Summary: Front running is illegal - but not for everyone<br> <br> Are we watching Reddit disestablishmentarianism?<br> Silver's bigger than Gamestop - can the "short" be broken?<br> <br> <br> The McAlvany Weekly Commentary<br> with David McAlvany and Kevin Orrick<br> When Trading Is Free, You’re The Product<br> February 3, 2021<br> The McAlvany Weekly Commentary covering monetary, economic and geopolitical news events.<br> David: It’s the big guy who’s already figured out how to use this system opportunistically to his benefit. And I don’t necessarily point a finger at the big guy who is smart enough to figure out how broken the system was and how to use it or leverage it, but now you’ve got the little guy figuring out that he can leverage it too and make a bunch of money really fast. My challenge and I think great fear is that I don’t think this is going to end well for either of them.<br> Now, here are Kevin Orrick and David McAlvany.<br> Kevin: Welcome to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick, along with David McAlvany.<br> While I was in Denver on the 16th Street Mall this last few days. And got a chance to see, 16th Street Mall, of course, is right in the heart of downtown Denver near Rockies Stadium and the clock tower where my daughter got married. That’s what I was there for. My daughter got married. Yeah. It was amazing. The night before, I was hungry for some Indian food, just I was ready for some curry. I went out and the restaurants, of course, because of COVID, there’s hardly anybody on the 16th Street Mall, hardly anybody in the restaurants. And I was thinking, how in the world is this guy staying open? – this man who owned this restaurant, very expensive real estate.<br> And as I was sitting there, I started to realize it’s not about the people sitting inside, these guys, these bike couriers with these gigantic backpacks were showing up, lined up, they had their masks on, they had their helmets on, and they were waiting to pick up food and deliver it, people were still going out, but they were ordering in, and these bike couriers were delivering, but I want to get to one of the key things that I heard Dave, because I think it characterizes what’s going on right now.<br> David: So I was just wondering, on the delivery side, what do they call someone … if you’re bike courier delivering Indian food? What are you if you’re delivering Chinese food?<br> Kevin: Well, I don’t know. I do know this. I do know that these guys all had a dream or at least some of them had a dream of not having to carry food for forever. One of the bike couriers came in and he asked the owner of the restaurant, he said, have you been buying stocks? Have you been doing…? Because this is the heat of the battle right now with GameStop and all this other stuff. You could tell this was a guy who had never purchased stocks before as far as the bike courier goes and he asked the owner of the restaurant, he said, “Do you think we’re going to get rich?”<br> And I was telling my son the story. I called him on the phone. And I said, “This is really amazing to see these bike couriers talking about the stock market.” And my son, who’s 30 years old, he reminded me of something we all should know, when the shoeshine boy is giving you stock picks, you’re at the top of the market. And in a way, I’m not saying that the bike couriers are shoeshine boys, but it was interesting to sit there and watch how business and life has changed over the last year, but especially over the last two weeks.<br> David: Yeah. I mean, I think history students will read with fascination about the capital flows of the early 21st century. You had credit expanded, money supply stretched to gargantuan proportions, you had Wall Street, which became more and more casino-like, investing became trading, trading was transformed from quarterly timeframes and long-term holds to monthly timeframes and short-term holds,
