“Gold Investors Give up Hope as Biggest Short in History Builds,” blared Bloomberg.

“Gold is hitting new milestones of misery.”

And from the looks of gold charts, they’re right. Gold is one of the most hated assets.

It’s been sunk from a high of $1,360 to $1,194.  No one wants to touch it.

But have traders become too bearish?  Is it time to buy when others are fearful, according to Warren Buffett.  Is it time to buy the blood in the streets, as pointed out by Baron Rothschild?

Not just yet.  But it appears we’re getting close, as fear becomes overdone.

“Exchange-traded funds tracking the metal have bled assets for 13 consecutive weeks… [and] investors have placed the biggest gold short on record,” Bloomberg reported.

Speculators are also net short for the first time since December 2001, when gold was priced at $275 an ounce, according to Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Financial Group, as quoted by CNBC. “It’s tough to find a more contrarian indicator.”

Even the levels of gold contracts held by shorts has run amok.

“It’s literally off the charts. 215,000 contracts is double what it was the third week of June, triple what it was the second week of June. It’s up nine weeks in a row,” said Boockvar. The last time gold short bets were at a high was in 2015, and the prior record was 159,000 contracts at that time, according to CFTC data going back to 1993.

“An extreme level of positioning should be the signal we’re close to bottoming out in gold in days or weeks,” he said.

Shorts in gold have only grown as investors long the dollar.

However, even as the dollar is susceptible to a stronger dollar, we do expect to see some bargain hunting at multi-year lows.

Plus, historically, each time gold has declined at such a rapid pace, recoveries aren’t long off.