Silver price jumps 11%, the most in 11 years as Reddit traders try their squeeze play with the metal

Gold last traded at $1,859 an ounce. Silver at $28.96 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metal prices surged Monday on speculative buying despite a firmer dollar. U.S. stocks rose as Wall Street traders appeared to shake off market bubble concerns that largely drove the market's worst weekly sell-off since October.

CNBC--"Futures contracts for silver surged higher early Monday morning as the Reddit-fueled boom in highly shorted stocks appears to be spilling over into the metals market.

Spot silver prices jumped 10.4% to $29.70 an ounce shortly before 8:30 a.m. ET. If this holds, it would be the biggest one-day pop in silver on NYMEX since a 13% spike in March 2009. The metal briefly hit $30.03 to register its highest level since Feb. 2013 before paring some of its gains....

The spike in demand for silver appears to be related to retail traders in the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, which has helped drive trading activity in heavily shorted stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment in recent weeks.

The forum had multiple active threads dedicated to silver on Sunday night, and the phrase '#silversqueeze' was also trending on Twitter.

'It's a very different target, but the fact that you can move silver, such a large market, is an indication to everybody that they have to take these new technicals seriously,' said Allianz chief economic advisor Mohamed El-Erian on 'Squawk Box.'....

The metal was already rising recently due to continued fiscal stimulus and that Reddit traders were targeting it because banks are typically net short on silver."