Today's blog is being produced under exceptional difficulties. First of all, we are suffering from a wildly blowing snow blizzard and freezing weather, blamed on global warming in the Arctic and in Iceland pushing the cold southward on the US east coast, so my office toilet is not working and my telephone landline is intermittent. Secondly, the remnants of the Redditt stock squeeze today has created so much traffic on my brokerage service that I cannot get prices past the Wall Street opening from the TD Ameritrade sub of Charles Schwab. Today's moves feature silver and silver miners, but unlike the situation with individual stocks, there is plenty of long and dry powder here because brokerages do not often short precious metals. It will not be as easy as last week's gangbuster.

My birthday mate Aung Sun Syu Kyi was arrested by the military in Myanmar, on TV. She put up with all their awfulness over Rohingyas and dissidents but it did not help.

Maid Marion reports that Robin Hood, a supposedly free brokerage, raised another $2.4 bn from its backers. It makes money by pushing trades to specific intermediaries who won't let it lead short squeezes.

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Volume leaders

*Nokia remains in focus, the only major ADR gaining from the gamestoppers that I am sure is under pressure, because it is the only stock TD Ameritrade still subjects to trading limits. NOK rose 2.7% today in London pre-trading and is up 5.81% now.

*Another non-US stock being bought heavily is British GSM, Ferroglobe, which analysts hate after it announced a preliminary move to recapitalize with new share issues and note holder deals providing an additional $100 mn. The talks by the metals firm with the Ad Hoc Group of Noteholders began last Oct. and is led by its largest shareholder, a Spanish family holding company, Grupo Vilar Mir SA.

*GameStop GME fell about 20% in the premarket.

*Mercado Libre of Argentina is up 6.25% today, our 2ndbiggest winner. MELI gets very mixed forecasts. Another personal holding of mine is nearly as big a winner.

*My most recent stock pick, Canadian media group BCE, a telco with powerful internet and TV rose by 98 US cents (o.33%) to US$42.54. My average basis is $12.15 so I am up over 250%. If I can trust Barron's, it will not report on its latest quarter this week.

Drugs

*TEVA rose 2.5% today at the opening, catching up with Israel from Sunday. It was back over $12, but now is at $11.98.

*Swiss Novartis fell after it was downrated to neutral today by Cowen. Most analysts rate it a buy. NVS is developing a diy monthly multiple sclerosis jab with Genmab that the EU CHMP will vote on.

*Japan's Takeda is up on Biogen hopes for their Alzheimer's disease drug. TAK gained 0.7%.

*Thermo Electron, TMO, my largest US holding, reports after the close today. The share gained 2.4%.

*Beigene rose 7.6% at the opening today. BGNE functions using normal accounting and works with western drug firms. It is today's top winner.

*New buy NovaCure is now Israel's drug industry leader on Wall Street, with electricity treatment for cancers like glioblastoma; mesothelioma (from asbestos) both approved, and trials for hard to treat cancers of the ovaries, pancreas, and brain in phase III trials. Globes Israel cheers but fails to tell the natives that they cannot themselves by NVCR because it is run from a tax haven. It is up 1.9% in US trading today, at $164 and change. (It is not CureVac which will work with Bayer to make a Covid jab.)

*Merck MRK fell not on short selling, but because its anti PDI therapy failed in non-small cell lung cancer. But now it is up 0.52%. This is a weird market.)

*Esperion Therapeutics, tipped as a bargain on Seeking Alpha because it is heavily shorted, today jumped 6.2%. ESPR is a Michigan company I own personally which is not in the model portfolio. It is No. 2 winner today.

*Another big mover pre-market was Indian Dr. Reddy's down 3.65% to $59.03 today after it reported a drop in earnings despite a rise in sales. It also was hurt by the failure of its Covid-19 jab Avigan in a trial in Kuwait. RDY performed brilliantly for us since Abhimanyu Sisodia tipped it. India is in negative territory because Modi's government has shut down the accounts of striking farmers and their supporters, an extraordinary sign of govt weakness hitting stocks. It doesn't matter if they make drugs.

*Zymeworks gained 2.9% today. ZYME was picked by Martin Ferera who hangs out in the Canadian drug-making capital of British Columbia.

*Exelixis, EXEL, a US share, reported a deal with Adagene to generate “SAFEbody” masked versions of monoclonal antibodies against specific targets EXEL will pick, paying $11 mn upfront. Milestones and royalties will kick in for NYSE-ADC as pre-clinical products become eligible for commercialization after trials. The SAFEbody system may solve the on-target off-tumor toxicity problem with long-lasting antibody cancer treatment to spare healthy cells. It also signed up other drug firms. Both EXEL and ADC fell today. No idea why. I own EXEL.

*Beigene recuperated by 7%, a nice change for BGNE after the sell-off of China stocks last month.

