Hi Baires, it depends who the shorts are, doesn't it? the small speculators are always wrong while the big institutional investors are always right? I don't have any recent info on that, unfortunately, it seems to change weekly, but the predictions for gold appear to be dire. Question is, is all this negativity contrarian and predicting a rise? I think not, but this I think is what makes it such a difficult question right now. We are also at the point where cost of production for seniors is higher than the price, this can't last for long. You have it right on the manipulation. Uncertainty +++ Ike