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* Global stocks up 0.5%; S&P 500 futures up 1%
* Retail crowd turns gaze on silver, jumps to 8-year high
* Oil up 1%; Dollar index, Bund, T-bill yields steady
* Excess Money? https://tmsnrt.rs/2YpThUB
By Simon Jessop
LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Global shares bounced and silver
markets surged on Monday as retail investors expanded their
social-media fuelled battle against Wall Street to drive the
precious metal to an eight-year high.
Stock markets were roiled last week after a spike in retail
demand to buy the stocks most bet against by hedge funds drove
huge gains in companies such as GameStop Corp and
prompted fresh concern that COVID-19 monetary and fiscal support
measures were fuelling a market bubble.
With chatrooms abuzz with talk that silver was the new
target, silver-exposed stocks, funds and coins jumped, helping
push spot silver up more than 11%, with London-listed
miners up strongly, including Fresnillo, up 18%.
After falling 3.6% last week - its biggest weekly fall in
three months - the MSCI All-Country World Index
was up 0.5% in early deals, tracking overnight gains in Asia.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan
climbed 1.9% while Japan's Nikkei added
1.5% and Chinese blue chips rose 1.2% after the
country's central bank injected more cash into money markets.
Futures for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, meanwhile,
both pointed to a stronger open on Wall Street, up around 1%.
While the retail battle versus Wall Street, coordinated over
online forums such as Reddit, created some systemic risks, the
bigger danger was in the tech sector, where some stocks had "eye
watering valuations", Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid said.
"Retail has in many parts driven such valuations in the last
10 months. If this pops the wider market will have bigger issues
than last week."
Gold followed silver higher, up 1% to $1,864 an ounce
, while oil also tracked the gains in other commodities,
with both Brent crude and its U.S. peer up around
1%.
While the stock market tussle continued to grab the
headlines, analysts cautioned the bigger concern was economic
momentum in the United States and Europe as coronavirus
lockdowns bite.
Indeed, two surveys from China showed factory activity
slowed in January as restrictions took a toll in some regions.
In the euro zone, manufacturing growth remained resilient at the
start of the year but the pace waned from December. Data from
Britain will be in focus later in the European session.
While the coronavirus vaccine rollout globally remains slow,
with concern about whether they will work on new COVID strains,
Europe was also bolstered by news that it would receive a
further 9 million doses from AstraZeneca in the first quarter.
"It is these considerations, not what is happening to a
video game retailer day to day, that has weighed on risk
assets," said John Briggs, global head of strategy at NatWest
Markets. "So much of the market's valuations, risk in
particular, is premised on the fact we can see a light at the
end of the COVID tunnel."
Higher yields combined with the more cautious market mood
have seen the safe-haven dollar steady above its recent lows.
The dollar index stood at 90.722, having bounced from a
trough of 89.206 hit early in January.
The euro, meanwhile, fell 0.3% to $1.2100, well off
its recent peak at $1.2349, while the pound was the biggest
gainer in the G10 group of currencies, up 0.3% on the day at
$1.3732..
With riskier markets bouncing, Italian government bond
yields fell 2-3 basis points across the curve.
German Bund yields, meanwhile, the benchmark for the euro
zone, remained anchored around -0.51% on Monday, tracking U.S.
Treasury yields that also remained unchanged..
(Additional reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan and Ritvik
Carvalho; Editing by Toby Chopra, William Maclean)
