Silver has met in recent trading sessions amid user attention on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum. A worker filled a molten silver mold at a plant in Russia in 2017.
Photo:
Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg News
Silver prices rose to start trading week on Sunday, driven by a new wave of excitement from online traders.
The most actively traded silver futures rose as much as 8% since Friday’s close before slightly gaining gains to recently traded at 7%, at $ 28.80 a troy ounce. The concentration on Sunday night comes after silver prices gained more than 5% last week.
Silver has come together in recent trading sessions after users of Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum posted about running a “short squeeze” similar to those credited to fuel recent gains from other popular stocks on the Internet. The large attention of day traders has made significant gains in stocks like GameStop Corp.
GME 67.87%
, captivating Wall Street as individual investors take hedge funds that are betting on falling prices.
The attention of day traders is the latest driver of silver prices, which have been trading in a range since they recorded a record return in 2020 and finished the year up 47%. Silver benefited from a rising price of precious metals that sent prices from gold to the palladium to all-time highs. Investors tend to buy precious metals like silver when they are nervous about holding riskier assets, such as stocks or corporate bonds.
Even physical metal, which is used in everything from electronics to jewelry, is starting to see a noticeable rise in demand as a result of Redditors ’attention. Silver retail markets, including Money Metals and APMEX Inc., among others, received warnings on their websites on Sunday that they could not process new orders until global markets opened due to unprecedented demand for metal.
Write to Sebastian Pellejero to [email protected]
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