The price of silver soared on Monday, briefly exceeding $30 an ounce for the first time in eight years, as Reddit users from the 'WallStreetBets' forum collectively have set their sights on silver in a similar way that saw the GameStop share jump last week.
At 12:40 CET time, an ounce of silver soared 8.6% to $29.29, after having reached $30.10, an eight-year high.
Since Thursday, the price of silver has increased by 16.05%. In comparison, gold remains relatively stable (+0.88% to 1,860.06 dollars an ounce).
The price rise started after posts on the WallStreetBets forum.
The forum, which now has more than 7 million members, had pushed for the mass purchase of the Gamestop share, a video game store chain headquartered in the United States.
The collective investments pushed the stock price up and were in direct opposite positions from those taken by several large hedge funds, who had ‘shortened’ positions, that would have benefited them if the stock’s price would have decreased.
Gamestop’s price has soared by 1,625% since the beginning of the year, and the ‘short-sellers’ have lost an estimated $19 billion in 2021.
While Wall Street is destabilized and the political debate rages on this duel between small investors online and giant investment funds, users at the forum are now looking for "the next GameStop", and some have set their sights on silver.
"It's going to be interesting to see how far individuals can push the price of silver," Hussein Sayed, analyst at FXTM commented, noting however that "the size of the silver market is around 1,500 billion dollars, and therefore more difficult to ‘move’ than Gamestop.
At the height of the price spike last Wednesday, the video game chain was worth $22.8 billion.
The Brussels Times
