Silver: hedge funds halve their long as new shorts move inSilver FuturesCOMEX_DL:SI1!NightbricksSilver has gone quiet on the chart since the late September drop. Under the surface, hedge funds have cut their bet on it nearly in half. The cut. In the CFTC report dated September 8, Managed Money (hedge funds and CTAs) was net long 14,176 COMEX silver contracts. By October 6 it was 7,608, down 46 percent in four weeks and the smallest net long since early March. Not only exits. Over those four weeks long contracts fell by 4,669 while shorts rose by 1,899, so close to a third of the drop came from fresh short bets. The single biggest week was the report dated September 29: shorts up 3,042 and longs down 2,236 in seven days. The fund count tells the same story. 44 managed money traders were long on September 15 and 32 on October 6. Short traders went from 10 to 17. In gold the selling was almost all funds getting out; in silver some are now betting on lower prices. The backdrop. Brent has stayed above 100 dollars on the Gulf attacks, inflation data came in hot again this week, and markets now expect the Fed to hold rates. That is a hard setting for a metal that pays no yield and also depends on industrial demand. Fewer hands. The net long of the four largest traders rose from 10.6 percent of open interest on August 25 to 13.1 percent on October 6, and it has not fallen in any report since. Open interest dropped from 138,386 contracts on August 18 to 118,562, a fall of 14 percent. Smaller funds are leaving and the big holders are staying, the same pattern we flagged in gold. Where positioning stands. The 52 week z-score is minus 1.0 and the three year COT Index is 29 out of 100. The net long sits at the 21st percentile of all weekly readings since 2006. Funds are lightly positioned, not yet at an extreme. The last time managed money was net short silver was February 2024. What we are watching. Whether short traders keep climbing past 17. Whether the net long slides toward zero, which would put funds on the short side for the first time since early 2024 and leave room for a sharp short covering rally if inflation cools. And whether the large holders who stayed start to sell, because when a concentrated long moves, it moves in size. Data: CFTC Commitments of Traders (Disaggregated, futures and options combined), read through COTInsight. Not investment advice. Futures carry substantial risk.