Notes Today: 

• It seems that the attempted Silver short squeeze by the Reddit crowd has at least temporarily failed. Yet, rising demand as the economy picks up steam may drive prices higher in the long run.

 

• QuickOverview is up to date. 

• Guardian: The volume of exports going through British ports to the EU fell by a staggering 68% last month compared with January last year, mostly as a result of problems caused by Brexit.

•  Bloomberg: Commodities have been on a tear since March and have surged to the highest level in more than six years, with rallies in everything from iron ore to soybeans, copper, and corn. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Ospraie Management LLC are among institutions that have endorsed raw materials as investment plays and predict they have more room to climb.

Notes Today: 

• Adjusting for the people that have dropped out of the labor force, by choice or obligation, the unemployment rate is around 9.5%,” estimated lead U.S. economist Lydia Boussour of Oxford Economics. 

• Consumer credit in the United States increased by $9.73 billion in December of 2020 after rising by a downwardly revised $13.93 billion in the previous month, 

• Bloomberg: By the end of last year, more than 30% of U.S. homeowners were considered equity-rich -- meaning their property was worth twice as much as the underlying mortgage, a report showed. 

• Exxon Mobil posted its first annual loss in at least 40 years. 

• South Korea returned to first place in the latest Bloomberg Innovation Index, while the U.S. dropped out of a top 10 that features a cluster of European countries
  
  
  

 

 

• Guardian: The Texas Republican party has endorsed legislation that would allow state residents to vote whether to secede from the United States.

• President Biden is supposedly on pace to save the U.S.  $124m this year by just not golfing.