Silver prices skyrocket to 8-year highs

Silver prices have jumped 16% over the past three trading sessions. The current quotation of the asset is $30.133 per ounce, which is a new high since February 2013.

Experts point out that the rush for silver may have emerged after a message appeared last week urging people to invest in silver on the private trader community on Reddit (a social news site). Forum participants decided to raise the price of the metal after the success with the shares of the GameStop company and the Dogecoin meme cryptocurrency.

Silver began to rise last week amid calls from traders to buy the metal to put pressure on banks trying to capitalize on its price decline. And on January 29, the net capital inflow to IShares Silver Trust, the largest exchange-traded fund backed by silver, reached an unprecedented amount of $944 million.

Investor interest in silver has also led to a surge in the value of silver-mining companies and ETFs that are pegged to silver. So the securities of the silver mining corporation First Majestic Silver soared by 30% in the last two trading sessions.