(Money Metals News Service) In a new Money Metals podcast interview, analyst Mike Maharrey spoke with veteran technical analyst Clive Maund about the Treasury market, soaring government debt, gold, silver, oil, inflation, and the increasingly unstable global fiat monetary system.
Clive Maund has been analyzing markets for decades and has operated CliveMaund.com since 2003. His work focuses heavily on the resource sector, including precious metals, mining stocks, copper, oil, natural gas, and broader financial markets.
Unlike analysts who begin with economic data or company fundamentals, Maund’s primary focus is technical analysis. He views charts as a visual record of supply and demand, price action, market psychology, and the interaction between price and time.
As he explained to Maharrey, the exact dollar amount of a price change matters less than the ratio. A stock moving from $1 to $2, from $2 to $4, or from $4 to $8 has made the same 100 percent gain in each instance. Charts provide a way to visualize those proportional changes and identify trends, cycles, bases, breakouts, and topping patterns.
Treasury Yields Are Pressuring Gold
The discussion began with the Treasury market and the impact of rising yields on gold and silver. Maharrey noted that 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields have climbed to levels not seen since 2002, creating significant pressure across financial markets.
Maund shared a one-year chart of the 10-year Treasury yield. He said yields have been in a relatively steady uptrend since March, but the chart also showed them reaching the top of that uptrend. The MACD indicator, which he uses to assess momentum and overbought or oversold conditions, suggested that yields were extremely overbought.
That does not guarantee an immediate reversal. Markets can remain overbought for longer than many investors expect. Still, Maund said the chart suggested a consolidation or a correction in yields was increasingly likely.
A pullback in yields could matter significantly for precious metals. Maund said the recent decline in gold was driven in part by rising Treasury yields and the associated strength in the dollar. If yields begin to retreat, that pressure could ease and allow gold and silver to regain upside momentum.
Maharrey agreed that rising yields have weighed on metals in the short term. But he questioned whether it makes sense to abandon an inflation hedge merely because yields are rising in an environment marked by debt, monetary expansion, and mounting economic uncertainty.
Maund said it is possible that the market could eventually resemble the late 1970s, when gold rose alongside yields because of the inflationary implications of the broader economic environment. In such a setting, investors may seek real money even if government bond yields remain elevated.
Debt Saturation and a Treasury Market Under Strain
Maund argued that the larger issue is not a short-term chart pattern but decades of borrowing and money creation. Governments around the world, he said, have continually kicked the debt can down the road through lower interest rates, quantitative easing, and ever-larger deficits.
In the United States, the national debt has reached roughly $40 trillion. Maund estimated that the cost of servicing that debt is around $1 trillion per year. He described the current moment as one of debt saturation, where the burden of financing government obligations becomes so large that markets demand higher yields to hold government paper.
In Maund’s view, policymakers have limited options. They can allow yields to keep rising, risking severe stress across Treasury, stock, and bond markets. Or they can create more money to support government debt and suppress yields, further undermining the purchasing power of the currency.
He said that continued money creation allows governments and large financial institutions to delay the reckoning, but everyday people ultimately pay the cost. As more dollars are created, the purchasing power of each existing dollar tends to decline. Prices then rise as the new money works its way through the economy.
Maharrey noted that the biggest buyers in the Treasury market increasingly appear to be hedge funds using leverage. Maund said that reinforces the fragility of a market in which debt must be continually financed at higher costs.
Both men emphasized that the issue is not merely the price of a single Treasury security. It is the structural dependence of the financial system on expanding debt, expanding credit, and a continuing willingness by investors to hold promises payable in fiat currency.
Gold’s Short-Term Setup and Long-Term Case
Turning to gold, Maund said the three-month chart showed a small head-and-shoulders top. He had previously warned that this pattern could lead to a short-term pullback.
However, he stressed that the formation did not look like a long-term top. Because it was a smaller pattern, he said its implications were limited to the short and medium term. On longer-term charts, the same move could be part of a larger bullish structure.
