Was interested to know how Apmex and other major buyers of bullion hedge their risk? Clearly, with them operating on tight buy/sell spreads, they must necessarily hedge their positions in metals with the type of volatility we have seen lately. No doubt some companies do not hedge their risks and just hope the price will recover based on market fundamentals. Any comment on this issue would be appreciated.
I have not studied Apmex, so I am not sure if I would put them more on the buying side of silver or on the selling side at the moment. If we assume they play both sides, then they could sell options on futures based on their ability to deliver silver in the future. If they were selling more than buying, they could buy options so they would get silver at a known cost in the future. Carlos Slim, owner of Mexican mining company Minera Frisco has been selling futures and calls on silver as much as 2 years in the future to protect his average delivery price. They talk of it as a normal business decision to normalize future profits, but many see it as a vision that he expects silver to be close now to the high for the next couple of years or he would have expected greater price and profits from the silver. Jim