*Moderna MRNA fell because BofA-Merrill downgraded it to underweight on valuation grounds.

*Astra-Zeneca AZN fell back by 0.5% today despite the EU ending its attack on the UK vaccination firm.

Mining and Manufacturing

*Despite the blizzard, Canadian Goose GOOS shares fell.

*BAE Systems, the UK merchant of death, won a $65.7 mn contract from the US Navy for air traffic control platform work. BAESY.

*Despite the blizzard, oil stocks fell: Schlumberger, BP plc, Royal Dutch Shell. SLB, BP, RDS-B.

*However Hoegh preferreds, HMLP stock, gained 2.6%. It was a pick by Gen. Joe Shaefer, a fellow newsletter writer.

*Focus on silver which is up 8% to a decade's high today may feed into my favorite metals, like gold and copper. Kirkland Lake was written up by David Kreka on Seeking Alpha today as a buy since its share remained flat last year despite increased revenues and eps. We told you first. KL remains in trouble for refinancing with 2 classes of warrant which could add up to 18.450 mn new shares which had earlier been in its treasury, to raise $45.2 mn. This did not show in the bottom line but hit the share price. KL rose 1.61% all the same.

*Cameco which mines uranium is up after BofA-Merrill forecast a global shortage of nuclear fuel. CCJ was written up by Tyler Durden on TalkMarkets. Also up is UUUU, Energy Fuels, up 11.3%. It removes rare earths from its own and other company's uranium ore.

*Despite its lock on platinum metals which should rise with silver, Johnson Matthey stock fell 1.44% today. JMPLY is now below our basis.

*Nintendo NTDOY of Japan is up 7.3% after it raised its 2020-1 outlook and reported 9-mo profits at ¥3.15/sh from ¥1.65 and forecast net will be up 55% tp ¥400 bn+ in the current FY ending Mar. 30. Sales will come in at ¥1.6 trillion ($15.3 bn), +22% over the last fiscal year thanks to boredom during lockdowns.

*NIO delivered 7225 vehicles in Jan., 352% more than in Jan. 2020. So natch it fell 1.9% to $55.92.

*Vodafone gained 1.6% today on no news. VOD runs telcos mostly outside Britain, where its is listed.

*Ford F jumped because it signed a strategic accord with Alphabet (AKA Google).

*Tencent is up on the IPO of Kuaishue. Naspers gained 2.5%+. Prosus gained 1.8%. NPSNY; PROSY.

*Tower Semiconductor, TSEM, gained because there is a shortage of chips. Its 2020 sales rose 6.5%.

*Tomra Systems, the Norway recycling and sorting machine maker, TMRAY, gained 2.53% today.

*Qualcomm is up 3.35% after being tipped for Feb. QCOM.

*Tata Motors January sales hit 59,959 and TTM gained 8.2% today. It reported selling 13% more cars in China but revenues there were down 9%. Its top performer turned out to be Jaguar-Landrover vehicles as Britons now go for native luxury rather than EU ones. Like other carmakers it is worried about chip shortages but if India persists in cutting service to farmers and Kashmir it may gain.

*Tesla TSLA gained over 2% after Piper Sandler doubled its target price to $1,200 from $515. This equals a 47% rise. Robinhood's chief explained why they had to stop long sales of GameStop to Elon Musk.

*Nikola, another electric vehicle maker, rose. NIO has boosters and critics but Nikola only has repentent critics, like Wedbush. This is a perverse market.

Finance

*Standard Life Aberdeen, SLFPY, gained 5.1% today hitting $17.2. We are up 39.4%.

*Sumitomi Mitsui, SMFG, is up 1.7%. But Mitsubishi, MSBHF, is down 0.8%.

*Banco Santander rose 0.34% as SAN is not subject to short squeezes. Shorting is illegal in Spain.

Funds

*Taiwan Fund, TWN, is upwardly mobile because the Biden Administration has issued a warning to China over its flyovers there. But we are still down.

*Meanwhile Korea Fund KF gained another 3.03%. I got that one very wrong.

*SPDR Gold, GLD, is up 1.06% on the spillover from silver buying.

*Goldman Sachs Active Beta Japan, GSJY, is up 0.92% today. It owns equal amounts of major listed Toky sotcks. JOF, Japan Small Cap, is up 2.2%. It's the yen.

*TIPX, SPDR-Bloomberg Barclays TIPS clone, is down 0.03%.

*Ireland Fund, IRL, is up 1.4% because the EU dropped its attempt to prevent Eire supplying Northern Ireland with covid-19 jabs, in violation of the Good Friday agreement which removes border barriers between them.

*Swiss Helvetia Fund SWZ is up because Swiss markets are more orderly than US or German ones.

*Lazard Global Income Fund LGI is up because these French guys who started out in La Nouvelle Orleans in 1800 know their stuff.