SILVER

Silver appears to be content to consolidate around the $30.00 level on the charts. In general, there would appear to be a risk on environment in place to start and that has probably lent some support to silver prices. A weaker dollar and initially higher US equity market action are also issues favoring the bull camp to start. However, the bear camp is probably holding out hope that debt restructuring talks in Greece will break down or perhaps the bears are simply hopeful that US debt ceiling issues will weigh on silver and physical commodity prices later today. However, expectations are calling for generally positive US scheduled data and that might serve to underpin the bull camp. While the silver market hasn't paid that much attention to classic physical supply news lately, a large international silver miner Fresnillo managed to beat its annual silver production target. Some traders think that silver has seen some drag on prices from recent Indian duty changes, while others think that silver is destined to take most of its near term direction from the direction of equities. Comex Silver Stocks were 125.639 million ounces down 340,560 ounces. Silver stocks have increased 15 of the last 20 days. Critical support in March silver is seen at $29.87 and there might be little in the way of resistance until the $30.37 level. The bias is pointing up off European debt developments and that bias should be give an added lift, in the wake of generally up beat US scheduled data. However, we aren't sure that silver will avail itself of the mostly positive environment this morning, as silver has been lagging behind gold recently. Up trend channel support is seen down at $29.69 and that support channel line rises to $29.90 on Thursday.