Silver is on a tear.
The metal rallied 8% on Monday, touching its highest level since February 2013, as Reddit traders turned their attention to the commodities market. Discussions on silver on the WallStreetBets Reddit forum over the weekend appeared to be tied to the surge.
The SLV silver trust ETF climbed 7% in its best day since July and notched a high not seen in nearly eight years.
One long-term silver bull told told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday that the ETF’s surge may not last.
“This trade right now is total speculation,” said Michael Bapis, managing director of Vios Advisors at Rockefeller Capital. “I mean, I just think that the volatility is not really worth the risk. And there is a push to move towards solar, which you need silver for, and I think long term that might be the play, but again I just there’s other ways to play.”
Traders looking for a short squeeze in the metal also have to contend with one major obstacle: There just isn’t enough bearish sentiment to trigger one, which send prices higher, said Miller Tabak chief market strategist Matt Maley said in the same interview.
“The short interest on the SLV is high, but it’s not extreme, certainly not anywhere near as extreme as it was for GameStop and AMC a week to a week and a half ago,” Maley said.
The net speculative futures positions are nowhere near lows, an indication that short interest still appears moderate in silver, he said, citing Commitments of Traders data. .
“It’s a very neutral chart, nowhere near the extremes we saw just before silver rallied strongly in 2018 and 2019. So I really think that investors need to be very careful,” he said. “It’s one thing to really try to squeeze a small-cap stock with a small float than it is to squeeze a big commodities market like the silver market so be very, very careful here.”
