Highlights for the morning: silver on the cusp, Samsung's record profits and LG's debut in India

Silver broke through an all-time high of $53 an ounce amid liquidity shortages in London and investors fleeing to safe-haven assets. Samsung posted its biggest profit in three years thanks to hype around AI chips. LG Electronics India shares jumped 50% on the first day of trading after a record offering. These and other topics - in our review of key events by the morning of October 14.

Silver prices reached an all-time high of nearly $53 an ounce, surpassing the 1980 record for the first time, Bloomberg reports. The rally is fueled by rising demand for protective assets and a large-scale short-squeeze in London. Due to the lack of liquidity, traders began to deliver bullion by airplanes from New York, and rates for borrowing metal soared above 30% per annum.

The silver market - nine times smaller than gold - has become particularly volatile: the slightest outflow of investment can trigger a sharp correction, the agency notes.

Since the beginning of the year, gold, silver, platinum and palladium have risen in price by 56-81%. Analysts at Bank of America raised their forecast for silver prices by the end of 2026 from $44 to $65 per ounce, expecting further growth due to supply shortages and lower interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

Samsung Electronics reported its biggest profit in three years - operating income rose 32% to 12.1 trillion won ($8.5 billion), revenue - by 9%, Bloomberg reports. The results exceeded forecasts, but the company's shares fell by 2.7%: investors locked in profits after quotes rose by more than 60% since June, the agency notes.

The revenue growth was due to a recovery in demand for memory chips and gas pedals from Nvidia and AMD. Samsung is gradually regaining lost ground in the production of HBM memory, a key component for artificial intelligence systems. The company is already supplying such chips for the OpenAI Stargate project, the scale of which is estimated to be twice the current global HBM capacity.

Analysts note that Samsung's success reflects confidence in the long-term demand for AI infrastructure, writes Bloomberg. However, to regain leadership, the corporation needs to consolidate progress in the next generation of HBM4 memory. A full report with details is expected on October 30.

After the record liquidation of positions for $19 billion on Friday, October 10, the cryptocurrency market remains under pressure: investors are actively buying put options, insuring against further falls in bitcoin and ether, writes Reuters. The sharp collapse followed Donald Trump's threat to impose a 100% duty on Chinese imports, which triggered a panic sell-off and a spike in volatility. After Trump softened his rhetoric, the market partially recovered, but analysts note the continuing "bearish" mood: traders are insuring at levels of $95-115 thousand for bitcoin and $2600-4000 for ether.

According to experts quoted by the agency, the market crash has removed excess leverage and temporarily reduced risk, but bitcoin has yet to overcome important price barriers to get close to its all-time highs again.

LG Electronics India shares jumped 50% on the first day of trading after a record-breaking offering: the 116 billion rupee ($1.3 billion) IPO was oversubscribed by more than 54 times, becoming the most sought-after in the country since 2008, CNBC writes. Institutional investors were especially active - their demand exceeded the quota 166 times.

The offering was at the upper end of the range (Rs. 1,140 per share) and did not involve the issuance of new securities - the parent company LG Electronics sold 101.8 million shares. As a result, the market capitalization of the Indian division of LG Electronics exceeded the value of the parent company - about $12.83 billion against $9.68 billion, CNBC calculated .

Analysts said the rise in quotes reflects confidence in the potential of the Indian home appliance market, which Redseer estimates will grow from $75 billion to $130-150 billion by 2029, the channel reported.

Volatility continues in global markets:

- Japan's broad Topix index fell 2.5 percent, while the Nikkei 225 collapsed as much as 3 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was down nearly 1 percent and the Kosdaq was down nearly 2 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was little changed.

- Futures on the S&P 500 lost about 0.7 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4 percent and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.9 percent.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor