RE:Show me the money!Considering anyone or any entity writing calls would be writing covered calls it stands to reason that their holding would have been acquired at a price lower than the calls they wrote. (Otherwise it's like a naked short with potential unlimited losses, a pure gamble). The call is then a cap on their profit on the holding, therefore writing the call is just a little extra profit. Their opinion would be that the call price exceeds the future price. The downside is if the stock price runs away and they miss the price higher than the call; but they would still have a (capped) profit plus the revenue received from the call they wrote. To write a call is a form of non-confidence on a future price.
The idea that if a stock price goes above the call price the writer of the call suffers loss is only valid if the writer of the call sold a naked call. I could be wrong, but it would seem to me that calls would normally be covered calls which cap profit but not incur loss. In the case of funds, they are playing with other people's money though, so at the risk of losing big to achieve higher potential profit they may well write naked calls. The staggering losses in the billions by an unhedged natural gas fund years ago are an example of this, and occurences of stock funds being liquidated are another example.
However, to suggest that any entity wouldn't 'allow' the share price to rise above the strike price is stretching it. The market is too big for that, and shorters do have a tendency to be often eaten alive. There are more buyers than shorters. And the PM market can turn on a dime either way for no apparent reason.
My opinion is that most investors are in for share price appreciation, which in the case of HL is a function of the price of silver. As I have said before I'm in it for the swing trade which is influenced by seasonal factors (but not absolutely - you can easily be surprised and not in a good way).
At 2.5c, less than 1/2 of one percent yield, the dividend is not a consideration, especially now when you can get maybe 5% with other instruments or shares.