The Wall Street Silver Generation

The Gamestop and AMC mania of early 2021 lit a fire underneath young investors, capturing the imaginations of a new generation. Starting off as an offshoot of its namesake, r/wallstreetsilver now plays host to 165,000 “apes”, with hundreds “in the jungle” at any one time. The movement also has a Youtube channel with interviews with many of the industry heavy hitters, and an extremely active community of silver bugs.

Looking through the posts on Wall Street Silver, you’ll see users showing off everything from their first Silver Maples, to enormous stashes worth hundreds of thousands. Prudently, the vast majority of precious metals holders don’t like to telegraph their holdings, certainly not that they are keeping them at home. Many phone generated photos also have GPS coordinates embedded so you may be leading hackers to your stash. But with the anonymity of usernames such as u/Stacking-Schmidt, u/Bullionbrother92 and u/Silvermoomoo, silver stackers share new purchases and give encouragement to each other with threads such as “Stay Strong - Supply Chains are breaking…” and “Honestly, you guys give me the courage to hodl…”.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/nrof00/apes_together_strong/

Younger people love memes, and Wall Street Silver is a great place to find them. The dominant theme is taken from the Planet of the Apes series, where phases such as “Apes together strong”, and “This is the way”, serve as rallying cries to fellow apes to “keep stacking” even when the spot price moves against silver holders. Even the recent Anniversary of the Closing of the Gold Window is recast as “Raid day”.  

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/p62xdn/aftermath_of_the_0815_raid/

For us as bullion dealers, we see a lot of buyers in their 20s and 30s seeking to diversify their holdings. Many have found bullion through Youtube videos, ‘going down the rabbit hole’ and questioning the nature of money and value preservation. Some of the favorites you’ll see shared as you scroll down include the likes of Keith Neumeyer, Gregory Mannarino and Lynette Zhang. The “new generation” isn’t necessarily young, as many of the customers we are seeing are first time purchasers despite the fact they may be confused if you ask them about “Reddit”. As they say though, better late than never.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/p65p4d/mining_stocks_count_as_diversification_right/

Despite differences in expression, the ultimate motivations that lead investors of different generations is invariably the same. Securing a safe haven asset that has stood the test of time is an investment people make without necessarily needing a short term appreciation in dollar terms. Hedging against uncertainty with precious metals is a major theme of the human condition, as civilisations have always come back to Gold and Silver as a medium of exchange and store of value.