gene arensberg says the commercial shorts aren't selling:

Isn’t that interesting? We are speaking of course about the fact that as silver has
challenged new 30-year nominal highs the largest commercial traders in silver futures are apparently not willing to take on much higher net short positioning.
How about that? We have to ask ourselves the question, with silver at 30-year highs why aren’t the largest futures hedgers and short sellers willing to really pile on the short side of silver futures? What signals do they see and what is keeping them from selling the heck out of this $5.00-plus rally since the August consolidation breakout?

Long-time readers and subscribers know that we have been looking for more selling
pressure from the commercial traders we have dubbed as the more mercenary of the two classes of commercial traders on the COMEX, the Swap Dealers either before or during the next harsh sell-down for silver. Let’s see what they were up to in this most recent report.
Interestingly, with silver net flat (but having tested as high as $24.90 during the COT week and having made new 30-year highs) we note the SDs reducing their net short positioning by 1,260 contracts to report a net 2,782 contracts net short.

http://library.constantcontact.com/doc205/1103244937002/doc/4AX4VRa4KlbMo9mb.pdf