Forget $100, Options Traders Now Betting On Oil Prices Hitting $200
- $100 Oil is no longer an ‘outrageous’ bet in the call-options market
- Some speculative traders are now betting on $200 oil in December 2022
- For those betting on $100 oil, the leader of the OPEC+ alliance, Saudi Arabia, has a message: look beyond the end of this year; an oversupply is coming next year
As oil prices hit multi-year highs, some speculative traders are betting on the options market that oil could exceed $100 a barrel by the end of this year and even reach a record $200 per barrel by the end of 2022.
Call options give traders the right—but not the obligation—to buy assets at a certain price, the so-called strike price, by a certain date.
The amounts of call options at triple-digit strikes have soared in recent weeks, suggesting that more speculative traders are attracted by potential quick profits from options trades, which are relatively low-cost ways to speculate on the direction of an asset.
Some “wild” bets such as call options at a $100 per barrel WTI Crude strike by December 2021 or $200 per barrel Brent Crude by December 2022 have been placed in recent weeks, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing data from provider QuikStrike.
For example, at the end of September, call options at Brent at $200 a barrel for December 2022 traded 1,300 times in one day, amid a worsening energy crunch in Europe and Asia ahead of the winter heating season in the northern hemisphere.
In WTI, the number of outstanding call options with $100 per barrel strike price with different expiry dates has surged five times since early February 2021 to more than 141,000 contracts as of the middle of October, according to data from CME quoted by the Journal.
Other popular call options for WTI included strikes at $95 or $180, QuikStrike data reported by the Journal showed.
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