Silver reached its highest price in years on Monday, as it became the last target of a brigade of day-traders on Reddit.
The precious metal was recently traded at around 9 percent at about $ 29.40 an ounce, after rising above $ 30 for the first time since 2013. The increase came amid increased interest in silver on the WallStreetBets forum from Reddit, which raised the stock prices of companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.
The message board has waged a war against hedge funds betting on these defeated companies – and now some novice traders want to carry out a similar “short squeeze” on silver to pressure banks that have bet on falling prices.
“The Silver Bullion Market is one of the most manipulated in the world,” wrote Reddit user RocketBoomGo in a popular post describing the thesis. “Any short squeeze on silver paper shorts would be EPIC.”
“If you don’t care about earnings, think of banks like JP MORGAN that you would be destroying along the way,” added the poster.
The “#SilverSqueeze” movement won the support of Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twin venture capitalists who sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and currently run a cryptocurrency exchange.
“#Silversqueeze is a rage against the machine,” Tyler Winklevoss said on Twitter Domigo.
But squeeze play was not universally accepted in the 7.8 million member WallStreetBets board. Several posts on Monday urged members to avoid betting on silver, with some claiming that hedge funds and the media were pushing up prices.
“Stop trying to make silver happen, it won’t happen,” wrote a user called snacksandmetal.
Skeptics have not prevented interest in silver from exploding, however. Precious metals broker APMEX said demand was 12 times higher than normal over the weekend and added as many new customers on Saturday as it usually does in a week.
“We made strategic decisions to purchase additional metal, blocking any metal we can find on the market,” said CEO Ken Lewis in a statement posted on the APMEX website. “We suspect that the premiums will increase and increase rapidly, as we are seeing significant increases in our costs, when we can even locate the metal.”
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