Silver rallies after Reddit post about executing a ‘short squeeze’

Silver futures rallied Thursday to mark their highest finish in three weeks, following a post by a Reddit user, who suggested executing a “short squeeze” on silver.

“Any short squeeze in silver paper shorts would be EPIC,” a post on the popular WallStreetBets forum said. “Why not squeeze $SLV to real physical price,” he said referring to the iShares Silver Trust exchange traded fund.

A short squeeze happens when a price increase for an asset prompts a rush in buying activity by those who previously bet that prices would fall.

Silver jumped “as a campaign grew among long-time silver bugs to attract the ‘Reddit crowd’ of young day-traders currently squeezing heavily-shorted U.S. shares higher,” Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault, wrote in a article Thursday.