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Futures for gold and silver on Monday traded sharply higher, with bullion’s sister metal hanging around its loftiest level in about 8 years, as dealers attributed recent gains to the spillover of coordinated buying among individual investors gathering on social-media platforms, as was seen in shares of GameStop Corp. GME, +67.87% and AMC Entertainment Holdings AMC, +53.65%.
Silver futures SI00, +10.46% SIH21, +10.46% were up $2.96, or 11%, at $29.86, with an intrasession peak at $30.35, putting the metal at around its highest level since 2012, FactSet data show.
Last week, a focus by individual investors on relatively small, heavily shorted companies like GameStop and others sent their stocks soaring and commodity experts say that group, which tends to gather on sites like Discord and Reddit, may be turning their attention to silver.
“Silver is skyrocketing today, jumping by over 10% in a matter of hours to reach its highest in 8 years while gold is up a meager 1%,” wrote Carlo Alberto De Casa, chief analyst at ActivTrades, in a daily note.
Read: Silver rallies after Reddit post about executing a ‘short squeeze’
On Friday, silver for March delivery added 3.8% to end at its highest settlement since Jan. 7.
As opposed to GameStop, the roughly $1.5 trillion silver market is seen as one that individual investors may find it more difficult to influence.
Read: Miners surge as silver futures jump to eight-year high on retail interest
“Fear, however, is pushing many of the traders who have shorts on silver to start covering their positions,” De Casa wrote. “Sellers of the physical metal are also rushing to cover their short positions, to avoid finding themselves at a loss in the face of the startling increases,” the analyst said.
Meanwhile, April gold GC00, +1.00% GCH21, +0.97% was up $15, or 0.8%, to trade at $1,865.30 an ounce settle at $1,850.30. Based on the most-active contract settlements, prices posted a 0.5% weekly gain, and fell 2.4% from the Dec. 31 finish for the February gold contract.
