This is an options expiration week for US equities including miners.
The option expiration for Comex gold and silver will be near the end of the month on March 28.
There did seem to be a fairly obvious effort from the US to keep gold and silver prices from breaking out with the natural disaster in Japan. They can try to keep doing this, but as we have seen, eventually the upward buying pressure becomes too great and they must retreat to defend some higher price level. And so we get this stairstep trending move higher.
