A vendor at the El Saga gold jewelry manufacturer displays various models and weights of silver bullion as gold prices register a rise due to the devaluation of the local currency in the gold market area of Cairo, Egypt, January 14, 2024.
Amr Abdallah Darsh | Reuters
Silver’s meteoric rise and as dramatic a reversal as it has been in recent weeks has left market watchers asking a fundamental question: When will assets stop trading based on fundamentals and start behaving more like a meme?
Fluctuations in silver prices have led to increased comparisons to meme stocks like GameStop. GameStop is the video game retailer that became a global phenomenon in 2021 after retail traders on Reddit flocked to it and sent its stock price soaring far beyond what traditional valuation models could justify.
Memetic stocks are typically characterized by several core characteristics. It’s the sharp, often parabolic price movements, the active participation of retail investors and the stories spread on social media, sometimes completely overwhelming the fundamentals. Liquidity can come in quickly, but it often goes out just as quickly.
Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Bull & Baird, explained the comparison frankly. “How is Silver different from, say, GameStop?” he asked in a post last week. “Isn’t this a meme anymore?”
He told CNBC that the metal has reached a kind of “zeitgeist” among retail traders who are starting to move in droves. Silver has industrial and consumer uses, but the price typically doesn’t fluctuate more than 100% within three months and is “completely decoupled and went vertically based on retail flows,” he said.
Retail investors poured about $171 million net into iShares Silver Trust, a popular exchange-traded fund that tracks the metal, on Jan. 26, according to a recent report by market research firm Vandatrack. This was nearly double the previous peak recorded during the 2021 “silver squeeze.”
Silver spot prices rose nearly 5% on Tuesday to $83.37 an ounce, while New York silver futures prices rose more than 9% to $84 an ounce.
Over the past month, silver has recorded 10 moves of 5% or more in either direction.
“Silver has just become retailers’ new (favorite) toy,” said Vanda analyst Ashwin Bakre.
That enthusiasm can be seen all over Reddit. The platform played a central role in the original meme stock phenomenon, and in 2021 the Reddit community WallStreetBets was at the forefront of coordinating retail purchases on GameStop.
On the Reddit Silverbugs forum, a community where users log physical purchases, discuss price targets, and share memes, posts after the recent stock selloff are emblematic of meme stock culture.
Silver price in the past month
Following Friday’s decline, Reddit user Jstaakz wrote, “Bought a push today! Diamond Hands.” “Diamond Hand” is a meme stock term used by retail traders to indicate their intention to continue holding an asset despite severe losses or extreme volatility, often as a sign of belief or defiance of selling pressure.
Another user on Monday asked fellow traders for advice on whether to hold or sell silver, adding that he bought silver last June at $48 an ounce.
“Silver is just the GameStop of 2026,” Antonelli said.
self-fulfilling frenzy
For some analysts, Silver’s actions cross a familiar danger threshold.
Lorna O’Connell, head of market intelligence at StoneX, warned that prices were moving away from sustainable levels.
“Silver was highly overvalued and in a self-fulfilling frenzy, but silver is notoriously fickle and its history is littered with examples of price crashes,” she says. “We are acting like Icarus at the moment, and extending this would very much risk other buyers getting burned.”
Tom Sosnoff, CEO of financial technology platform Rothdog, also included gold in the meme. “Gold and silver were truly the meme products of 2026…Silver moves so fast…You’re basically seeing multi-year moves within 30 days.”
“Huge volume, huge volatility, no fancy words or reasons. I mean, you can make up all the fundamentals and technical reasons you want, but this is meme stock trading,” Sosnoff said.
He warned that new entrants were drawn to headlines and social media. “If you’ve never traded silver in the futures or ETF markets before, please be careful. These are big contracts, and they are moving around at levels we have never seen before.”
Henrietta Treyz, managing partner at Veda Partners, said this dynamic is undeniable. “The movement in precious metals, whether it’s gold or silver, is really quite significant. And as an outside observer, you can see that the meme stock element is very much alive,” she said. “It reminds me of GameStop.”
However, not everyone agrees that silver should be lumped in with narrative-only assets.
Silver “sometimes acts like a meme product, but it’s not inherently a meme product,” said Vasu Menon, managing director of investment strategy at OCBC, pointing to industrial demand such as solar panels, electric vehicles and electronics. But Menon acknowledged that recent moves have been fueled by speculation and that sharp corrections are part of Silver’s DNA.
