By Peter Degraaf

The most recent COT (Commitment of Traders) report (chart courtesy Cotpricecharts.com), shows the ‘net short’ position of commercial gold traders to be at its highest level since December 18th 2009 (purple bar at far right). In the past whenever the number rose to the level of the last three weeks (300,000 see table at left), a correction soon followed. Not so much because of the large number of short positions (because these will eventually have to be covered), but because of the large number of long positions (blue-grey vertical bars), representing gold that is held for the most part by hedge funds. Many of these hedge funds use computer generated trading programs which kick in with a domino effect. Once a few begin to take profits, they all try to exit at the same time.

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