originally published March 5th, 2012

Silver has had a good run from its lows at the end of last year and was on course to break out of the major downtrend in force from its highs of April last year, but it was not to be, for last week it reversed sharply to the downside, leaving behind a bearish engulfing pattern on its chart, as we can see on its 15-month chart below. While it has not yet broken down from the intermediate uptrend in force from late last year, action last week suggests that it is destined to shortly.

The fact that silver tried to break out of its major downtrend channel, but failed and then dropped hard on heavy volume is a clear sign of a trend change - an intermediate reversal. Thus it is now expected to break down from its shorter-term uptrend shown and drop away, despite the fact that it is not very overbought and its moving averages are in increasingly bullish alignment. How far could it drop? - it could drop right back across the trend channel which would clearly not be good news for silver bulls, and there is nothing to say that it could not drop further than that.

The 3-year chart for silver shows the current established downtrend in the context of the preceding strong uptrend. While it now looks set to drop back across the channel, a clear upside break out of this obviously important downtrend will restore upside potential.