Oklahoma Governor Declares State Of Emergency As Fast-Moving Wildfires Scorch The Panhandle Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt declared a State of Emergency as a massive wildfire spread across the panhandle region of the state and crossed into Kansas. The Ranger Road Fire has burned 145,000 acres and is one of four wildfires raging in the northwest region of the state. In total, the fires have scorched about 156,000 acres. Latest […]

Calm Market Waters Hide Fierce Undercurrents Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, The price movement in the broad S&P 500 index is relatively calm. Yet the market’s undercurrent, as measured by sharply diverging returns across stock sectors and factors, is anything but calm. The current market picture we paint is well embodied by a quote from Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. “The sea was […]

FOMC Minutes Confirm Divided Fed: “Several” Suggest Rate-Hikes Possible, Fear Private Credit “Vulnerabilities” Since the last FOMC meeting (where they held rates with two dovish dissents) on Jan 28th, Bitcoin has been the biggest underperformer (along with gold) while bonds and the dollar have rallied with stocks lagging… Source: Bloomberg March is ‘off the table’ for a rate-cut now (following last week’s payrolls beat) but […]

Nestle Weighs Scaling Back Ice Cream Unit As Investors Seek Turnaround Plan From CEO Update (1405ET) Nestlé SA reports full-year results on Thursday. Ahead of the release and investor call, CEO Philipp Navratil is expected to outline a turnaround plan, while a new report says the Swiss foodmaker is considering a smaller footprint in its ice cream business. People familiar with the discussions told Bloomberg: The Swiss food […]

Trump DOJ Blocks Largest Copper, Gold, And Silver Extraction Site In The US Over Salmon, Sending Stock Tumbling In a move that has sent shockwaves through the mining industry, the Trump administration has blocked what would have been the largest copper, gold, silver, and molybdenum extraction site in the United States, after the DOJ filed a 143-page brief late Tuesday defending the Biden Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) […]

Yields Jump After Extremely Ugly, Tailing 20Y Auction Sees Lowest Foreign Demand Since 2021 The week’s lone coupon auction, was also one of the ugliest 20Y auctions since its inception in May 2020. Moments ago, the Treasury sold $16 billion in 20Y paper in an especially disappointing auction: here are the details. The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.664%, down from 4.846% in January and the lowest since October. It tailed the […]

American-Born Pope Snubs Trump Invitation To Gaza Board Of Peace The Vatican will not be joining US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” after Washington specifically invited Pope Leo XIV to join the massive post-war Gaza reconstruction project overseen by the United States and Israel. The Vatican’s top diplomat argued Tuesday that the United Nations should be left to handle crisis situations, and not a ‘private’ board […]

US Threatens To Quit IEA Over Green Energy Advocacy By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com The United States has threatened, once again, to quit the International Energy Agency (IEA) if the organization, created in the aftermath of the 1970s Arab oil embargo, doesn’t return to forecasting energy demand without strongly promoting green energy. “If it goes back to what it was — it was a fabulous international data recording […]

New Mexico Launches Probe Into What Happened At Epstein’s ‘Zorro Ranch’ Until now, the public’s visualizations of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal have largely centered on his Caribbean Island and his seven-story New York townhouse, but a new setting is poised to take greater prominence, as the New Mexico legislature just launched a wide-ranging investigation into what took place at Epstein’s “Zorro Ranch” about 30 miles south of Santa […]

Record Taiwan Arms Deal In ‘Limbo’ As White House ‘Vacillates’ Amid Xi Pressure: Report During their February 4 phone call, President Xi Jinping used the opportunity to warn President Donald Trump on China’s Taiwan red lines. Xi had described the US approach to Taiwan “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” declaring that China “will never allow Taiwan to be separated from China.” Trump has repeatedly stressed the […]

Big Tech Turns To Uranium As Data Center Power Demand Soars Big Tech is considering supporting new uranium mining projects as companies need additional reliable power capacity for their huge data center expansion, according to the top executive of Canadian uranium miner NexGen Energy.      “It’s coming. You’ve seen it with automakers. These tech companies, they’re under an obligation to ensure the hundreds of billions that […]

Apple Races To Build Smart Glasses To Take On Meta AI Ray-Bans Apple learned the hard way that a $3,500 Apple Vision Pro is well out of reach for the average consumer, while the sub-$500 Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses sit in the sweet spot and have been in hot demand. Vision Pro  Vs.  Meta smart glasses Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, citing people familiar with Apple’s product roadmap, reports that the company is accelerating […]

