Silver broke above $30 US an ounce for the first time since 2013 on Monday as an army of retail traders stormed into the metal after betting billions of dollars on stocks last week.
Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist with SIA Wealth Management in Toronto, said silver has apparently become the next asset to get caught up in the GameStop frenzy.
"The most significant move this morning has been in silver, which was a trending topic in the media and on Reddit over the weekend with a lot of chatter (both for and against) that it could be the next market to become active in the wake of GameStop's big move last week," he said.
Organized in online forums and traded with fee-free brokers such as Robinhood, small-time investors have driven a 1,600 per cent rally in the shares of video game retailer GameStop, scooping up assets big fund managers had bet against.
The phenomenon spilled over into silver late last week.
Spot silver leapt more than 11 per cent in London to $30.03 an ounce and was on track for its biggest one-day rise since 2008, taking gains to about 19 per cent since last Wednesday.
The jump set off a rally in silver-mining stocks from Sydney to London.
The action in silver, following thousands of Reddit posts and hundreds of YouTube videos suggests that a rise in the physical price could hurt large investors with bearish bets, also marks a foray into a much bigger and more liquid market than individual stocks.
However, within the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, some members were adamant targeting silver is not their next strategy. They said outsiders are trying to pump the stock, and it appears to be working.
"I would look at the silver rally the same way as I would the GameStop saga — from the point of view of market stability, for now it's not an immediate concern, but if we see sharp moves, we could see some deleveraging in markets," said Antoine Bouvet, a rates strategist at ING.
"This reducing of risk through deleveraging could potentially boost demand for bonds if it is causing excess volatility."
In the first signs of deleveraging, Goldman Sachs said the amount of position-covering last week by U.S. hedge funds, buying and selling, was the highest since the financial crisis more than a decade ago.
Nevertheless, their market exposure to stocks remains near record levels, the investment bank warned.
Rise of new trading platforms
The rush to silver and GameStop-like stocks has been testing limitations in newer trading platforms and processing venues, frustrating retail traders who are unable to feed their hunger to buy and sell more frequently.
The feverish silver-buying has hit a glitch, with large U.S. broker Apmex warning of processing delays while it secures more bullion. The Money Metals online exchange suspended trade until mid-morning Monday.
Trading volumes in small miners' stocks in Australia were unprecedented and jumps in some exploration firms, which do not actually produce silver, topped 90 per cent.
Similar hiccups were seen in equities last week. GameStop, AMC and a few other volatile stocks saw temporary buying restrictions in trading apps like Robinhood, as frenzied buying led to trading apps putting on curbs.
"The Reddit crowd has turned its sights on a bigger whale in terms of trying to catalyze something of a short squeeze in the silver market," said Kyle Rodda, an analyst at brokerage IG Markets in Melbourne.
"This is their big, bold Moby Dick moment."
Silver the latest 'short squeeze'
The popularity of dabbling in stock markets has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic as volatility, stimulus checks and lockdowns have driven account openings and investment.
The craze hit fever pitch last week when the GameStop pile-on resulted in a "short squeeze," turning price gains stratospheric as hedge funds with bets against the stock desperately bought it at high prices to close their positions.
Now it is silver's turn and once again the scale of buying is catching the professionals by surprise.
Online discussions turned to silver late last week as Reddit posts suggested higher prices could hurt banks with large short positions, and that buying easy-to-access exchange-traded silver funds could quickly ramp up the metal's value.
Retail traders poured a record $39.1 million Cdn into Australian ETF Securities' Physical Silver fund by the afternoon. A silver ETF in Japan surged 11 per cent.
So far, the Redditors are rolling on. Several of the renegade traders are millionaires on paper and their hedge fund adversaries are nursing their wounds. Melvin Capital, which bet against GameStop, lost 53 per cent on its portfolio in January.
Robinhood, the Redditors' main broker, has also backed down and lifted some of the buying restrictions it imposed last week, although limits remain on eight companies, including GameStop, AMC Entertainment and BlackBerry.
However, with regulators circling both Robinhood and the Redditors' forums, the battle is far from over.
"I'll tell you one thing, [I] absolute guarantee this ends in tears," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets (Australia). "I just don't know when."
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2021-02-01 15:20:00Z
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