A friend asked if anyone had seen short interest on gold. Not quite my specialty, but did a quick check.

Points to note from the Latest Commitments of Traders Report of Sept 11 on positions as of Sept 8 [see table below]:

• Non-commercial traders (i.e. speculators) are long gold almost 10:1. They are more indicative trading market sentiment than commercial traders. Their long positions of these speculators grew almost 10x as much as short positions in the latest report.
• Commercial trader positions moved in the opposite direction, though not by as great a magnitude. They were short gold about 4:1. Short positions grew over the most recently reported week by about 25x. Commercial traders trade more on the spot market.

I don’t know where to get historical data to see if these figures indicate extreme sentiment or not, no my conclusions are limited. They include:

• Speculators and commercial traders appear to have a rather opposite position on gold’s near term future based on the below table.

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