Silver’s rapid rise and equally dramatic reversal in recent weeks has market watchers asking a fundamental question: When does an asset stop trading on fundamentals and start acting like a meme?

Silver price volatility is increasingly drawing comparisons to meme stocks like GameStop. GameStop, the video game retailer, became a global phenomenon in 2021 after its shares soared far beyond what traditional valuation models would justify after retail traders on Reddit bought heavily.

meme stocks Typically have a few core characteristics: sharp and often parabolic price movements, heavy participation from retail investors, and narratives that go viral on social media, sometimes completely overwhelming fundamentals. Liquidity can come in quickly and often exit just as quickly.

Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Bull and Baird, was blunt about the comparison on X: “How is Silver different from the likes of GameStop?” he asked in a post last week. “Isn’t this a meme now?”

He told CNBC that the metal has become a “zeitgeist” among retail traders, who are starting to act en masse. While silver does have industrial and consumer uses, prices don’t typically move more than 100% over a three-month period: “It’s completely disjointed and moves vertically based on retail flows,” he said.

According to recent data, individual investors poured a net $171 million into iShares Silver Trust, a popular exchange-traded fund that tracks gold, on Jan. 26. Market research company VandaTrack. This is nearly double the previous peak recorded during the 2021 “silver squeeze.”

Spot silver prices rose nearly 5% to $83.37 an ounce on Tuesday, while Silver futures New York futures prices rose more than 9% to $84 an ounce.

Silver has moved 5% or more 10 times in both directions over the past month.

“Silver has just become retail’s favorite new toy,” said Vanda analyst Ashwin Bhakre.

This enthusiasm can be seen all over Reddit. The platform played a central role in the original meme-stock phenomenon, with Reddit community WallStreetBets at the forefront. Coordinating 2021 GameStop retail purchases.

Posts on the Reddit Silverbugs forum, a community where users document physical purchases, discuss price targets and share memes, are emblematic of meme stock culture after the recent selloff.

“Buy on the dip today! Diamond Hands” Reddit user Jstaakz wrote following Friday’s sell-off. “Diamond hands” is a memetic stock term used by retail traders to indicate that they plan to hold on to an asset despite large losses or extreme volatility, often to show conviction or to defy selling pressure.

another user Ask other traders for advice on Monday should they hold or sell silver, adding that it purchased silver last June at $48 an ounce.

“Silver is just the GameStop of 2026,” Antonelli said.

self-fulfilling madness

For some analysts, silver’s behavior has crossed a familiar and dangerous threshold.

Rhona O’Connell, head of market intelligence at StoneX, warned that prices were moving away from sustainable levels.

“Silver is grossly overvalued and in a state of self-fulfilling madness; but silver is notoriously fickle and history is littered with examples of price collapse,” she said. “It’s currently behaving like Icarus and, by extension, the risk of other buyers getting burned is significant.”

Tom Sosnoff, CEO of fintech platform Lossdog, even brought gold into the meme spectrum: “Gold and silver are definitely the meme commodities of 2026… Silver’s moves are crazy… We’re basically seeing a multi-year move in less than 30 days.”

“The volume is huge, the volatility is huge, and there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to it. I mean, you can make up as many fundamental or technical reasons as you want, but this is a meme stock trade,” Sosnoff said.

He warned that new players will be attracted by headlines and social media. “If you’ve never traded silver in the futures market or the ETF market before, be careful. These are large contracts, they fly around, and they’re volatile at levels we’ve never seen before.”

Henrietta Treyz, managing partner at Veda Partners, said the dynamic is evident. “Whether it’s gold or silver, the movement of precious metals does matter. As an outside observer, you can tell that the meme stock component is very active,” she said. “It reminds me of GameStop.”

However, not everyone agrees that silver should be lumped in with pure narrative assets.

Silver “sometimes behaves like a meme commodity, but it’s not essentially that,” said Vasu Menon, managing director of investment strategy at OCBC Bank, pointing to industrial demand for solar panels, electric vehicles and electronics. However, Menon acknowledged that speculation has amplified recent moves and that large corrections are part of silver’s DNA.