I am so tired of hearing “experts” in commodities(particularly gold & silver) saying that “for every long, there is a short.”  While that is “technically” true, it is a big misconception.  Yes, they introduced paper gold & silver contracts for the express purpose of suppressing gold and silver prices and discourage the public from investing in them.  It worked quite well for over 50+ years, but grossly distorted the markets for both metals.  Other than speculators betting either long or short, to bet on the future price of any commodity, the purpose of futures contracts are for the producers and users of those commodities to HEDGE their position.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      So, as the massive paper shorts in silver have been covering,  and will continue to do so as open interest declines, not every long contract has a REAL short.  What I mean by that, is that the longs are users(mostly industrial) while the shorts are mostly the miners, refiners and large holders of actual physical silver, who are hedging their physical silver inventories.  Yes, technically they are short(but only in the paper sense) because they have the physical silver inventories, in their possession.  There is a big difference in being short, vs being naked short.  That is what is playing out currently.  A big shift from the bulk of the shorts being naked, paper shorts, to eventually, most of the shorts being holders of physical metal, hedging their actual inventory.