Is Silver 'Not A Meme' Now? Analyst Likens Metal To GameStop As Volatility, ETF Volumes Explode

• Silver Futures and iShares Silver Trust (SLV) hit fresh records on Monday.
• Trading volumes on Monday and the spread between the high and low were significantly higher than usual.
• An analyst likened silver’s rally to meme-stock–style momentum trading, cautioning that the surge is driven by hype and price action rather than any sudden increase in industrial demand for the metal.

Investors have sprung from their seats watching the rally in Silver, once considered the sleepiest of commodities, over the past months. Now, it’s suddenly become volatile, with some observers drawing parallels to meme-stock frenzies like those of GameStop.

Silver Futures (SI1) gained for three straight days to hit a fresh record of $115.5 on Monday, with a nearly 16% spread between the high and the low that day. ETF iShares Silver Trust (SLV), which tracks silver prices, rallied 19% over the past three days, with 375.47 million shares traded on Monday, the highest on record amid extreme volatility.

SLV is up nearly 53% in January, after a 145% rally over 2025. Meanwhile, the ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL), designed for short-term trading to profit from falling silver prices, gained nearly 5% in after-hours trading on Monday and also saw an all-time record trading volume of nearly 826 million shares.

Silver swung nearly $2 trilling of market cap in 14 hours, “quite literally throwing around Bitcoin's entire market cap in a matter of hours,” capital markets blog The Kobeissi Letter remarked in an X post. 

Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Baird, tied the move to meme-stock trading: “How is silver different from, say, GameStop? Is this not a meme now?” he asked. In an X thread, he argued today’s market rewards momentum above all else: “If Oats rose 50% in a month, everyone would pile into Oats. It’s not like the price would rise because we invented a new cookie.” 

To be sure, GameStop (GME) has all but lost its place as the key meme stock in the market – notwithstanding a surge yesterday after noted investor Michael Burry disclosed a long position.
 

Antonelli cautioned that investors should recognize silver’s rally as momentum-driven, rather than a reflection of rising industrial demand for the metal. Incidentally, short interest in SLV has also jumped; it climbed from 6.5% in September 2025 to 9.9% as of the end of last week, per Koyfin data.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for SLV climbed multiple points higher in the ‘bullish’ zone as of early Tuesday, from the previous day, amid ‘extremely high’ message volume. Member discussions were split between expectations that the rally would continue due to upside from buying in Asia, a potential short squeeze, and weakness in the U.S. dollar, while another section forecast a price correction.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

Read Next: Elon Musk Urges Users To Ditch WhatsApp, Signal For X Chat As Meta Lawsuit Revives Privacy Debate

Share

·

Add us on