gene arensberg writes about the precious metals:

Always more volatile silver is literally AT IMPLIED SUPPORT technically speaking. So, while silver is seen by some as vulnerable, it is also in the region where we can trade it from the long side with easily defined stops. There are also reasonably priced hedges available for the more cautious traders among us.

Despite material pressure on both gold and silver, we note only minimal reductions of metal holdings in gold ETFs and we even note some modest buying pressure for silver ETFs over the past week.

Large mining shares are still underperforming gold and that is worrisome. We will be on the lookout for when the big miners hold their ground despite gold and silver weakness, but until they do we have no choice but to respect their underperformance. This is the main reason we have not already returned to a bullish bias for gold.

Although shares of the largest gold and silver miners have taken a stomach punch over the past few weeks, we have been impressed with the relative outperformance of the smaller, less liquid issues on down the mining share food chain. We believe that when the “little guys” outperform the big miners it is usually a more bullish than bearish signal.

http://www.stockhouse.com/Columnists/2010/Feb/3/Got-Gold-Report--COMEX-Commercials-covering-gold-s