After a year of almost uninterrupted bullish bias in precious metals options markets, gold skews (the 'price' of put protection over calls) has exploded to its highest (most bearish) leves since July 2015.
As Bloomberg reports, bearish options hedging against a 10 percent price drop in the biggest gold exchange-traded fund cost the most since July 2015 relative to calls betting on a 10 percent jump.
And as is clear from the chart below, the last 3 times that options skew sentiment has become this bearish, the price of gold has soared (Nov 2014 +16%, Jul 2015 +11%, Nov 2015 +21%)...
Which combined with the collapse in large spec longs...
Makes us wonder if its deja vu all over again...