A seller displays different models and weights of silver bars at a gold jewelry manufacturer in El Saga, as gold prices rose following a devaluation of the local currency, in the gold market area of Cairo, January 14, 2024.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh | Reuters
Silver’s rapid gains and equally dramatic swings in recent weeks have prompted market watchers to ask a fundamental question: When will the asset stop trading fundamentally and start acting like a meme?
Silver price volatility has sparked meme-stock comparisons to video game retailer GameStop, which became a global phenomenon in 2021 after retailers rallied on Reddit in droves, sending its shares far above what traditional valuation models could justify.
Meme shares usually characterized by a few key features: sharp, often parabolic price changes, heavy retail investor participation, and viral social media stories, sometimes completely justified. Liquidity can come and go quickly.
Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Bull and Baird, put the comparison bluntly at X: “How is Silver different from, say, GameStop?” he asked in a post last week. “Isn’t that a meme anymore?”
He told CNBC that the metal has reached a kind of “zeitgeist” with retailers starting to move as a herd. While silver has both industrial and consumer uses, prices typically don’t rise more than 100% in three months: “It’s been completely disconnected and vertical based on retail flows,” he said.
On January 26, private investors poured about $171 million into the iShares Silver Trust, a popular exchange-traded fund that tracks the metal. VandaTrack is a market research firm. This is almost twice the previous peak recorded during the “silver squeeze” of 2021.
On Tuesday, spot silver prices rose almost 4% to $4,852.76 an ounce. silver futures In New York, it rose more than 9% to $84 an ounce.
In the past month, silver has recorded 10 moves of 5% or more in both directions.
“Silver has become the new (favourite) toy of retail,” said Ashwin Bhakre, an analyst at Wanda.
This enthusiasm is evident all over Reddit. The platform played a central role in the original meme-stock phenomenon, with threads like WallStreetBets Coordinate retail purchases at GameStop in 2021.
On Reddit’s Silverbugs forum — a community where users document physical purchases, discuss price goals, and share memes — recent post-sale posts are emblematic of meme-stock culture.
Silver price last month
“I bought water today! DIAMOND HANDS,” wrote Reddit user Jstaakz after sold out friday. “Diamond hands” is a stock meme term used by retailers to indicate that they plan to hold an asset despite steep losses or extreme volatility, often to demonstrate confidence or resistance against selling pressure.
Another user asked colleagues for advice on Monday they responded to the question of whether to hold or sell silver, saying it was bought last June at $48 an ounce.
A self-fulfilling frenzy
For some analysts, silver’s behavior has crossed a familiar and dangerous threshold.
Rhona O’Connell, Head of Market Research at StoneX, warned that the price had moved away from a stable level.
“Silver was highly valued and a self-fulfilling frenzy; however, it is volatile and its history is full of examples of price collapses,” he said. “Now it behaves like Icarus, and there is a high risk of other buyers getting burned to extend the analogy.”
Tom Sosnoff, CEO of financial technology platform Lossdog, even added gold to the meme pack: “Gold and silver have been kind of the meme commodity of 2026… silver’s moves have been wild… We’re basically seeing multi-year moves in less than 30 days.”
“High volume, high volatility, not too much rhyme or reason. I mean, you can make as many fundamental or technical reasons as you want, but this is meme stock trading,” Sosnoff said.
He warned that new participants will be attracted by topics and social networks. “If you’ve never traded silver in the futures market or the ETF market, just be careful. These are huge contracts and they fly and move at levels they’ve never seen before.
Henrietta Treyz, managing partner at Veda Partners, said the dynamic is inevitable. “Movements in precious metals, whether it’s gold or silver, are really big things. And as an outside observer, you can tell that the meme stock component is very much alive and well,” he said. “It reminds me of GameStop.”
However, not everyone agrees that silver should only be combined with stated assets.
Vasu Menon, managing director of investment strategy at OCBC, said silver “sometimes acts like a meme commodity, but it’s not by nature,” pointing to industrial demand for solar cells, electric vehicles and electronics. Menon, however, acknowledged that speculation had fueled recent moves and sharp corrections were part of silver’s DNA.