And some WallStreetBets members deny they are behind silver’s rise.
(Well, that’s one theory of what drove the silver price to a 10-year high on Monday. The Reddit crowd was allegedly driving up silver’s price in an attempt to put a squeeze on Wall Street hedge funds that have shorted the metal. It was Bryan, then a 36-year-old former Nebraska congressman, who secured the Democratic nomination for President in 1896, emerging from a crowded pack of candidates at the party’s national convention after he mesmerized attendees with a blistering speech attacking the gold standard, concluding with its famous enjoinder that humanity should “not be crucified upon a cross of gold.” History may not repeat, but it frequently rhymes, and there are parallels between Bryan’s pro-silver populism and the WallStreetBets’ silver rally.
Politician, orator, and lawyer (he famously sparred with legal eagle Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial), Bryan became hugely influential in the late 19 th century in part by championing silver as an alternative to the gold standard. Well, as you might vaguely recall from your high school AP American history class, Bryan was the original anti–Wall Street populist.
When the silver price suddenly rallied earlier this week to an eight-year high, and market analysts speculated WallStreetBets’ Reddit army of retail investors was behind the move, a few commentators quipped that William Jennings Bryan would have been proud.
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