The day traders are moving into commodities.
Silver futures prices and shares of silver miners climbed Thursday after a user in Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum posted about executing a “short squeeze” in the notoriously volatile precious metal.
Most actively traded silver futures closed up 2.1% at $25.922 at troy ounce after earlier adding as much as 6.7%, while U.S.-listed shares of First Majestic Silver Corp. , a mining company, ended the day up 21%. The iShares Silver Trust, a popular exchange-traded fund tied to silver, also surged.
Silver prices had generally been muted in recent weeks, staying in a tight trading range alongside other precious metals that was well below the multiyear highs it hit during a rally last summer. But Thursday’s gain at one point was pushing the metal back near that nearly eight-year peak.
The moves represent what some analysts called an inevitable move by day traders into other asset classes following outsize gains in popular stocks such as GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. The moves have captivated Wall Street as individual investors take on hedge funds that wagered on declines in those stocks, and big swings in the silver market could add to the frenetic trading.
