Not surprisingly, the commercials decreased their short silver futures position a net 165 contracts (825k ounces) for the week ending 3/13/12. The commercials' net short position now stands at 35,631 contracts, (70,972 shorts and 35,341 longs) or 178.155 million ounces short. Actually we are surprised the commercials were unable to cover a greater portion of their shorts into the nearly $6 price smash from $37.50 to the low $30's.
This means one of two things:
1. The cartel is planing further raids next week under the cover of chaos from the Greek debt auction on Monday March 19th and the subsequent trigger of CDS' on Greek debt, or:
2. The cartel merely ran out of new weak longs to puke and flush their new long paper silver positions, and the cartel will now have to retreat to higher ground to start the game anew...possibly even requiring them to cover a portion of their recent massive new accumulation of shorts into a price rally, which has not happened since the last 2 weeks of April, 2011.
The speculators increased their short silver futures positions a net 2,976 contracts (14.88 million ounces), likely indicating that a bottom is near as they pile on the short side after silver has declined nearly 15% over the past week.
Open interest remains stable near 110,000 contracts, closing at 111,730 for this week's report.
