Friday Watch

Around X:

• @Business

• South Korea’s top trade official said negotiations with the US on tariffs have entered a critical phase.
• Trump said he plans to make a “major statement” on Russia, as the US prepares to send a volley of new American weapons to Ukraine via purchases from NATO allies. 
• Goldman Sachs strategists raised their forecast for Asian stocks, citing a more favorable macro environment and lower tariff risk.
• Here’s the latest news and analysis on the oil market.
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams raised more than $1 million for his reelection effort in a single night at a fundraiser in Manhattan, his campaign said.
• There's a surprise tucked inside President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" - the biggest increase in incentives to build affordable housing in a generation.
• Levi raised its revenue outlook, with the maker of 501 jeans expecting sales growth to outweigh the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
• Get up to speed on what's moving global markets.
• Here's what you need to know to start your day.

• @ZeroHedge 

• Trump To Impose 35% Canadian Tariff, But USMCA Goods To Stay Exempt. 
• Dramatic Video: Anti-ICE Protester Fires Weapon At Federal Agents During Immigration Raid.
• Doug Casey On Why The Military-Industrial Complex Always Wins.
• Iron Ore Soars As China Pledges Crackdown On Industrial Overcapacity.
• California Might Stop Making Necessary Debt Payments For 2 Years. 
• FDA Approves Moderna's COVID-19 Vaccine For Some Children. 
• The Roots Of Leftist Rage. 
• Bitcoin Surges To New Record High, Momo Meltdown Continues As 'Uncertainty' Soars Again.

• @MarioNawful 

• NICOLE SHANAHAN DROPS BOMBSHELL ON GEOENGINEERING – WHISTLEBLOWER CONFIRMS WHAT WE'RE SEEING WITH OUR EYES. Nicole Shanahan just connected the dots everyone's been afraid to mention. A whistleblower came forward about secret geoengineering programs while catastrophic floods destroy American communities. The kicker? The White House already admitted it in 2023 – publishing reports on stratospheric aerosol injection and weather modification. They're literally spraying particles into our atmosphere. Texas camps underwater. North Carolina deluged. "100-year floods" every year. Shanahan's brave enough to say what we're all thinking: this isn't natural. NOAA spent millions on "solar radiation management." NASA provides the planes. They call it "research" while our weather goes apocalyptic.
• 67% OF AMERICANS DEMAND EPSTEIN FILES – EVEN 62% OF DEMOCRATS WANT THE TRUTH. May 2025 Rasmussen poll just destroyed the "conspiracy theory" narrative. Two-thirds of voters say releasing Epstein records is important, including massive bipartisan support. The bombshell: 62% of Democrats want the files public. So do 70% of Republicans and 71% of independents. This isn't a partisan issue – it's an American demand for truth.
• ELON BUILT A SUPERCOMPUTER IN 19 DAYS; FASTER THAN YOU CAN LOSE 5 POUNDS. While most people can’t even finish their homework on time, Elon and his xAI squad just built a 100,000-GPU AI supercomputer in less than 3 weeks. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang called it “superhuman” and basically said Elon is the only guy on Earth who could pull it off. Normally, these things take 4 years. Elon did it between breakfast and lunch. And yes, it’s now the fastest AI cluster on the planet.

• @FBIDirectorKash

• Yesterday, in coordination with our international partners, Xu Zewei was arrested Italy. Xu is accused of hacking U.S. universities and stealing critical COVID-19 research on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP’s relentless attacks on our institutions will not go unanswered. The FBI will hunt down those who threaten our national security—wherever they hide.

• @annvandersteel

• Well. THIS IS ODD…. Why would @RainmakerCorp and @ADoricko remove (scrub) their financiers off of their website? Was that a request by the financiers or was it a requested by others connected to the financiers? And now we have massive flooding in many other cities across America. Qui bono?

• @disclosetv

• NEW - China creates the first cyborg bee with tiny brain-control chip that controls movements with a 90% success rate, "could serve as military scouts."

• @charliekirk11

• Recent graduates in physics, computer science, and computer engineering have some of the highest unemployment rates among young people. Before demanding an unlimited flood of imported STEM workers from abroad to keep down wages, American companies should hire the graduates our colleges are already producing.

