Notes From All Over -- February 1, 2021

Updates

Later, 10:19 a.m.: that silver trade? Losing steam, now below $29.

Original Post

Silver: last night before going to bed, I said the number to watch overnight / today was $30. The number to watch by the end of the week: $35. Well, we hit $30 overnight. Silver up over 10%; up almost $3; trading at $29.805. Link here. From SeekingAlpha:

Bigger picture: This squeeze here is aimed at banks by forcing physical delivery of silver into vaults. The Silver Trust ETF is backed by physical silver, meaning the precious metal needs to be purchased when new investments are received.

However, retail traders may find it harder to influence silver prices, compared to a single stock, given the large off-exchange market for the precious metal in which banks trade on behalf of clients.

Flashback: In 1979-80, the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the silver market by buying up one-third of the entire world supply (other than that held by governments). Within a year, the price for silver jumped 713% to a record high of $49.45 per troy ounce, but later collapsed in an event called "Silver Thursday." COMEX adopted "Silver Rule 7," which placed leverage restrictions on the purchase of commodities on margin, and the Hunt brothers had borrowed heavily to finance their purchases.

Unemployment: rates, year-over-year. Link here.  Rankings, best to worst:

• South Dakota: #1 -- best numbers, year-over-year
• Minnesota: #10
• North Dakota: #20
• Texas: #41 -- missed the top ten for worst-performing states by one one state; throw out outliers like Hawaii and Nevada, and Texas would have been at the bottom;
• California: #48

Pigeon-holing states: one wonders if states could be divided along the following lines --

• rural vs urban
• red vs blue
• tech vs non-tech
• farming vs non-farming
• manufacturing vs service industry

And, if so, which of the divisions is most important when tracking the health of the economy. I don't know, but it seems "manufacturing vs service industry" is a huge discriminator. California, at number 48th in the list of unemployment changes year-over-year, certainly suggests the service industry is a big, big deal. Which immediately brings us to Nevada, which is 100% service (if one includes entertainment as a service industry, and I do). Nevada ranked #49th. 

Melvin Capital lost 53% in January on GameStop and bad positions.