ed steer of casey research notes that options expiration came and went without the usual fireworks in the metals markets:

The only happening of note, was that every attempt by gold to breach $940...or silver to break above $14...was quietly turned back. That happened during Wednesday's trading as well...but with much more force. Options expiry passed very quietly, and with no fanfare at all. Therefore, the options written at those two strike prices expired out of the money, and whatever bullion bank had written these options contracts...or those at a higher strike prices...pocketed the commission. This sort of gaming happens all the time, and not just with silver and gold either.

The gold and silver shares were on fire yesterday, and their large gains surprised even me. As the usual New York commentator put it yesterday morning..."The HUI closed up 4.95% and the XAU up 5.75%...essentially at their highs, with the June downtrends decisively broken." [Is something up? - Ed]

Open interest changes for trading on Wednesday show that the big price spike in gold was caused by more longs being placed...probably by the tech funds [with the bullion banks taking the short side]...as o.i. rose a large 8,351 contracts to 378,698...on huge volume of 128,516 contracts. In silver, o.i. actually fell 972 contracts to 104,727...on a monstrous [for silver] 63,743 contracts...so it's likely that silver's price rise was a short covering rally...as this is what this decline in o.i. usually means. But 'da boyz' can hide a lot of things by placing or removing spread trades to cover their tracks.

Thursday's Comex Delivery Report showed that 151 gold contracts were delivered, along with 5 silver contracts. Based on yesterday's CFTC report, there are around 200 gold contracts and maybe 5 silver contracts left to be delivered in June. They only have today and Monday to get it done...as first day notice [and delivery] for the July contract is on Tuesday, June 30th. GLD was down 5.5 tonnes...about 176,700 ounces. There were no changes in SLV. There was another update from the U.S. Mint. There were no changes in silver eagles, but they pounded out another 10,000 gold eagles, bringing the June total to 113,000. And over at the Comex-approved warehouses, silver inventories declined 678,158 ounces.

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