Hi, I asked a similar question about copper earlier... someone mentioned to me gold has the same behavior. "Why" is gold volume primarily in certain months, and not the front month? If you look at COMEX data, Feb-10 open interest is 100x that of Jan-10. What's behind this?
1) Commercial users prefer to trade the "established" months in the market. For gold, it's the "even" months, except for October. For copper, it's March, May, July, September and December. 2) "Serial" months tend to be avoided. It's the same thing with EuroDollars. 3) If something "super weird" were to happen, traders could pile-into a front-month serial contract. Until then, stay with the primary months.
Hmm... are there spread-traders and/or MM's that keep the serial months largely in line with the "established" months? Or is it like the energies, and fluctuating quickly? I'd like to trade the front month options and hedge with underlying future... but if the underlying future has no liquidity/fluctuates randomly, then that's a no-go. Wish they'd just go the ags/soft route, and just have the "primary" futures and serial options.
when does jan10 future expire? i was planning to buy jan10 GC call option but i could not found when is the expiry looks very cheap Jan10 call and put options thank you
FEB 10 OGG10 OPT 01/28/2009 01/26/2010 - 01/26/2010 - - - - - - - - APR 10 OGJ10 OPT 03/27/2009 03/25/2010 - 03/25/2010 - - - - - - - - JUN 10 OGM10 OPT 01/31/2006 05/25/2010 - 05/25/2010 - - - - - - - - AUG 10 OGQ10 OPT 07/29/2009 07/27/2010 - 07/27/2010 - - - - - - - - OCT 10 OGV10 OPT 09/25/2009 09/27/2010 - 09/27/2010 - - - - - - - - DEC 10 OGZ10 OPT 01/03/2006 11/23/2010 - 11/23/2010 - - - ????
gold volume goes to those months because that is how the commercial hedge guys run there books, not to be confused with wall street guys but guys that pull in out of the ground and hedge it. these markets were made for the produces to hedge themselves,that was why they were created