Commercials sold 2,373 longs and picked up 2,669 shorts to end the week with 58.66% of all open interest and now stand as a group at 17,609,100 ounces net short, a increase of 504,200 ounces from the previous week.

Large speculators sold 2,296 longs and pitched a whopping -7,648 shorts for a net long position of 14,200,500 ounces, a increase of 535,200 ounces from the prior week.

Small speculators dumped 1,987 longs and 1,677 shorts for a net long position of 3,408,600 ounces a decrease of a mere 31,000 ounces from the prior week.

The beating the large speculators took on their shorts was devastating. They had been building up their own large short positions for many weeks prior to the March 27 COT report where they were beat out of 8.998 short positions. The commercials do not intend for anyone to profit at their game.

In the disaggregated commercials, the producer/merchants added to their huge net short position 676,200 ounces. The swap dealers who are also net short in gold but net long in silver dropped their short position by 172,000 ounces.

Quite a different picture from what we see going on in the silver market. Our favorite banker has a stranglehold on gold. The question now is will they try to drop the price or let it remain where it is. Jim Willie has said that deep pockets from the East are feeding on gold at these levels and are content to do so slowly and the process may take as long as 2 years. It is hard for me to imagine our bankers allowing this constant purchasing and delivery of physical gold to foreign shores for this long a period of time. Something has to give!