SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Silver prices jumped to a five-month high on Monday and Australian-listed small-scale silver miners rose after social media made calls to buy the metal and mimic the madness that GameStop shares within two weeks.
Spot silver rose 7.4% to $ 28.99 per ounce, the highest since mid-August. Shares in a handful of mining firms such as Argent Minerals, Boab Metals and Investigator Resources rose more than 15%.
Coin sales websites also reported an unprecedented demand and reported delays in delivering bullies. The move is the latest example of small traders buying a lot, especially equities and other assets that have been heavily traded, resulting in huge losses for large investors. [MKTS/GLOB]
“There’s this curious situation where the Reddit crowd has set their sights on a bigger whale trying to catalyze a brief push on the silver market,” said Kyle Rodda, an analyst at IG Markets, a broker in Melbourne, said .
“The most important factor here is that silver is heavily shorted, and the paper market is much, much larger than the underlying commodity can justify,” he said.
“There are a lot of comments on these platforms to pile up with the miners.”
Silver prices have risen 15% since closing Wednesday, around the time messages began circulating on forums like Reddit, encouraging users to buy the metal and raise prices.
Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Edited by Daniel Wallis and Lincoln Feast.