Comex options expire on Thursday. Options in the larger Over-the-Counter market start expiring the same day, with their expiry continuing to the end of the month. From past experience we know that prices of gold and silver are weak when options expire. This recurring outcome is just one visible facet of the ongoing manipulation of precious metal prices. Another example is gold for February delivery being backdated to today’s spot price.
The objective of the option writers is to push prices as low as they can so that as many call options as possible expire out of the money. Meaning they end up worthless. In this way the option writer earns the full premium, and more importantly, does not have to deliver physical metal for those options that still offer settlement with metal instead of cash settlement. The current backwardation shows that available physical metal is in tight supply.
- James Turk via King World News, read more here
