Insiders Are Betting Millions On Gold Reset By Year-End | Ed Steer

Liberty and Finance Jul 23, 2026

Summary

Traders have placed tens of millions into December gold call options at strikes from $6,000 to $20,000, betting on sharply higher prices.

Commitment of Traders data (who is long or short) shows big commercial shorts growing even as prices fell, meaning new buyers keep absorbing.

The guest argues January's silver crash, driven by bid-pulling and margin hikes, was a foreshock of a broader precious metals price reset ahead.

Three banks ending naked (unbacked) futures selling on the Shanghai Gold Exchange signals pricing power shifting from Western paper markets to Asia.

Whoever is writing these deep calls faces huge losses if gold reaches those levels, which is why the guest watches the short side.

Steer recalls First Majestic Silver co-sponsoring a gathering at the Vancouver conference in late January, when silver traded above $100 an ounce, where he wore one of the company's 'triple-digit silver' t-shirts.

Top takeaway The host recalls Oliver calling earlier this year for silver to reach $300-$500 by summer, a call that looked on track during January's spike before the second-quarter pullback raised doubts.
His view of a radically higher precious metals price regime over roughly the next six months is set alongside the out-of-the-money call bets and Steer's reset timeline as part of the same bullish picture.

Top takeaway The host frames the interview around whether the big out-of-the-money gold call buying and China's Shanghai Gold Exchange move point to a year-end price reset, suggesting investors who are down in the dumps should reconsider the bullish case.
He raises Michael Oliver's $300-$500 silver call and asks Steer to connect it with the shift of pricing power from West to East.

Top takeaway Steer argues the tens of millions of dollars placed in far out-of-the-money gold calls at strikes from $6,000 up to $20,000 show big money betting gold moves dramatically higher by year-end, and he doubts anyone short of the Federal Reserve or Treasury could absorb the losses if gold ever hit $20,000.
He reads the Commitment of Traders data as showing the big eight commercial shorts 'got stuffed': their silver short grew from an April low of about 43,600 contracts to about 48,000, and their gold short rose from 162,000 on May 26 to 193,000, because new longs kept arriving even as prices were pushed lower.
He stresses that, unlike every episode in his 25 years of watching these markets, non-commercial traders bought into the decline instead of dumping longs and going short, and he suspects they are the same money behind the $20,000 strike calls.
He describes the end-of-January collapse, when silver fell almost $40 in two to three days, as engineered through bid-pulling, spoofing and CME margin increases, and calls it a foreshock of the broader price reset he expects in precious metals and other commodities.
He expects China's move to end paper and naked futures trading on the Shanghai Gold Exchange to shift metals pricing from West to East, and says a reset bringing three-digit silver and four- or five-digit gold is a matter of when, not if, possibly before the December options expire on November 24, 2026.