Jeffrey Christian

Founder & Managing Partner, CPM Group

The data rarely supports the sensational narrative — own metals for the right reasons, in the right amounts.

Background

Jeffrey Christian is the founder and managing partner of CPM Group, the New York commodities research and consulting firm he established in 1986 through a buyout of the commodities research group he had led at Goldman Sachs' J. Aron & Company. He has analysed precious metals markets professionally since around 1980, making him one of the longest-serving continuously practising analysts in the space. CPM Group's annual Gold Yearbook, Silver Yearbook, and Platinum Group Metals Yearbook are standard references for supply, demand, inventory, and investment-flow statistics, and the firm advises mining companies, refiners, central banks, governments, and institutional investors on hedging and market strategy. He is the author of "Commodities Rising" (2006).

Christian occupies a deliberately uncomfortable position in the precious metals commentary ecosystem: he is a career metals analyst who believes strongly in owning gold and silver, and an equally persistent critic of the promotional narratives — imminent COMEX default, decades-long price suppression, paper-gold collapse — that circulate through much of the retail-facing commentary space. He testified at the CFTC's March 2010 public hearing on metals position limits, and has spent much of the years since publicly disputing manipulation and shortage claims with statistics, often in direct and abrasive exchanges with the community's more bullish voices.

Investment Thesis

Christian's core framework is that precious metals prices are set by measurable fundamentals — mine supply, secondary recovery, fabrication demand, inventories, and above all investment demand, which he identifies as the swing factor in gold and silver pricing. CPM Group's research treats investor net purchases as the marginal force that determines whether structural surpluses or deficits translate into price moves, which is why the firm spends so much effort quantifying flows that other analysts treat anecdotally.

From that foundation he draws two conclusions that put him at odds with much of the gold commentariat. First, the market mostly works the way it appears to work: futures markets are hedging and price-discovery mechanisms rather than suppression machines, the London OTC market's large gross turnover is not evidence of fractional-reserve fraud, and episodic trader misconduct does not amount to a coordinated decades-long scheme to cap prices. Second, the strongest case for gold and silver does not need the apocalypse: metals have earned a permanent place in portfolios as liquid, no-counterparty-risk diversifiers that perform well across recurring periods of monetary and political stress, without any requirement that the dollar or the financial system collapse.

The result is a stance that is structurally constructive but tactically unsentimental — CPM has been long-term positive on gold ownership for decades while being willing to call cyclical tops, overshoots, and bubbles in both metals when the data said prices had outrun fundamentals.

Critiques & Limitations

Christian's combative style is inseparable from his value: he treats debunking as part of the job, and his exchanges with silver-squeeze proponents, GATA, and prominent perma-bulls are often personal enough to overshadow the underlying statistics. Critics on the bullish side argue that his structural skepticism bleeds into conservatism in strong bull phases, and that a framework calibrated to normal supply-demand behaviour can lag when the buyer base shifts structurally, as central-bank accumulation has arguably done — though the charge lands unevenly, since CPM was also early in flagging the sharp rise in gold and silver prices into 2025. The JPMorgan spoofing prosecutions are also cited against him, though conflating episodic spoofing with the multi-decade suppression thesis he actually disputes misstates his position. Finally, CPM Group is a consultancy whose clients include miners, refiners, and institutions — a commercial context readers should weigh, exactly as they should for dealer-affiliated commentators on the other side. None of this diminishes the rarity of what he provides: a data-first check on a commentary ecosystem that is overwhelmingly long-biased.

Notable Calls