Posted this on a different BB but it's worth considering.These are the net short positions of the big commercials who trade on Comex, Gld, Slv, as indicated in the last few weeks gold COT reports. July 24th 21,500 contracts. July 31st 16,500 contracts. August 7th 15,000 contracts. August 14th 23,500 contracts. August 21st 30,000 contracts. To give some perspective to this, in the COT dated 22nd August 2014 the commercials were 122,377 contracts long compared to 270,039 contracts short. This was a net short position of c. 148,000 contracts. This was reflected in the precipitous decline in gold at that time and of course the large specs were net long 140,000 contracts and got hammered. Back to today, it is overall positive to see such muted net short interest in the commercials for the simple reason that they alone have the edge over the hedge funds and large speculators who generally are on the other side of the trade. Nanex shows us in glorious Technicolor the actions of these large participants like JPM who actively short the market in thinly traded hours to hit the stop loss levels of major long positions of their own clients who they maliciously front run with their prestiged access to the stop loss order book in order to not have to pay out. As we know on one occasion they managed to accidently break the SLV market in doing this. Fact. End of. It has been to court and they got their wrist slap. And Don't forget Libor, Euribor, etc. But now they are positioned like sharks just under the surface ready to take a big bite out of the flat footed short positioned speculators and of course the poor producers who take longer to get out of contractually obliged hedging positions in certain situations, generally refinancing related. It's going to get messy for a while until market psychology comes into play, Vix and Vvix retracements smack of complacency to me. I doubt it will take long for another rude awakening for the AAPL class investor.