Silver price climbs as Reddit traders find new target

Silver hit its highest price in years on Monday as it became the latest target in a squad of day-traders on Reddit.

The precious metal was recently trading around 9% to around $ 29.40 an ounce after crossing $ 30 for the first time since 2013. The spike came amid increased interest in silver on the. Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, which has boosted the stock prices of companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.

The bulletin board has waged the war on hedge funds betting against these battered companies – and now some novice traders want to run a similar “short squeeze” on money to pressure banks that bet on its price drop.

“Silver Bullion Market is one of the most manipulated in the world,” wrote Reddit user RocketBoomGo in a popular post describing his thesis. “Any pressure on silver paper shorts would be EPIC.”

“If you don’t care about the payoffs, think of banks like JP MORGAN you would destroy along the way,” the poster added.

The “#SilverSqueeze” movement has garnered support from Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the two venture capitalist brothers who have sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and who currently run a cryptocurrency exchange.

“The #silversqueeze is a rage against the machine”, Tyler Winklevoss said on twitter Sunday.

But the squeeze game has not been universally accepted on the 7.8 million member WallStreetBets board. Several messages released on Monday urged members to avoid betting on money, with some saying hedge funds and the media were pushing prices up.

“Stop trying to make money, it won’t happen,” wrote one user named snacksandmetal.

Skeptics haven’t stopped interest in money from exploding, however. Precious metals broker APMEX said demand was 12 times higher than normal over the weekend and that it added as many new clients on Saturday as it usually adds in a week.

“We have made strategic decisions to purchase additional metal, blocking out any metal we can find in the market,” CEO Ken Lewis said in a statement posted on the APMEX website. “We suspect that the premiums will go up and up quickly, as we’re seeing significant increases in our costs, when we can even locate the metal.”

With pole wires