Silver prices rise after online attention

Silver has risen in recent trading sessions amid user attention on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum. A worker fills a mold with molten silver in 2017 in a factory in Russia.


Photo:

Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg News

Silver prices rose to kick off the trading week Sunday, fueled by a surge of fresh enthusiasm from online retailers.

Most actively traded silver futures rose as much as 8% at the close on Friday before the price gain rose slightly, and recently traded at 7% at $ 28.80 per troy ounce. Sunday night’s march comes after silver prices rose by more than 5% last week.

Silver has risen in recent trading sessions after users posted on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum about performing a ‘short press’ similar to that attributed to recent gains in other stocks that are popular on the internet. Great attention from day traders has yielded significant gains in stocks like GameStop Corp.

GME 67.87%

, which captivates Wall Street while individual investors adopt hedge funds that fall on prices.

Attention of day traders is the latest driver for silver prices, which has been trading in a range since achieving a record performance in 2020, which is 47% higher this year. Silver benefited from a boom in precious metals that sent prices ranging from gold to palladium to record highs. Investors tend to buy precious metals like silver when they are nervous about owning riskier assets like stocks or corporate bonds.

Even the physical metal, used in everything from electronics to jewelry, is starting to see a noticeable increase in demand due to Redditors’ attention. Retail markets in silver, including Money Metals and APMEX Inc., announced on their websites on Sunday that they could not process new orders before global markets opened due to unprecedented demand for metal.

Write to Sebastian Pellejero by [email protected]

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