"I looked at the shorts (commercial/hedgers) numbers and it appears to me that the short covering of all times is almost among us"

However, if they are REALLY hedgers, then they don't have to cover their positions; they merely deliver into the contract month the same number of ounces that they hedged. The contract closes when the "long" takes delivery.

So the question is as always, "Are they indeed hedgers or are they just bankers trading naked short silver contracts?"

g