NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global equities bounced back from last week’s steep sales and silver prices rose on Monday as retail investors extended their social media battle with Wall Street to drive the precious metal to a new level. maximum of eight years.
A shift in the retail to silver frenzy has led to rising mining stocks on both sides of the Atlantic and left precious metal dealers looking for bars and coins to meet demand.
The iShares Silver Trust ETF – the largest silver-backed ETF – rose 7.1%. The data shows that its holdings increased by a record 37 million shares from Thursday to Friday alone, each representing an ounce of silver.
BHP Group, Glencore Plc and Anglo American Plc were the top six winners on the FTSE 100 in London, with the blue-chip index closed at 0.92%.
Miner Fresnillo rose 8.95% to 1,076 to help drive the pan-European STOXX 600 index 1.24% higher.
US small-cap miners Hecla Mining Co and Coeur Mining Inc increased by 28.3% and 23.1%, respectively.
Silver prices rose to an eight-year high of just over $ 30 an ounce before increasing earnings to trade by 6.3% to $ 28.70.
The trading frenzy generated huge gains in companies like GameStop Corp last week, forcing hedge funds to cover bets that would fall. GameStop was down 30.77% at $ 225.00.
“Silver has knock-on effects compared to GameStop because it has to do with mining,” said Connor Campbell, a financial analyst at SpreadEx. “If you start pushing silver higher, this will have an effect on other industries and other markets, and that’s clearly what happened.”
Silver gained 19% of its price on Thursday after Reddit posts prompted small investors to buy silver shares and traded funds (ETFs), backed by physical silver bars, in a style game GameStop.
Spot silver rose 6.97% to $ 28.88.
The MSCI benchmark for global stock markets rose 1.47% to 652.35.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.76%, the S&P 500 gained 1.61%, and the Nasdaq Composite added 2.55%.
The US dollar fell to a two-week high in terms of weakness in the euro, the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen, considering that the United States has an advantage in developing the economy and vaccinating the population against COVID-19.
The euro weakened after Germany reported that retail sales fell 9.6% unexpectedly in December, following tighter blockages last year to reduce the spread of COVID-19 consumer spending in Europe’s largest economy.
The dollar index rose 0.461%, the euro fell 0.66% to $ 1.2056.
The Japanese yen weakened 0.25% against the green dollar to 104.94 per dollar.
Oil prices have risen, boosted by declining stocks and hopes for a faster global economic recovery, although stopping vaccine launches and renewed travel restrictions have limited gains.
In the long run, crude oil set $ 1.31 to $ 56.35 a barrel. US crude oil futures rose $ 1.35 to $ 53.55 a barrel.
Gold followed silver above, up 0.77% to $ 1,860.22 per ounce. US gold futures were down 0.7% at $ 1,863.90.
(Chart: Silver has outperformed gold in terms of ETF prices and holdings in recent months 🙂
Overnight data showed that Chinese factory activity slowed in January as restrictions hit some regions. In the euro area, output growth remained strong at the beginning of the year, but has slowed since December.
The British data showed an even bigger fight, with the producers facing the double winds of COVID-19 and the exit of Great Britain from the European Union.
While the global launch of the coronavirus vaccine remains slow, with concerns about whether they will work on new COVID strains, Europe has also been rumored to receive another 9 million doses from AstraZeneca in The first trimester.
With riskier markets returning, yields on Italian government bonds fell 2-3 basis points along the curve.
German Bund yields, meanwhile, the benchmark for the eurozone, remained anchored at around -0.51% on Monday, following the yields of the US Treasury. The 10-year US Treasury bill fell 2.8 basis points to produce 1.0672%.
Reporting by Herbert Lash; Edited by Richard Chang