Looking at the most recent Commitment of Traders reports for the various commodities I track, I found a disturbing trend in the sentiment toward oil.

Large speculators are only long a net 130,858 contracts. This is the least bullish they have been since last October.

To refresh your memory, oil was trading around $78 a barrel at the beginning of October before it rallied to over $100 a barrel by mid-November.

With oil, large speculators have not been net short since April 2009, so it is better to look at how long they are in relative terms.

If you question the power of contrarian investing, here is some food for thought.

The peak optimism from large speculators came at the end of February when the net long position was over 250,000 contracts. At that time, oil was trading up around $110 a barrel.

Over the last four months, the price of oil has fallen as low as $81 a barrel.

It looks like oil is getting ready to rally again and the $100 mark looks like a good target.