Hello. I'm James Willhite, with Monday's update as the day-trading mania continues to drive individual shares higher while global stocks advance and silver prices jump.

Futures are up. Short-squeezed stocks like GameStop are back on the rise premarket, albeit at a somewhat gentler pace. Some investors expect volatility to edge down this week as many hedge funds have already reduced short positions on stocks that have attracted a tremendous amount of attention on the internet. And day traders are looking beyond equities, pushing silver prices up. Manufacturing and construction data are due this morning. Read our full market wrap here.

Meanwhile, our Amrith Ramkumar finds that individual investors on the hunt for speculative trades have developed a taste for blank-check companies.

GameStop, AMC, Bed Bath & Beyond, Koss: Shares of some companies that logged huge jumps last week in volatile trading started this week with fresh rises. Follow our live blog here.

Exxon Mobil, Chevron: The oil giants discussed merging after the pandemic shook the world last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

NXP Semiconductors, Woodward and Thermo Fisher Scientific are among the companies reporting earnings Monday.

Day traders fueling enormous gains in popular stocks such as GameStop are also powering big swings for another suddenly hot investment: so-called blank-check companies.

Special-purpose acquisition companies—shell companies planning to merge with private firms to take them public—are rising more than 6% on average on their first day of trading in 2021, up from last year’s figure of 1.6%, according to University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter. Before 2020, trading in SPACs was muted when they made their debut on public markets.

Now, shares of blank-check companies almost always go up. The last 140 SPACs to go public have either logged gains or ended flat on their opening day of trading, per a Dow Jones Market Data analysis of trading in blank-check companies through Thursday. One hundred and seventeen in a row have risen in their first week. The gains tend to continue, on average generating bigger returns going out to a few months.

The gains in companies that don’t yet have any underlying business underscore the wave of speculation in today’s markets. Merging with a SPAC has become a popular way for startups in buzzy sectors to go public and take advantage of investor enthusiasm for futuristic themes.

But lately, day traders are even putting money into SPACs before they have revealed what company they are buying. At that stage, they are pools of cash, so investors are wagering that the company will eventually complete an attractive deal.

For a longer version of this article online, follow this link.

Are SPACs showing signs of froth? Let us know by replying to this email. Your comments may be edited before publication in future newsletters, and please make sure to include your name and location.

Investors see some classic signs of a bubble, but they are uncertain whether a downfall looms.

Investors have little way to gauge the likely success of new electric-vehicle ventures before they launch their make-or-break products, notes columnist Stephen Wilmot.

Traders and politicians are making new, risky arguments about low interest rates to justify their actions.

Much of the climb in solar stocks looks justified by growth prospects, but buyers may still be in for a bumpy ride, writes Heard on the Street columnist Rochelle Toplensky.

• Silver prices jumped for a third day Monday, as traders sharing tips on social media piled into the metal. Futures rose 11.5% to $30.03 a troy ounce.
   
• China’s short-term lending rates shot up to their highest levels in two years last week, with the weighted average of the one-day interbank collateralized repo hitting nearly 7% Friday. As recently as Jan. 22, it was only 2.5%.
   
• On this day in 1869, the New York Stock Exchange required listed companies to register their securities to prevent "watered stock," or the manipulated over-issuance of shares by insiders.

IHS Markit's U.S. manufacturing index for January is out at 9:45 a.m. ET.

The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for January, due at 10 a.m., is expected to fall to 60  from 60.7 a month earlier.

U.S. construction spending for December, due at 10 a.m., is expected to increase 0.8% from the prior month. 

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari speaks to a University of Montana economic outlook seminar at 12 p.m., and Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly speak at a virtual event on the labor market at 2 p.m.

The Reserve Bank of Australia releases a policy statement at 10:30 p.m.

Roaring Kitty wanted to break a 4-minute mile. He broke Wall Street instead. Before he became the Reddit user behind the GameStop surge, Keith Gill was a college track star. Injuries ended his dreams—and he traded running for investing.

Melvin Capital lost 53% in January, hurt by GameStop and other bets. Losses at the hedge fund extended beyond GameStop, but new and existing clients have signed up to invest into Melvin on Feb. 1.

Some GameStop investors got in with one goal—to pay off debt. Now, after a wild January featuring a 1,625% rise, comes the hard part, deciding when to sell.

GameStop, bitcoin and QAnon: How the wisdom of crowds became the anarchy of the mob. Thousands of Americans are being mobilized by social-media algorithms that amplify fringe ideas. The results have real-world impact.

Why did Robinhood ground GameStop? Look at clearing. Frenzied trading in GameStop and other stocks highlighted the crucial role clearinghouses play in the functioning of markets.

Day-trader mania will challenge the SEC under Gary Gensler. As more individuals become short-term speculators, the agency could come in for blame when bubbles burst and investors are saddled with losses.

Banks are bracing for tougher rules under Biden. The Obama-era focus on financial stability is giving way to concerns about racial equity and climate change in regulatory efforts.

We want to be the first place you go to get ready for the opening bell every day. This newsletter is written and edited by James Willhite (@jimwillhite; james.willhite@wsj.com) in London.