Maund said gold may be reacting back toward the upper boundary of a bullish falling-wedge pattern. He identified roughly $3,900 to $3,950 per ounce as a potential area of strong support.
If gold pulls back into that zone, Maund said it could provide a technically attractive buying opportunity. Alternatively, gold could turn upward before reaching that level if yields begin falling or if oil prices moderate.
In that case, Maund said traders should watch for gold to break above a former support level that has become resistance following the head-and-shoulders breakdown. A decisive move above that level would, in his view, signal that gold is ready to resume its larger uptrend.
Maharrey said the conflict involving Iran and the resulting oil-price pressures have acted like a lid on precious metals. Concerns about the Strait of Hormuz, elevated energy prices, inflation, and rising yields have all created a difficult short-term environment for gold and silver.
But both analysts said those pressures could reverse. If oil prices retreat and yields pull back from overbought levels, the macroeconomic and technical backdrop for precious metals could improve quickly.
Oil Prices and the Political Calendar
Maund also discussed a one-year Brent crude oil chart. He said it appeared to show the potential for a double top, a technical formation that can signal a possible decline after an extended advance.
He suggested that oil could pull back in the coming weeks, especially if policymakers make conciliatory moves toward Iran ahead of the November 2 midterm elections. Maund was careful to frame this as a possibility based on market and political incentives, not as a firm prediction.
He said a lower oil price would be politically helpful because high energy prices feed directly into public frustration and inflation concerns. A decline in oil could also reduce pressure on Treasury yields and the dollar.
That matters for gold and silver because the recent metals correction has occurred alongside rising oil and yields. A reversal in those trends could remove an important obstacle to a renewed advance in precious metals.
Silver’s Enormous 45-Year Pattern
The most bullish section of the interview focused on silver. Maund shared a long-term silver chart featuring what he called an extraordinarily large cup-and-handle pattern extending over roughly 45 years.
He said he had rarely seen such a clear and massive formation in decades of chart analysis. Maund first highlighted the setup last year, before silver broke out and surged to approximately $120.
The subsequent decline, he said, should not necessarily be interpreted as a failure of the long-term breakout. It is common for markets to experience a post-breakout reaction, particularly after a sharp advance from a major base.
According to Maund, silver has been reacting back toward support near the upper boundary of the giant cup-and-handle pattern. This type of retest can be normal technical behavior following a breakout.
He said silver could still move somewhat lower in the near term, perhaps toward $50 to $55 per ounce. But he characterized the broader $50 to $60 range as a major long-term buying zone.
Maund said the chart points to substantially higher silver prices in the months and years ahead. He argued that investors holding physical silver should focus less on short-term volatility and more on the larger trend, which he believes remains exceptionally bullish.
Maharrey said the macroeconomic conditions support that analysis. Silver has faced persistent supply deficits, and physical demand pressures have recently appeared in both the COMEX and London markets. Those fundamentals, combined with the technical setup, could create a powerful environment for silver if demand continues to outpace available supply.
Real Money in an Era of Currency Debasement
The interview closed with a broader discussion of why gold and silver remain relevant. Maund said physical precious metals differ fundamentally from Treasury bonds, paper currencies, and digital financial assets because they cannot be created with a keystroke.
Governments can expand fiat money and credit supplies, but they cannot print gold or silver. That physical constraint is one reason precious metals have served as money and stores of value for thousands of years.
Maharrey said Money Metals aims to help people understand how currency debasement erodes purchasing power and how physical gold and silver can provide a measure of protection. Neither man presented precious metals as a perfect or effortless solution, but both argued that they offer a tangible alternative to an increasingly debt-dependent fiat system.
For Clive Maund, the value of analyzing gold and silver goes beyond forecasting price movements. He said that during dark and uncertain economic times, understanding real money can give people a practical path forward and a reason for financial hope.