• @ShadowofEzra

• Former Bush official Catherine Fitts claims the Epstein files could expose a much larger cover-up involving Jeffrey Epstein, over $20 trillion missing from the Pentagon, and the government's Operation Warp Speed vaccine campaign. She says the truth about Epstein would also reveal where the missing trillions went and whose really behind the vaccine agenda. Fitts believes the same people who looted the system are now pushing experimental injections, and exposing that connection could destabilize the entire system. (video)

• @amuse 

• USAID: If you needed any more proof that Elon and Trump were right to dismantle USAID look no further. Former USAID officials are plotting to overthrow the democratically elected government here in the US - they admit it openly. We unleashed these madmen on the world and now they've come home to destroy us.. (pic)
• PRIMARY: The Islamic Marxists taking over the Democrat Party are going to primary Hakeem Jeffries and other NY Democrats.

• @lsferguson

• Another day goes by and the Senate hasn't passed the 9.4 billion dollar recission package passed by the House. It includes defunding USAID, PBS and NPR. Why hasn't this bill been voted on?

• @BillAckman

• A staggering $7.4 Trillion is now sitting in Money Market Funds, a new all-time high. Bullish. (graph)

• @EricLDaugh

• BREAKING: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna threatens to have CCP-linked billionaire Neville Singham's assets FROZEN after he refuses to appear before Congress regarding funding the LA riots. "If he decides to hide in CHINA, we will now be asking the State Dept and Treasury to freeze his assets/visa." NO MERCY! Make him appear!

• @Bannons_WarRoom

• REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R): This Epstein case should not be closed. Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison, but her black book with 2,000 names is sealed. The American people deserve answers. Asking questions is not disloyalty. It is simply demanding the truth. (video)

• @catturd2

• Stop f..king with viruses in labs. Stop f..king with the clouds. Stop f..king with our food. Stop f..king with vaccines. Stop f..king spying on us. We are not the enemy. Stop f..king trying to control us.

• @EYakoby

• BREAKING: Campaign finance records reveal 72% of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign cash came from out-of-state donors — not local supporters. His donors? Hollywood elites and tech billionaires. “Grassroots” was a complete lie. (pic)

• @WarClandestine

• Epstein’s former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, puts his hand to God and swears he knows that documents are being suppressed to protect individuals pertaining to Epstein, and he knows who is doing the suppressing. I’m here to tell you right now, it’s not Trump. These people have been protected LONG before Trump showed up, or any of his appointees. Dershowitz’s comments here back up the position of the Trump FBI/DOJ that they are still looking for documents, and that many are protected under court order. 

• @Patriot_N_Chief

• Very interesting and complete opposite facial expressions by SECDEF and CIA Director Ratcliffe when Trump announces mores weapons and support to Ukraine. Thoughts? (video)

• @MJTruthUltra

• And there it is California… Your homes were burned to the fucking ground to “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles." California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled $101 million in funding for “multifamily low-income housing development” that will be Built on the ashes of the Palisades.The priority is for “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters of the Eaton, Hughes, and Palisades fires.” The Governor’s press office tried to do damage control and only made it worse… “Oh, it’s not just for the Palisades we burned, it’s for all the places we’ve burned under the guise of wildfires.” (pic)

