HAUZ

Silver futures opened lower after the CME Group announced that it was raising margins for Comex contracts following a rally to an eight-year high that was inspired by an army of retail investors.

As silver futures surged to the highest level in almost eight years, traders are still trying to solve a mystery: Who penned the Reddit posts that ignited this staggering run-up in prices -- and why were they taken down?

The silver options market, normally a quiet zone compared to gold or oil, has burst to life, roiled the most in years by the Reddit frenzy.

For all the talk of a comeback for big tech shares in January, tracking the cash shows the rotation into riskier names not only continued -- it got stronger.

It’s a measure of Cathie Wood’s popularity that the main fund at Ark Investment Management saw money exit last week and still had the greatest inflows for any U.S. thematic exchange-traded fund in January.

It seems a match made in heaven: Reddit’s rambunctious army of retail investors eager to take on the financial elites, and the world of silver “bugs,” hard-core metal bulls, many of whom have long argued the price was being suppressed by powerful forces.

GameStop Corp. and other Redditor favorites including AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. held onto January’s gains, rising further in early trading as brokerage trading restrictions continued to ease.