Gold could be set to bounce back in the beginning of 2014, as the overwhelmingly bearish sentiment in the market may present an appealing opportunity to get long the battered metal for a trade.

Next year could be a totally different picture for gold, said George Gero, precious metals strategist at RBC Capital Markets.

He believes that improving fundamentals, plus a turnaround in sentiment, could finally put a bottom under the precious metal.

Every analyst I’ve been seeing or talking to in the past month has gotten pretty bearish because of the price action. And as open interest has shrunk along with the price, a lot of money has been allocated out of gold and to the stock market, Gero told CNBC.com.

There hasn’t been too much inflation to make gold investors jump in at lower prices and bargain-hunt. But I believe that you could find some reallocation to gold next year, because the lack of inflation could be disappearing.

Mark Dow, a former hedge fund manager whose bearish gold and silver calls have proven prescient, similarly believes that the precious metals have become ripe for a bounce.

Now is a really good time, risk-reward-wise, to put on a long gold or a long silver trade, Dow said on Thursday’s Futures Now . With gold near the year’s low at $1,179, you could see that the stops are nearby, and you could get a bounce to $1,400 or something along those lines, or maybe even more.

Gold has declined by 26 percent year-to-date, as fears about inflation have not been borne out, rising bond yields have made non-interest-bearing assets like gold less attractive and stocks have proved a far better investment. As the metal has declined, the net long position in gold dropped to just 16 percent, or 26,774 futures and options contracts as of Dec. 3, which is the smallest net long position since June 2007.

If you look at the sentiment and the futures positioning, there are record-low gold longs—in fact, it’s almost net flat, and that’s something we haven’t seen in a long, long, long time, Dow said.

So while Dow remains a long-term gold bear, he says a short-term bounce will really be about the price action and positioning.

Brian Stutland. on the other hand, is just keeping it simple.

I don’t think there is a bounce that’s coming here, said Stutland, managing member of the Stutland Volatility Group and a CNBC contributor. I mean, I would rather just stick with the long-term trend, which is lower.