There is a reason why precious metals have had an ordinary start to the year. The DJ-UBS commodities index is rebalanced at the beginning of every year and generally speaking the methodology is to sell the outperforming commodities of the previous year and buy the underperformers. Based on that silver is one of the commodities being sold down.
In terms of scope, apparently around 25m oz of silver will be sold out which is roughly equal to the amount that has gone into ETF buying since November 2010, so quite a sizeable amount. Of course this is a temporary phenomenon and, IMO, does not change the fundamental bullish outlook for silver.
