SILVER

Today we start with Silver, as it merits all attention, after it was the star performer on Friday. By the end of the day, 191 Mio. ounces had changed hands, 40% above average and a price gain of 6.3%, or almost 2 USD from the lows. The biggest turnover was registered around the 31 USD level, where on the first attempt to clear the resistance 15 Mio. ounces changed hands in just 10 minutes. Only once Europe was out, Silver seemed bitten by the devil and took off to a high of 32.23 as the day ended, continuing this morning in Asia to as high as 32.51 USD per ounce. We had mentionned earlier in the week of strong Call buying interest by the fund community, which was followed by Sprott Physical Silver ETF addind 26,45 Mio. shares or 10.36 Mio. ounces of Silver holdings. Sales of the American Eagle Silver Coin have reached 5.3 Mio. ounces so far, the second best monthly sale we could track back to 1986, only beaten by January 2011, where 6.4 Mio. ounces were sold. Last but not least, technical driven buying might have caused the last sharp upmove. Silver fixed at 30.36 on Friday, which lets us expect a strong buying interest at today's Fixing. Gold fooled the bears on Friday, trading down to 1645 and ralling back above 1660 after the p.m. fixing with a good turnover of 1.1 Mio. ounces in the 20 minutes around that level. The 1670 level was only taken out in Asia today, with a high of 1673.20 but volumes muted, due to the lack of Asian participants. Here we'd look for 1685 as the next major resistance today. In the news the Russian Central Bank added 300'000 ounces to its holdings in December.