Wells Fargo Sees ‘YOLO’ Trade Driving $150B Into Bitcoin & Risk Assets Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com, US tax filers may see bigger refunds in 2026 compared with previous years, a development one Wall Street strategist said may boost risk appetite for digital assets and tech stocks preferred among retail investors. In a note cited by CNBC, Wells Fargo analyst Ohsung Kwon said the coming refund wave may help […]

Trump Unveils Japan’s First Wave Of Mega US Investments: Oil, Gas, Minerals From Ohio To The Gulf Details of the much anticipated US-Japan trade mega deal have finally been revealed. First, Trump previewed in a Truth Social post on Tuesday: “Our MASSIVE Trade Deal with Japan has just launched!” He then boasted that “The scale of these projects are so large, and could not be done without one very special word, TARIFFS.” The total […]

Who Exactly Is Going To Be Earning More With AI? By Michael Every of Rabobank May The Warsh Be With You After having written about AI for two days in a row, it wasn’t the intention to do so again today. However, developments on the ground are accelerating while those responsible for dealing with the fallout are failing to understand what the immediate implications are. Two short movies were just made with AI for pennies, in […]

Watch: Macron Calls Free Speech Online ‘Pure Bullshit’ French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that the notion of free speech on social media platforms – is “pure bullshit,” because algorithmically served content can lead to hate speech (such as the right to say his elderly wife has a penis and gives him black eyes). The comments come after the US recently imposed bans on a former European official and pro-censorship […]

How Relaxed COVID-Era Rules Fueled Minnesota’s Biggest Scam Authored by Kristin Robbins via RealClearPolitics, In my testimony before the Senate last week as chair of the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and Oversight Committee, I outlined the genesis of Minnesota’s massive fraud scandal, how it expanded under relaxed COVID-era rules, and what steps the federal government can take to help stop the theft of federal tax dollars […]

US Industrial Production Surged In January Despite slumping sentiment surveys, ‘hard’ data continues to suggest the US economy is ticking along nicely with Industrial Production surging 0.7% MoM in January (better than the +0.4% MoM expected and well up from the downward revised +0.2% MoM in December). This is the 3rd straight monthly increase in Industrial Production, lifting growth to 2.3% YoY – the best annual growth since Sept […]

Amid Slumping Sales & Sentiment, Housing Starts & Permits Jumped In December It would appear that homebuilders are desperately hoping for a ‘Field of Dreams’ year… After seeing existing home sales collapse in January (not driven by the winter storms), US Housing Starts and Building Permits rose dramatically more than expected in December (+6.2% MoM vs +1.1% exp and +4.3% MoM vs +0.4% MoM exp respectively)… […]

Under Intensifying US Pressure To Reach Deal, Zelensky Explodes: No Time “For All This S**t” Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has increasingly made his frustrations with the Trump administration public, but he may have just crossed the line with the US President, who Zelensky admits can be tough and unbending. Zelensky has newly complained amid the latest Geneva trilateral talks that the US delegation could pressure him to make […]

Has America Reached Peak Idiocracy? Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, We live in a lowest common denominator society. For the last several decades, virtually every major institution in our society has become less civilized, and that is because our entire population has become less civilized. 20 years ago, a film entitled “Idiocracy” was released. It was about an average American that was selected […]

Core Durable Goods Orders Surge For 9th Straight Month US Durable Goods Orders dropped 1.4% MoM in preliminary December data (slightly better than the 2% decline expected) but well down from the +5.4% MoM surge in November… Source: Bloomberg The headline orders print was restrained by a decline in orders for aircraft. Boeing said it received more orders for its planes in December than a month earlier, but the data don’t […]

Oil Surges On Report Warning US-Iran War Is Far Closer Than Americans Realize Axios’ Barak Ravid, a journalist very close to the Israeli government, writes Wednesday that the Trump White House is now “closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” The sources he spoke to, which could be American or Israeli, say that such an operation would be a “massive” campaign at least weeks in […]

Global “Everything Rally” Pushes US Futures HIgher As “AI Disruption” Fears Fade US equity futures trade near session highs, after rising much of the overnight session amid muted volumes. Yesterday, US stocks recovered their early losses starting just after the EU close and that momentum has carried through to global markets today with what appears to be re-grossing in EU and continued momentum in the Japan trade. As of 8:15am ET, […]

Package-Food Stocks Sink After “Most Downbeat” Consumer Conference, General Mills Guidance Woes A fresh reminder that the K-shaped economy remains a very big problem emerged Tuesday at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference, where top U.S. packaged food executives struck a sour tone about persistent consumer softening and unease over elevated food prices. General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening told the audience at […]