de steer of casey research thinks the banks have liquidated all of the silver shorts they can at the moment:

From Ed Steer:

Both gold and silver were comatose all night long in the Far East...and all through European trading once again. However, the moment that the London p.m. fix was in, both metals' prices went vertical. Silver got capped before it hit $13...but gold managed to close above $900, and is now above $910 as I write this. As I said yesterday...Friday is options expiry...so be ready for anything. But even I wasn't expecting that. Today's New York price action should be enlightening.

Needless to say, Ted Butler and I had a discussion about yesterday's goings-on. His guess [and it's only a guess] is that the 'four or less' traders in the Commercial category of the Commitment of Traders...all bullion banks...have covered all the shorts they can by rigging the price to the downside...and now they're forced to cover their shorts in silver and gold by buying in the open market. This action on their part, if true, would have caused the spike up in prices yesterday. Time will tell.

Surprisingly, since both gold and silver prices rose on Wednesday, open interest in both metals fell...but as I mentioned yesterday...we're in the rollover period before options expiry and first day notice for May, and a lot of switching is going on...and many contracts are also being closed out. Having said all that, gold open interest fell 2,824 contracts to 336,402...and silver o.i. was down 534 contracts to 95,743.

Not a lot to report in 'other gold news' this time. The Comex Delivery Report on Thursday showed that 49 contracts were delivered in gold...and two in silver. Not a lot of activity there. Over at the Comex-approved warehouses, I note that 477,032 ounces of silver was removed from the exchange yesterday. Virtually all of it came from Brink's, Inc. Over at the GLD ETF, about 30,000 ounces was removed...probably a fee payment. There was no change in SLV.

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