Silver prices jumped 11% in early trading Monday, the precious metal’s biggest jump in 11 years. And many on Wall Street are pointing to Reddit as the cause. But the site’s channel that has been responsible for the surge in GameStop and AMC stock says it has nothing to do with the spike.
A scan of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit shows multiple threads by users actively denying they are behind the run on silver.
“There is no silver short squeeze happening. NONE. NEVER,” reads one message, which currently has over 1,000 comments and more than 39,000 ‘upvotes’ (Reddit’s user rating system of threads). Another, titled “Complete lies. Stay away from silver right now” has 33,000 upvotes and another thousand-plus comments. Other users are taking a more conspiratorial approach, blaming everyone from the media to Citadel Securities for the chatter.
While there have been some discussion about silver on r/WallStreetBets, users say they prefer to focus on trading stocks, as the process is easier to grasp.
“No one comes on here and pitches commodities, ever in my 3 + years here I’ve seen a hand full of commodities/weather guys and no one comments on their [posts] because they are too high functioning,” said user DistractedEmployee.
R/WallStreetBets has been behind January’s explosive growth in GameStop shares, as well as notable gains in AMC, Bed Bath & Beyond and other companies that were in decline for much of last year. Massive buying by individual investors created a so-called short squeeze, which occurs when short sellers—who bet a stock’s price will fall and sell shares they borrowed—have to buy shares in order to exit their positions, pushing the stock upwards.
GameStop shares are lower in early trading Monday, but the r/WallStreetBets faithful are rallying each other on the board, urging each other not to sell as volume dips on the stock.