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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William JH who wrote (12385)	5/29/1998 10:42:00 PM
From: Giraffe	Respond to of 116895

Friday May 29, 7:41 pm Eastern Time U.S. OPTIONS/Barrick Gold calls attract interest CHICAGO, May 29 (Reuters) - Calls on Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX - news) attracted speculative interest on Friday as the underlying stock continued to slip. The July 22-1/2 calls saw trading volume of almost 3,400 contracts. The June and July 20 calls also registered good volume. Overall volume in calls broadly outpaced put volume 6,177 to 113, as the stock lost 1/2 to close at 19-1/2. Open interest in calls has been accumulating much faster than open interest in puts, noted analyst Joseph Sunderman of Schaeffer's Investment Research. ''Open interest in calls is up to about 71,000. Open interest in puts is only 21,000,'' he said. ''That's bearish.'' He noted that most mining stocks have been getting hit on fundamentals. The precious metals index fell 1.58 points, or more than 2 percent, to 74.71 on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. ''You've got worries about the deflationary effect from Asia.... Gold doesn't like this environment,'' Sunderman added. Yet implied volatility for nearby at-the-money options crept up only slightly to about 45 percent from 40 percent, traders noted. ''People are still looking for consolidation in the mining industry,'' Paul Foster, investment strategist and editor of 1010WallStreet.com, added. In other trading, implied volatility on the S&P 100 (^OEX - news) rebounded as the index took a tumble at the end of the day. The Market Volatility Index (^VIX - news), which measures implied volatility of several strikes on OEX options, firmed 1.41 points to 22.89 as the index shed 5.00 points to close at 529.04. ''There was some decent put buying and that's indicative of the market going higher,'' said one trader who was forecasting a bounce early next week. However, volume was light on the day. ''It's very slow and there's nothing going on. This feels like a typical summer Friday afternoon,'' said Hank Nothnagel, senior vice president of options trading at Everen Securities.