Shares are rising, retail is rising silver up to eight-year highs

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global equities rebounded from last week’s strong sell-off and silver prices rose Monday as retail investors widened the social media-driven battle with Wall Street to raise the precious metal to a maximum of eight years.

A shift in the retail silver frenzy boosted mining stocks on both sides of the Atlantic, with a 7.2% jump in the iShares Silver Trust ETF, the largest ETR with support from silver, which launched its best day since 2008.

ETF data showed its silver holdings rose a record 37 million shares from Thursday to Friday alone, each representing an ounce of silver.

Large mining monitors BHP Group, Glencore Plc and Anglo American Plc were the top six winners of the FTSE 100 in London, with the blue-chip closing 0.92%.

Miner Fresnillo rose 8.95% to 1,076, to help lead the 1.24% pan-European STOXX 600 index increase.

On Wall Street, nine of S&P’s top 11 sectors advanced, with technology at the helm of the rally.

Silver prices rose to an eight-year high of just over $ 30 an ounce, before stopping earnings from trading 6.3% higher, at $ 28.70.

The social media trading frenzy generated huge gains in companies like GameStop Corp last week, forcing hedge funds to hedge their short positions and sparking volatility on Wall Street. The top three stock market indices recorded the largest weekly declines since October.

GameStop fell 27.31% to $ 236.23.

“Silver has unequivocal effects compared to GameStop because it has links to miners,” said Connor Campbell, financial analyst at SpreadEx. “If you start pushing silver higher, that will have effects on other industries and other markets and that’s clearly what happened.”

Silver has gained 19% in price since Thursday after posts on Reddit led small investors to buy silver mining stocks and traded funds (ETFs) backed by physical silver bars, in a GameStop style.

Spot silver rose 6.33% to $ 28.71.

MSCI’s benchmark for global equity markets rose 1.6% to 653.19.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.06%, the S&P 500 gained 1.82% and the Nasdaq Composite added 2.67%.

The US dollar rose to a two-week high on the weakness of the euro, the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen, given that the United States has an advantage in growing its economy and vaccinating its population. against COVID-19.

The euro weakened after Germany reported retail sales fell an unexpected 9.6% in December after tighter closures last year to curb the spread of COVID-19 consumer spending to the largest economy European Union.

The dollar index rose 0.393%, with the euro up 0.59% to $ 1.2064.

The Japanese yen weakened 0.25% against the green dollar, at 104.92 per dollar.

Oil prices rose, bolstered by reduced inventories and hopes for a faster global economic recovery, although halting vaccine deployment and renewing travel restrictions limited gains.

Brent crude futures settled at $ 1.31 to $ 56.35 a barrel. US crude futures rose $ 1.35 to $ 53.55 a barrel.

Gold followed the silver higher, up 0.70%, to $ 1,859.05 an ounce. U.S. gold futures were down 0.7% at $ 1,863.90.

(Chart: Silver has outperformed gold in terms of prices and ETF stakes in recent months 🙂

Overnight data showed that activity at Chinese factories slowed in January, as restrictions affected some regions. In the euro area, manufacturing growth remained strong at the beginning of the year, but the pace slowed from December.

The British data showed an even bigger struggle, with manufacturers facing the COVID-19 twins and Britain’s exit from the European Union.

While the implementation of the coronavirus vaccine worldwide remains slow, with concerns about whether they will work on new strains of COVID, Europe was also bolstered by news that it would receive 9 million more doses of AstraZeneca on first term.

As the riskiest markets bounced, Italian government bond yields fell 2-3 basis points on the curve.

Meanwhile, yields on the German Bund, the eurozone benchmark, remained anchored at around -0.51% on Monday, following the yields on the US Treasury. The 10-year U.S. Treasury bill became 1.0723%.