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n January this year, a group of retail investors – social media-savvy, working from home due
Ito the pandemic and using online trading platforms – congregated around the “wallstreetbets”
group on social media platform Reddit.

heir online conversations began to cir- The stock eventually reached $347.51/ under the Twitter hashtag #silversqueeze
Tcle around Gamestop, a traditional high share on January 27, having started the – pushed the silver price up from less than
street video game retailer. year at $17.37. By February 19, however, it $23/oz in early January to more than $29/
Like most other bricks-and-mortar retail- was back down to $40 but rallied in March oz by mid-February. A second rally in May
ers, Gamestop was struggling to compete when wallstreetbets members jumped back – “Silver Squeeze 2.0” – saw the price hit
against online retailers where customers in. $28/oz.
could download new PlayStation, Xbox or The combination of technology and coor- The move in the spot price had con-
PC games without having to deviate their dinated retail investors had Wall Street and sequences for the few ASX-listed silver
eyes from the screen. US financial regulators panicked and plans companies with Investigator Resources
Wall Street short-sellers had targeted are already in place to curb the influence of Ltd moving from 6.7c/share to 11.5c in the
Gamestop stock, driving down the price. these online communities. space of two trading days in January-Feb-
However, among the now 3 million mem- In Australian resources circles, the ruary with Silver Mines Ltd doing much the
bers of the wallstreetbets subreddit, a plan Gamestop furore caused little more than a same (21.5c to 36.5c).
began to emerge to get one over on the ripple but when the online retail army turned The next commodity to come to the at-
short-sellers. its attention to silver, the phenomena began tention of online investors was uranium. In
By acting in union, the retail investors kept to gain prominence. conjunction with the launch of the Sprott
buying Gamestop and call options, forcing a A combination of online investors look- Uranium Physical Trust, online uranium
“short squeeze” on shares. Several hedge ing for the next Gamestop and conspiracy bulls have built momentum in both the spot
funds were forced to cover their positions in theorists adamant the silver price has been price and uranium equities with Twitter us-
Gamestop, costing them billions of dollars. artificially supressed for decade – running ers such as Uranium Insider gaining more

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT NOVeMBeR 2021 Page 21