Why Are Traders Betting on $20,000 Gold Price After a Historic Crash?

Traders have piled into deep out-of-the-money gold options even after a dramatic selloff: roughly 11,000 December $15,000/$20,000 call spreads have been accumulated. The gold price plunged in one of the sharpest one-day declines in decades after briefly topping $5,600 per ounce and is now consolidating near $5,000, making the scale of those trades striking given the distance from current levels.

Those spreads function as low-cost, high-upside wagers; for them to expire in the money, gold would need to nearly triple by December, a scenario likely to require a major macroeconomic or geopolitical shock. The flow into far-out calls has pushed implied volatility higher and signaled demand for extreme upside exposure, even as some analysts argue the metal’s broader trajectory remains intact despite recent turbulence.

Several macro factors underpin bullish views.

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