this is from ed steer of casey research:

The usual not-for-profit New York bullion banks went after both gold and silver right from the Globex open on Sunday night. In the thinly traded Far East market, any selling [or buying] of consequence has a huge impact on the price. This time it was down...big time. I don't remember gold ever being down $20 by lunch time in Hong Kong...ever. Silver was down 35 cents. It was savage. From there, both metals traded sideways until the Comex open in New York at 8:00 a.m....where the boyz peeled another $15 off gold and 40 cents off silver. The bottom was in for gold at the London p.m. fix...10:00 a.m. in New York. Silver's bottom was at 10:45. Estimated gold volume yesterday was 119,802 contracts with a switch effect of 2,840.

This is price management at its most flagrant. It's illegal as hell, but neither the CFTC nor the SEC will do a thing about it. They are there to protect JPMorgan and HSBC USA et al, so they can go about their business of managing the gold and silver price. The CFTC pretends that everything is fine, even though anyone with more than a room temperature I.Q. [in degrees Fahrenheit, mind you] can see exactly what's happening.

As I said in my Saturday commentary...I am short-term bearish on both gold and silver. The reason given was latest COT report on Friday...and the gargantuan gold short position of the '8 or less' bullion banks...almost a record. I said that gold's 200-day moving average was in their sights...and that they would kill the silver price at the same time. Well, they killed silver...and stopped just a couple of bucks shy of the 200-day m.a. on gold. This selloff was engineered to do maximum psychological damage to the precious metal investor. Here is the 2-year gold chart.

click to enlarge

You will note how close we came to the 200-day m.a...less than four bucks. They could have sliced right through it if that was their plan...but I think they pulled their punches. Ted feels [after yesterday's action] that there are still between 50-60,000 Comex long gold contracts that the bullion banks could harvest...if they want to...and if they can. Ted figures that the bullion banks are net short about 15 million ounces of gold as of Monday's Globex close. When the bullion banks were at rock bottom in the COT...December 9/08...they held a net short position of only 9.5 million ounces. How low could the gold price go if they really got serious? Don't know.

And now for silver...here's the 2-year chart.

click to enlarge

After yesterday's brutal beating in silver, it's Ted's feeling [and I agree] that we are within a few thousand contracts [if that!] of the absolute lows that we also experienced in the December 9/08 COT, when JPMorgan and HSBC were short only 123.7 million ounces of silver. The bottom is basically in for silver right now...but we've got miles to go in gold. As I said on Saturday...the dichotomy between the two metals is incredible.

Not that I want to get too technical about it, but Ted pointed out to me that there is one silver moving average that still hasn't been penetrated on this down move...and that's the 100-day m.a....which is shown on the above silver chart. Is it a target? Don't know...but thought I'd point it out. The 100-day moving average in gold was penetrated yesterday. Also, when looking at both charts, you will note that the RSI for both metals is in the mid 30s. On a real clean-out they can be 10-15 points lower than that...so if JPMorgan and HSBC are going to do the 'full monty' on this...we've got a bit to go yet.