In late January and early February 2021, users of the Reddit community r/WallStreetBets — already flush with gains from the GameStop short squeeze — turned their attention to silver.
The thesis: buy silver ETFs and physical silver en masse, forcing short sellers to cover and driving the price to $1,000 (or more, depending on which post you read).
What happened:
- Silver spot price rose from approximately $25 to about $30 in early February 2021.
- Physical silver premiums spiked dramatically — some dealers ran out of inventory.
- The SLV ETF saw record inflows.
What didn’t happen:
- The silver market is vastly larger than a single stock. Daily trading volume dwarfs any Reddit community’s buying power.
- Silver fell back below $26 within weeks.
- No short squeeze occurred in the way GameStop’s did.
The 2021 episode is useful as a reminder that retail momentum can temporarily impact premiums and spot prices, and that the physical and paper markets can diverge in interesting ways under demand spikes. It didn’t demonstrate suppression, and it didn’t produce a sustained price move.
Sources: News reporting from Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal, January–February 2021. (URLs unverified)