(Adds oil, settlement prices for gold)
* The retail public’s focus on silver is pushing it to its 8-year high
* Oil up 1%; dollar index, Bund, T-bill yields stable
* Excess money? tmsnrt.rs/2YpThUB
NEW YORK, Feb. 1 (Reuters) – Global equities rebounded from last week’s steep sell-off and silver prices rose Monday as retail investors expanded their social media-fueled battle with Wall Street to propel the precious metal to an eight-year high.
A shift in retail to silver pushed mining stocks up on both sides of the Atlantic, with a 7.2% rise in the iShares Silver Trust ETF – the largest silver-backed ETR – set it on track for its best day since 2008 .
Data for the ETF showed that silver holdings were up 37 million shares from Thursday through Friday alone, each representing one ounce of silver.
Mining giants BHP Group, Glencore Plc and Anglo American Plc were the top six winners of the FTSE 100 in London, with the blue chip closing at 0.92%.
Miner Fresnillo rose 8.95% to 1,076 to help lead the pan-European STOXX 600 index 1.24%.
On Wall Street, nine of the top 11 S&P sectors advanced, with technology leading the rally.
Silver prices rose to an eight-year high of just over $ 30 an ounce, before gains narrowed to trade 6.3% higher at $ 28.70.
The social media trading frenzy last week drove huge profits at companies like GameStop Corp, forcing hedge funds to hedge their short positions and sparking volatility on Wall Street. The three major stock indices posted their biggest weekly declines since October.
GameStop was down 27.31% to $ 236.23.
“Silver has knock-on effects compared to GameStop because it has ties to miners,” said Connor Campbell, a financial analyst at SpreadEx. “If you are going to push silver higher it will affect other industries and other markets and that is clearly what happened.”
Silver is up 19% in price since Thursday after reports on Reddit prompted retail investors to buy silver mining stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETF), backed by physical silver bars, in a GameStop-esque squeeze.
Spot silver was up 6.33% to $ 28.71.
MSCI’s benchmark for global equity markets rose 1.6% to 653.19.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.06%, the S&P 500 1.82% and the Nasdaq Composite 2.67%.
The US dollar bounced to a two-week high on the weakness of the euro, Swiss franc and Japanese yen as the United States has an advantage in growing its economy and vaccinating its population against COVID-19 .
The euro weakened after Germany reported retail sales plummeted by an unexpected 9.6% in December, following tougher lockdowns last year to curb the spread of COVID-19 disrupting consumer spending in Europe’s largest economy.
The dollar index rose 0.393%, while the euro fell 0.59% to $ 1.2064.
The Japanese yen weakened 0.25% against the dollar at 104.92 per dollar.
Oil prices soared, buoyed by shrinking inventories and hopes for a faster global economic recovery, although the cessation of vaccine rollouts and renewed travel restrictions limited profits.
Brent crude oil futures rose $ 1.31 from $ 56.35 a barrel. US crude oil futures rose from $ 1.35 to $ 53.55 a barrel.
Gold followed silver higher, up 0.70% to $ 1,859.05 an ounce. US gold futures were up 0.7% at $ 1,863.90.
Overnight data showed that Chinese manufacturing activity slowed in January, as restrictions in some regions took their toll. In the eurozone, output growth remained resilient at the start of the year, but slowed from December.
UK data showed an even greater battle, with manufacturers facing double headwinds from COVID-19 and Britain’s departure from the European Union.
While the roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine has been slow worldwide, with concerns about whether they will work on new COVID strains, Europe was also bolstered by the news that it would receive an additional 9 million doses of AstraZeneca in the first quarter.
With a rebound in riskier markets, Italian government bond yields fell 2-3 basis points across the curve.
Yields on German government bonds, the benchmark for the eurozone, remained anchored around -0.51% on Monday and followed the yield on US government bonds. The 10-year US Treasury traded to return 1.0723%.
Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Richard Chang