I will have a full market summary out on Sunday but for now I found two of this afternoon's Commitments of Traders (CoT) reports to be quite curious; small speculators have moved to a record short position in gold futures (net short 6,592 contracts for a notional value of roughly $818 million), while total speculative length (both large and small speculators) has never been higher in US dollar futures:

Click to enlarge

Gold_CoT_10.17.2014

This is one of the most interesting gold CoT reports I have ever seen: Large specs (mostly hedge funds) opened up a large number of fresh long positions in the week leading up to the October 14th report date, meanwhile small specs (mostly individual traders) moved to the largest net short interest on record.

US dollar futures speculative positioning

USD_spec_positioning

US dollar speculators (large and small) have reached a fresh record net long interest (above previous currency panics such as May 2012)

I believe these two reports are especially noteworthy given that gold has begun to exhibit signs of bottoming while the US Dollar Index is beginning to exhibit signs of topping:

Gold (Daily)

Gold_Daily_10.17.2014

$1250 is still the nut to crack next week

US Dollar Index (Daily)

USD_Daily

Two large sell-off days recently as bullish sentiment and speculative long interest continues to surge

In markets the crowd is usually right for a long time, until there comes a major turning point and then they are often badly wrong. One must wonder if the extreme bullish sentiment in the US dollar combined with the extreme bearish sentiment in gold occurring in the face of divergent price action is an early indication of such a turning point.