Pick a reason and it's helping support precious metals today:

Geopolitical tensions

The situation in the Middle East with Iran is continuing to escalate.  Britain has told Iran that the standoff is entering a "different phase" freezing talks as diplomatic efforts so far seem to have failed to secure the return of their 15 sailors.  At the same time the US military has begun exercises in the Persian Gulf involving warships and planes.  Iran has now said that they will release the female sailors in captivity.  We'll have to wait and see if some of the excitement is worked off throughout the course of the day as cooler heads attempt to prevail in a very incendiary situation.

US Dollar

February durable goods orders came out this morning and were significantly weaker than expected, coming in at a 2.5% increase instead of forecasts projecting a 3.5% increase.  Add another round of some sub prime worries hitting the market from Beazer Homes, more news about the housing market being in the worst shape since the early 1990's and the dollar is looking particularly weak at present.  Throw on top of all that testimony by Chairman Bernanke in front of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress and we have a potentially very volatile day in the currencies markets on tap.  He should be pushed on a number of issues, specifically what is the US better equipped to handle right now, increasing inflation or slowing growth.  The markets will ebb and flow on each word of his testimony.

Oil Market

While oil is the most connected to any events in the Middle East, we will also get the US oil and gas inventory reports this morning at 10:30 AM EST.  We've seen gasoline stocks decline six weeks in a row before we've even begun the heavy driving season in the US.  Along with numerous refinery shutdowns and maintenance issues, this is not good to be having supply problems entering the peak demand season for gas. 

Miner News

The market has also received news that Newcrest's Telfer mine in Australia has been shut in for the past two days and could continue to be shut in for another three days as massive weather systems are hitting the southwest coast of Australia.  Telfer is one of the largest producing mines in Australia.  Goldcorp's Los Filos mine which is scheduled to begin production in the 2nd quarter of 2007 has had several work stoppages over the past few weeks as area landowners have been protesting agreements.  Neither mine shut in should affect prices on their own, but bear keeping an eye on in the next few days.   Finally, Chip Goodyear, CEO of BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, told a conference in Chile that he expects metals prices to continue to surge over the coming decades.  While he's speaking directly about base metals (copper, zinc, nickel, and lead) the mining and metals sector are closely correlated and we believe the same phenomenon is true of precious metals, silver being the swing bet between base and precious metals (BHP is the largest producer of silver in the world).