Commercials picked up 1,144 longs but covered a massive -3,799 shorts to end the week with 43.27% of all open interest, a mammoth change since last week, and now stand as a group at -60,055,000 ounces net short, almost 25,000,000 less net short ounces from the previous week. Technically, this is one for the history books. Very few weeks have ever seen these huge percentage point changes.

Last week, these same commercials had 45.65% of all open interest. That is almost a 2.5% change in just one week.

Large speculators picked up 595 longs but stocked up for Armageddon by purchasing 4,475 shorts for a net long position of 31,110,000 ounces, a 40% decrease in their net long position of almost 20,000,000 ounces from the prior week. Are these large specs intending to become the next silver short tandem of Jamie Dimon and Blythe Masters? Just do the comparison from last week's COT report.

http://www.marshallswing.com/images/uploads/weblog/COT_Silver_6-19-2012.png

Small speculators gave up -141 longs and purchased a very significant 922 shorts for a net long position of 28,945,000 ounces a dramatic decrease of over 5,000,000 ounces net long from the prior week.

The real question here is on what days, exactly, did the speculators pick up all those shorts? If it was early in the reporting period then they are in the money but if late in the reporting period then that tells us exactly why the uptick in price after close Thursday, opening in Asia, and on into Friday morning in Europe. The sudden rise Friday morning may have been the opportunity for the commercials to rid themselves of some of those speculator shorts.

One more thought is that price is now in between the low on Thursday and the reporting period high about Wednesday of last week. Could be that the commercials are not sure just what the speculators intentions are with those shorts and see the speculators as hanging tough in the trenches?

Looking at the commercials, we see the swap dealers were able to add another 1,382 longs during this period.

It has not been all that many weeks since they were a mere 57,000,000 ounces net long. Now they are 98,405,000 ounces net long.

What a difference a couple of months makes!

As always, 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!