.... and more importantly to ECU shareholders, provide ongoing support to the price of Silver Equities through the next month-long correction which should commence in another week. Don't worry because it's going to be a fairly mild sideways chop before gearing up for a heck of a run into the May/June timeframe. This clip is from the February 28 GATA dispatch:

 Bill,
Despite the recent surges in the gold and silver prices, their COMEX future prices are still firmly in contango. In early 2006, when silver prices surged due to the silver ETF and climbing commodities, the silver futures were in backwardation. This backwardation said two things, one was that spot physical silver was in short supply, and the 2nd was that long term, the market believed that adequate supplies would return. The same thing happened in zinc and nickel over the last two years. The backward future prices in all 3 of these metals were proven correct in that prices came down significantly for each metal. Now what we have is spiking spot silver prices, but no backwardation. To me this means one of two things. Either the supply of spot silver is in deficit AND is expected to be in deficit for years to come, or someone is buying up long dated silver futures which is causing prices for all contract months to climb. Either way, the contango says that the silver price has room to continue climbing and that these high prices are here to stay. Regards,
-Bryant