A seller displays different models and weights of silver bars at a gold jewelry manufacturer in “El Sagha”, as gold prices recorded an increase after a devaluation of the local currency, at the gold market in Cairo, Egypt, January 14, 2024.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh | Reuters
Silver’s rapid rise and equally spectacular reversal in recent weeks has led market watchers to ask a fundamental question: When does an asset stop trading on its fundamentals and start behaving like a meme?
Silver price volatility has led to growing comparisons to meme stocks such as GameStop, the video game retailer that became a global phenomenon in 2021 after retail traders on Reddit rallied en masse, sending its shares soaring far beyond what traditional valuation models could justify.
Action memes are generally characterized by a few fundamental characteristics: sharp, often parabolic price movements, heavy participation by retail investors, and stories that go viral on social media, sometimes overwhelming the fundamentals. Cash can flow in quickly and often flow out just as quickly.
Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Bull and Baird, laid out the comparison bluntly on X: “How is Silver different from, say, GameStop? he asked in a post last week. “Isn’t that a meme now?”
He told CNBC that the metal had reached a sort of “zeitgeist” among retail traders who were starting to move in herds. Although silver has industrial and consumer uses, prices typically don’t move above 100% in three months: “It’s totally disconnected and has become vertical based on retail flows,” he said.
On Jan. 26, individual investors put about $171 million net into the iShares Silver Trust, a popular exchange-traded fund that tracks the metal, according to a recent study. market research company VandaTrack. This was almost double the previous peak recorded during the 2021 silver squeeze.
Spot silver prices rose nearly 5% to $83.37 an ounce on Tuesday, while silver futures in New York, the price rose more than 9% to $84 an ounce.
Over the past month, silver has seen 10 moves of 5% or more in either direction.
“Money has just become the new [favorite] toy,” said Ashwin Bhakre, an analyst at Vanda.
This enthusiasm is visible on Reddit. The platform played a central role in the original meme stock phenomenon, with Reddit community WallStreetBets at the forefront. coordinate retail purchases in GameStop in 2021.
On Reddit forum Silverbugs – a community where users document physical purchases, debate price targets and share memes – posts following the recent sell-off are emblematic of stock meme culture.
Silver Price Last Month
“I bought the dip today! DIAMOND HANDS,” wrote Reddit user Jstaakz after Friday’s liquidation. “Diamond hands” is a meme term used by retail traders to signal that they plan to continue holding an asset despite heavy losses or extreme volatility, often as a sign of conviction or defiance in the face of selling pressure.
Another user asked other traders for advice on Monday on whether they should hold or sell their silver, adding that it was bought at $48 an ounce last June.
“The money is only GameStop in 2026,” Antonelli said.
A self-fulfilling frenzy
For some analysts, the behavior of money has crossed a familiar and dangerous threshold.
Rhona O’Connell, head of market intelligence at StoneX, warned that prices had moved away from sustainable levels.
“Silver was massively overvalued and in a self-fulfilling frenzy; however, it is notoriously fickle and its history is littered with examples of price crashes,” she said. “Currently it is behaving like Icarus and, to extend the analogy, there is a high risk that other buyers will be trapped.”
Tom Sosnoff, chief executive of financial technology platform Lossdog, even included gold in the meme fold: “Gold and silver have sort of been the meme commodities of 2026…the movement of silver has been wild…We’re basically seeing multi-year moves in less than 30 days.
“Huge volume, huge volatility, not too much rhyme or reason. I mean, you can make up as many fundamental or technical reasons as you want, but it’s a meme stock trade,” Sosnoff said.
He warned that new participants were attracted by headlines and social media. “If you’ve never traded silver before in the futures market or the ETF market, be careful. These are big contracts, and they’re flying, and they’re trading at levels that, you know, we’ve never seen before.”
Henrietta Treyz, managing partner at Veda Partners, said the momentum was unmistakable. “Precious metals movements are really something, whether it’s gold or silver. And you can tell as an outside observer that the meme stock component is alive and well,” she said. “It reminds me of GameStop.”
However, not everyone agrees that money should be lumped in with purely narrative assets.
Vasu Menon, managing director of investment strategy at OCBC, said silver “sometimes behaves like a meme product, but it is not one by nature”, pointing to industrial demand for solar panels, electric vehicles and electronics. Menon, however, acknowledged that speculation had amplified recent moves and that sharp corrections were part of the DNA of money.
