Commercials sold off -890 longs but picked up a large 1,301 shorts to end the week with 45.54% of all open interest, almost a full percentage point drop since last week, and now stand as a group at -82,625,000 ounces net short, over 10,000,000 added net short from the previous week. This is the result of the speculators going long because they thought the bottom was in. But the bottom, of course, is not in yet and will not be in for quite some time to come. As we approach the fall of the Western financial system with JP Morgan leading the pack, the precious metals will plummet. But this is a good thing for us physical investors.

Large speculators grabbed 1,310 longs and a minor 74 shorts for a net long position of 48,970,000 ounces, a big increase in their net long position of well over 5,500,000 ounces from the prior week. They were doing the right thing going long but as we shall see in next week's COT they got slammed by the commercials and gave up many of those longs but not all of them.

Small speculators increased 359 longs and covered -596 shorts for a net long position of 33,655,000 ounces a significant increase of almost 5,000,000 ounces net long from the prior week.

What happened this past week is old business as usual. It is the same old story where the commercials purchase huge amounts of shorts when the specs go long. The speculators, thinking the bottom was in, jumped in head first buying longs and everything looked very good for a little while. But the roof caved on the speculators in the last two days. I will detail this in a report on Sunday.

The battle with the CFTC and the manipulation of silver and gold is over for now but I will always provide their access information for you so we can continue to remind them they work for us!

For your convenience, if you would like to contact the CFTC and express your views to them, I have provided you their phone numbers and I hope earnestly that you fill up their phone lines: http://www.cftc.gov/Contact/index.htm and email addresses as well:
ggensler@cftc.gov Chairman Gensler
bchilton@cftc.gov Commissioner Chilton
jsommers@cftc.gov Commissioner Sommers
Somalia@cftc.gov Commissioner O'Malia
mwetjen@cftc.gov Commissioner Wetjen
dmeister@cftc.gov Director Meister

See you next week!