(Add oil, gold settlement prices)
* The retail crowd focuses on silver, increasing it to 8 years
* Oil 1% higher; dollar index, Bund, T-account returns steady
* Excess money? tmsnrt.rs/2YpThUB
NEW YORK, Feb. 1 (Reuters) – Global equities recovered from last week’s strong sell-offs and silver prices rose on Monday as retail investors expanded their fight against Wall Street on social media to raise the precious metal to an eight-year high.
A shift in the retail frenzy to silver boosted mining stocks on both sides of the Atlantic, with a 7.2% jump in the iShares Silver Trust ETF – the largest silver-backed ETR – which put it on track has for his best day since 2008.
The data for the ETF showed that its silver investment jumped from Thursday to Friday alone by 37 million shares, each representing an ounce of silver.
The mining arts BHP Group, Glencore Plc and Anglo American Plc were the six best winners in the FTSE 100 in London, with the blue chip closing 0.92%.
Miner Fresnillo rose 8.95% to 1,076 to boost pan-European STOXX 600 index gains by 1.24%.
On Wall Street, nine of the 11 major S&P sectors have made progress, with technology leading the march.
Silver prices rose to an eight-year high of just over $ 30 per ounce before trading 6.3% higher at $ 28.70.
The madness on social media last week drove huge profits in companies like GameStop Corp, forcing hedge funds to cover their short positions and inflating volatility on Wall Street. The three major stock indices have reached their biggest weekly declines since October.
GameStop fell 27.31% to $ 236.23.
“Silver has a significant effect compared to GameStop because it has links to miners,” said Connor Campbell, a financial analyst at SpreadEx. “If you start pushing silver higher, it will have an effect on other industries and other markets, and it’s clear what happened.”
Silver has risen 19% since Thursday after posts on Reddit led small investors to buy silver mining stocks and exchange-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 stock markets rose 1.6% to 653.19.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.06%, the S&P 500 rose 1.82% and the Nasdaq Composite 2.67%.
The US dollar bounced back to a two-week high due to weakness in the euro, Swiss franc and Japanese yen, believing the United States has an advantage in growing its economy and putting its population against COVID-19 ent.
The euro weakened after Germany reported retail sales fell by an unexpected 9.6% in December after tighter closures last year to curb the spread of COVID-19 consumer spending in Europe’s largest economy.
The dollar index rose 0.393%, with the euro down 0.59% to $ 1.2064.
The Japanese yen weakened 0.25% against the greenback at 104.92 per dollar.
Oil prices have risen, driven by shrinking supplies, and hopes for a faster economic recovery, although the explosion of the vaccine and renewed travel restrictions have limited profits.
Brent crude futures settled $ 1.31 at $ 56.35 a barrel. U.S. crude futures rose $ 1.35 to $ 53.55 a barrel.
Gold followed silver higher, up 0.70% to $ 1,859.05 an ounce. US gold futures settled 0.7% at $ 1,863.90.
Data showed overnight that Chinese manufacturing activity slowed in January as restrictions in some regions took a toll. In the eurozone, output growth remained resilient at the beginning of the year, but has slowed since December.
UK data shows an even bigger battle, with manufacturers facing the headwind against COVID-19 and Britain’s exit from the European Union.
While the effects of the coronavirus vaccine are slow worldwide, with concerns about whether they will work on new COVID strains, Europe has also been bolstered by the news that it will receive another 9 million doses of AstraZeneca in the first quarter.
With more risky markets, Italian government bond yields fell by 2-3 basis points across the curve.
The yields of the German Bund, meanwhile, the benchmark for the eurozone, remained anchored at around -0.51% on Monday, checking US Treasury yields. The ten-year U.S. Treasury note traded at 1.0723%.
Reporting by Herbert Lash; Edited by Richard Chang