yeah regardless of the manipulation or not, that stuff is just noise, for trading you have to focus on the charts etc. And the COT data has been useful and the one thing that told us that the correction following the Aug highs would take a while to unfold.  Folks get impatient, particularly gold bugs and gold sites and know most that bought back in way way too early after those early fall highs. While Steve and I had some long ideas in that space since then, they have been for shorter term trades. 

again for trading purposes I would pay no attention to the manipulation stuff, it can't provide you timing or triggers, it's simply side information