A friend of mine just asked me about the TOCOM short positions, so I searched through the MIDAS archive to find the last time the chart was published showing the trend in the gold short positions of the “seven big gold shorts” in Japan.

And I found it (below), last published in MIDAS on October 22nd. That was the time that Goldman Sachs briefly went long for the first time (for just a few days), and coincided with one of the largest commercial short-covering days ever. That day, Goldman went from net short 200 gold contracts to net long 543 contracts, their first ever day long, while the “seven big gold shorts” slashed their net short position by 7,520 contracts to 12,359 contracts, the “smallest net short position they have held since (Scott) began recording this data in February 2006.”

And what did Gold do on the next day? Yep, it BOTTOMED at roughly $713/oz.!

So let’s see. Back in late October, at the peak of the market crisis, the big “commercials” were massively buying back shorts right around the bottom of the gold market. At that time, the Dow was 9,025, gold was $713, silver was $10.10, and the COMEX open interest positions were 319,000 for gold and 95,000 for silver.

Now fast forward to today. The Dow is LOWER, at 8,579, gold is $838, silver is $10.90, and the COMEX open interest positions are 294,000 for gold and 86,000 for silver.

As we know, the Cartel ALWAYS increases its shorts as the prices of gold and silver rise. However, in this case, for the first time EVER, they have not. Gold and silver have risen by 17% and 8%, respectively, over the past two months (while the Dow has fallen by 5%), however the TOCOM shorts have reduced their gold short position by 91% to its lowest level ever (essentially neutral at short 1,164 contracts) and are now long silver. Meanwhile, Goldman on Friday went long gold again in major fashion, yielding its largest long position EVER. And, simultaneously, the COMEX gold and silver open interest positions have fallen by 8% and 10%, respectively, back to their lowest positions in 3-4 years (last seen when gold and silver were nearly half the prices they are today).

Not to mention, since that time nearly HALF of the physical gold and silver COMEX inventories have been claimed (if the gold and silver are even there), and each day it’s looking like either February or March will represent D-Day for the COMEX short squeeze (barring any further dirty tricks by the Cartel).

In other words, taking out the market noise of the past few weeks, the themes of the gold and silver markets have been a) MASSIVE, UNPRECEDENTED SHORT COVERING by the bad guys during a period of rising gold and silver prices, b) MASSIVE, UNPRECEDENTED ABANDONMENT OF THE GOLD AND SILVER FUTURES MARKETS by traditional long speculators as they likely leave the COMEX forever, and c) MASSIVE, UNPRECEDENTED PHYSICAL DELIVERY REQUESTS on the COMEX.

Combine these themes with the MASSIVE PHYSICAL GOLD AND SILVER SHORTAGES, including closing mints, rising premiums (no more eBay cash back offers, for instance), and the topping of the dollar, sprinkle in the new Zero Interest Rate Policy, MASSIVE planned fiscal stimulus ($586 billion in China and $850 billion in the U.S.), heightened bailouts, and an incoming president designing himself to put FDR to shame, and you have the ingredients for a very near-term earthquake in the Precious Metals markets.

Nothing is guaranteed, but if I were a Vulcan like Mr. Spock, I’d say that you can’t argue with logic!

Andrew Hoffman

Murphy's Le Metropole cafe is the best single source of pm related info I have found.

Our time is comming my friends.