• @HustleBitch_ 

• BREAKING: PRINCE ANDREW CLEARED TO TRAVEL - FBI ENDS EPSTEIN PROBE. The FBI has officially closed its investigation into Prince Andrew’s Epstein ties. He’s now free to travel the world, just months after Virginia Giuffre, his accuser, died by suicide. No charges. No accountability. Just a leaked memo quietly shutting it all down. And that infamous “client list”? Vanished with her. Andrew kept in touch with Epstein after his conviction. Emails prove it. But now? He walks. Elite immunity in full display. They don’t hide it anymore, they just outlast the outrage.
• 256 FLASH FLOOD WARNINGS - ACROSS 33 STATES - IN ONLY 6 DAYS. America is underwater. Since July 4th, the U.S. has lit up like a disaster map: * 33 states slammed. * 256 official warnings. * Nonstop chaos. This isn’t “weather.”. This is a f***ing pattern. And it’s nationwide. They say “climate.” We say coordinated. There is NOTHING normal about this weather. Flash floods hitting in waves. Rivers rising in hours. Sirens silent. Response delayed. Who floods a country like this… and why?
• WEATHER FOR SALE: MEET THE POLITICIAN WHO'S SEEDING STORMS OVER TEXAS & NEW MEXICO - WHILE TOWNS DROWN. Gary Walker isn’t predicting the weather, he’s modifying it. A former Texas State Representative, Walker now runs SOAR (Seeding Operations and Atmospheric Research), a company that flies planes into storm systems, igniting silver iodide and calcium chloride flares to force more rain from the sky. He’s not new to this. Walker is a veteran cloud seeder, operating across Texas, New Mexico, California, Oklahoma, and beyond. SOAR has been under state contracts for over 21 years, and is currently active in 7+ counties in the Southwest. Funded by the state. Paid with your tax dollars. Filed under: “precipitation enhancement.” So-called experts say cloud seeding didn’t cause these floods. But SOAR could be operating during flood season and no one’s publishing flight logs or asking who signed off. This isn’t just weather. It’s engineered. And someone’s getting paid.

• @TheDroneWarrior

• Hegseth tears up red tape, orders Pentagon to begin #drone surge at Trump's command.

• @VigilantFox

• REPORT: America is drowning in catastrophic floods, and evidence suggests these “natural disasters” may not be so natural after all. State records reveal Utah and New Mexico quietly reclassified cloud-seeded rain as “natural water,” shielding weather modification projects from lawsuits while entire communities are swept away. Flash floods are now hitting Chicago, New Mexico, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and North Carolina, leaving devastation in their wake. While Rainmaker denies its operations in Texas caused any floods, it’s impossible to rule them out entirely. Australia’s Rainmaking Control Act shows these operations can trigger disasters hundreds—even thousands—of miles away. If governments can manipulate the weather, don’t we deserve the truth—and the right to say no? (video)

• @GlobalMktObserv

• Professional investors are DUMPING US stocks: Institutional investors sold $2.3 BILLION in US equities last week. They have now sold in 8 out of the last 9 weeks. While institutions have been dumping, retail investors are still buying. (graph)

• @TonySeruga

• A Radical Company is Paying Supreme Court Justices Millions. —Daniel Greenfield. Jackson received a $893,750 advance for her memoir and is now reporting $2 million in profits last year. These would be record numbers for a Supreme Court Justice's biography from a book that hardly anyone had noticed when it came out. And while books can become unexpected successes once released, there was little sign of that happening. Penguin Random House will be publishing Justice Amy Coney Barrett's book for which she received a $2 million advance. That's money the publisher seems even less likely to recoup considering that Barrett is hated among leftists and has a mixed approval rating among conservatives. Past polls show that the majority of the country can't even name a single Supreme Court justice, yet they are receiving celebrity level advances for books no one cares about.

• @goddeketal

• SURPRISE, SURPRISE. Only a few people know that, in 2014, police arrested a man at Bill and Melinda Gates’ mansion in Seattle for possessing over 6,000 child rape photos. (video)

Night Trading 

• Asian equity indices are unch. to +1.0% on average. 
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 72.5 -.25 basis point.
• China Sovereign CDS 46.0 -.5 basis point.
• China Iron Ore Spot 99.9 USD/Metric Tonne +.9%. 
• Polymarket:  Which Countries Will the US Agree to Tariff Agreements with Before August?

• EU 63.0% -14.0 percentage points
• India 66.0% -11.0 percentage points.
• Japan 42.0% -2.0 percentage points. 
• South Korea  42.0% -7.0 percentage points.

• Swiss Franc/Offshore Chinese Renminbi Cross 8.99 -.21%.
• Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 37.0 -.32%.
• Bloomberg Global Risk-On/Risk Off Index 77.2 +.4%.
• US 10-Year Yield 4.36% +1.0 basis point.
• Volatility Index(VIX) futures 19.3 +.7%.  
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures -.29%. 
• S&P 500 futures -.34%. 
• NASDAQ 100 futures -.31%.

Morning Preview Links

BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly higher, boosted by financial and real estate shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open modestly lower and to rally into the afternoon, finishing mixed.  The Portfolio is 75% net long heading into the day.