here is the silver with the cot data and it too is similar to oct 31, 2008 and this is the first time that the commercials have had this small of a hedged position since feb, 2001! but the cot data is weekly and therefore not applicable for trading on a daily chart. also, it is about a week late and the commercials may be even less hedged now which will show up in next weeks report.

here is a monthly chart of gold with the cot data for comm, large specs and small specs, notice the similarity between now and oct 2008 thus far as long as gold holds in here

currently the comm and large specs are right where they were in oct 2008 and the small specs are a little bit lower than they were at that time

here is a chart of the gold with cot comm, large and sm specs, the yellow horizontal line on the comm cot is the # of contracts that they are currently net hedged at this latest report, i think we need to see the comm begin to increase their hedged position to have gold start going up. the cot report is always a week late so we have to wait. the bottom panel is small trader sentiment which is usually wrong at turning points, so it is a contrary indicator.

here is a chart of the large specs, they seem to be following the trend

here are monthly, quarterly charts of gold with commercial COT and DSI (daily sentiment index of  small traders), the orange horizontal line on the COT is @ -100,000 and the horizontal lines on the DSI are @ 85% and 20%

also there is a chart of the small traders position and as can be seen the small trader is now negative for the 1st time since the start of the bull market and they are usually wrong @ turning points and also they are bearish now too

matt, let me know if you want more charts and what data you want to see

there were over 9.5 MILLION shares traded on the last minute of trading for GDX, don't know what to make of it? gdx closed unchanged for that one minute @ 30.23 low of 30.12 & high of 30.37