From the bullish perspective Gold and Silver are both continuing to hold onto gains made after the historic — and wholly manufactured — crash that occurred between April 12th and April 15th.  In a story that is beginning to sound like that of the movie “Groundhog Day” gold gave back gains made over night selling off from around $1480 per ounce to $1464 through the European session after which it clawed its way back to $1470 where it stayed for the rest of the day; closing on the Globex at $1469.

Silver did much the same thing, rallying last night to $24.40 or so before being beaten back below $24.00 to hold that level tenuously for the rest of the afternoon.  At this point the price of both metals are being completely managed in the futures market to ensure no more momentum-based buying comes in.  Commodities in general did not move much today as Copper gave back a few pennies after Friday’s huge short squeeze, closing at $3.29 per lb.  Brent Crude tipped up a few pushing through to $105.38 per barrel.

I would not be surprised to see these markets to be on continued lock-down until FOMC Chairman Bernanke’s speech on Friday.  There are also U.S. treasury auctions this week which will have a large bearing on how the primary dealers position themselves in the futures market depending on how much cash they need to raise to cover the offering.

As long as physical demand maintains itself in the face of this the prices will push higher as Oil and copper have to follow equities eventually and this will continue to pull up the precious metals as well