SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Silver prices hit a five-month high on Monday and silver miners appearing in Australia rose after calls on social media to buy the metal and emulate the frenzy it has driven GameStop shares up 1,500% in two weeks.
Spot silver rose 7.4% to $ 28.99 an ounce, the highest since mid-August. The shares of a handful of mining companies such as Argent Minerals, Boab Metals and Investigator Resources grew more than 15%.
Coin-selling websites also reported unprecedented demand and marked delays in bullion delivery. Movements are the latest example that small business traders are buying en masse, particularly stocks and other assets that they bet heavily on, which caused huge losses for major investors. [MKTS/GLOB]
“Now there’s this curious situation where the Reddit crowd has been looking at a bigger whale when it comes to trying to catalyze something in the silver market,” said Kyle Rodda, an analyst at IG Markets brokerage in Melbourne.
“The most important factor here is that silver is very short, the paper market is much, much bigger than the underlying commodity can justify,” he said.
“There are a lot of comments about these platforms to pile up miners.”
Silver prices have risen 15 percent since Wednesday’s close, when messages began circulating on forums like Reddit that encouraged users to buy the metal and raise prices.
Report by Tom Westbrook; Edited by Daniel Wallis and Lincoln Feast.