2026 Lunatic Fringe - Market and Trade Chat

[Goldhedge]

 

[pmbug]

Spoiler

 

[Goldhedge]

the Canary in the coal mine? Clive Thompson

The dominos are falling. The cockroaches have arrived. Gold and silver are the only refuge.​

Private Credit: Blowing up. You can't have your money back.
Lending drying up.
Small and medium size companies can't get financing. Profits fall.
Economy slows.
Business reducing.
Number of people employed falling.
Unemployment rising - The Fed can't hike rates
Core PCE inflation at 3% - The Fed can't cut.
Oil prices up 50% in 3 months. Could drive up prices.
Oil could go through $100.
Treasury yields rising. Bond prices falling.
Stocks falling.
60:40 portfolios not working.
Real interest rates falling and could go negative.
Stagflation now a real possibility.
Can't buy bonds.
Can't buy stocks.
Negative real rates would be explosive for gold.
Time to buy gold and silver.

 

[Ttazzman]

fed can always cut.........they will just reinflate the economy and blame it on the war/oil...........they always do

 

[pmbug]

 

[Someone_else]

Those call options are probably very cheap. Maybe it is someone just "playing the lottery" for fun and amusement.
Maybe it is a player that is throwing this into the news cycle to nudge the market a few points.

"And maybe the horse will learn to sing..." (reference from "The Mote in God's eye.")

 

[pmbug]

FWIW:

...
At its core, this is a bull call debit spread: buy the $15,000 call (the long leg for leveraged upside exposure) and sell the $20,000 call (the short leg to offset premium costs and cap maximum gains at $5,000 per ounce intrinsic value).

Each contract controls 100 ounces, so roughly 11,000 contracts deliver notional exposure to about 1.1 million ounces—equivalent to roughly $16.5 billion at the $15,000 strike, or around $5.5–$5.6 billion at the prevailing spot price near $5,100 as of February 20 (per CME and market data).

But the real outlay? Far less. With premiums estimated around $18.00 per ounce for the $15,000 call and $7.00 per ounce for the $20,000 call (based on recent CME levels and implied volatility), the net debit per spread falls in the range of $1,100–$1,800 per contract (depending on exact fills, bid-ask spreads, and implied volatility fluctuations). For the full position, total risk capital amounts to roughly $12–$20 million at maximum loss—if gold remains flat or below $15,000 at December expiration.

That’s modest sizing for a serious macro fund or high-conviction player, yet it delivers extraordinary convexity: a explosive move above $15,000 could generate 10x–50x returns on the risked capital, turning this into a true “lottery ticket” with defined downside and uncapped (within the spread) upside potential in a regime-shift scenario.
...

https://x.com/4thTurningCap/article/2025192140771381347

 

[Voodoo]

Is that the last strike price? Because we've seen this for a long time now in Gamestop. For some reason the highest strike calls always had a ton of volume... BUT its not necessarily bulls. I think its some type of synthetic trade and they are trying to protect themselves cheaply from a squeeze.

Ok, after seeing the data in the post above, Thanks Bug. But that is not the same. Clearly it is likely a spread trade and certainly would be bullish. Its a low cost / "low" likely trade with big upside.