Originally published January 23rd, 2011.

While silver has performed as predicted in the last update posted on 11th January and has broken to successive new lows as its correction has progressed, it does not now look like it will drop to the downside targets that we earlier projected. Instead it now looks like we are very close to a reversal to the upside.

It has to be said that the 6-month chart for silver does not look particularly inspiring at this point, as following the failure of the uptrend in force from last August, silver's intermediate upside momentum has collapsed, as shown by the MACD indicator at the bottom of the chart, and on Thursday it crashed a support level in the $28 area. Normally such a setup would create the specter of a steep drop back at least to the first support shown on our chart in the $25 area, and this may indeed happen during the early or middle part of next week ahead of options expiration. However, there several strong indications that what happened on Thursday was a false breakdown engineered by "big money" in order to shake out technical traders ahead of a potentially powerful reversal to the upside, and the extreme reading of the MACD histogram (blue columns) certainly suggests a high probability of an immediate bounce, even if we then see lower lows.

As with gold the latest COT chart provides a strong indication that a reversal and new uptrend is close at hand, although the silver COT is not as dramatically bullish as the gold COT. The COT chart shows that the Large Spec (dumb) long positions and Commercial (smart) short positions have dropped to their lowest levels since last July - since before the huge rally in silver - and are in fact at even lower levels. As with gold this a very strong indication that a reversal and major uptrend is imminent. This being so we should not expect much more downside in silver - there could be a brief spike down towards the next important support level in the $25 area, but this is looking much less likely now in light of the latest COT data and also the bullish indications on the PM stocks indices looked at in the Gold Market update, so although upside momentum has undeniably dropped out in silver, as shown by the now negative MACD reading, another way of looking at it is that its earlier overbought condition has unwound and thus the potential for another powerful upleg has been restored.

Any positions opened to make speculative gains on this drop should now be closed out (for a big profit). There are times in this business when you can "have your cake and eat it", as those who bought Puts or bear ETFs to protect open long positions in stocks have the opportunity to sell them now for a big profit that covers the stock losses, and then watch with satisfaction as the stocks go on to recoup their losses as the new uptrend takes hold. The silver bear leveraged ETF ZSL which we bought at a good price and in which we have a good profit should now be sold, except where you wish to retain it as insurance for long positions.