Friday Watch

Around X:

• @Business 

• Japanese stocks are set to gain after President Donald Trump signed an executive order implementing his trade agreement with Japan, with a maximum 15% tariff on most of its products, including automobiles and parts.
• Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook joined tech industry leaders in touting their pledges to boost spending in the US on artificial intelligence during a dinner hosted by President Trump.
• President Donald Trump said he would be imposing tariffs on semiconductor imports “very shortly” but spare goods from companies like Apple that have pledged to boost their US investments. 
• Bond and currency traders are bracing for the August jobs report, which stands to solidify views on Fed policy and determine the near-term trajectory of interest rates.
• OpenAI is preparing to design and produce its own AI chip with help from Broadcom in 2026, the Financial Times reports. 
• Get up to speed on what's moving global markets.
• Here's what you need to know to start your day. 

• @ZeroHedge  

• Trump Tariffs Go From Terriying To Indispensable To Prevent A Bond Market Crash.
• Sweeney's "Great Jeans" Fuel American Eagle Sales, Shares Jump Most On Record.
• Bonds & Stocks Bid Ahead Of Payrolls-Palooza; Gold & Bitcoin Fade.

• @CNBC

• Asia-Pacific markets set to open mixed after Trump formalizes lower Japanese auto tariffs.
• JPMorgan names humanoid robot stocks to buy as Musk stakes Tesla's future on the tech.
• Friday's big stock stories: What’s likely to move the market in the next trading session.
• Stock futures are little changed ahead of August jobs report: Live updates.

• @TheTranscript 

• Broadcom CEO: "[We] achieved record third quarter revenue on continued strength in custom AI accelerators, NETWORKING & VMware. We expect growth in AI semiconductor revenue to accelerate to $6.2B in Q4, delivering 11 consecutive quarters of growth..." $AVGO: - 1% AH.
• Lulu lemon CEO: "While we continued to see positive momentum overall in our international regions in Q2 25, we were disappointed with our U.S. business results and aspects of our product execution" $LULU: - 12% AH.

• @FinalTelegraph

• Everyone is talking about the allegations of mortgage fraud against Fed Governor Lisa Cook. But that's just the cover story. The real scandal is a decade-long trail of academic fraud, cancel culture extremism, and radical politics that put an unqualified activist at the heart of our economy. This isn't about one mortgage. It's about the deliberate corruption of America's most important financial institution. THREAD:

• @WallStreetApes

• Barack Obama ruined everything. When Barack Obama became president he ordered Nashville Music Executives replaced with his own people. They then dictated what kind of music was allowed to be made, its messaging and even who artists could interview with “When Obama became president, a lot of the original guys that were running those labels, they would bring in a New York guy to replace the Nashville guy. Then when the new guy comes in, he would start changing the culture of that label, which bled all the way down into the artists, and it bled all the way down into the publicity departments and what kind of songs you were allowed to cut, what interviews you were allowed to do, who you were allowed to interview with. — I started getting in trouble with the label because I was doing interviews with Sean Hannity. My record label went absolutely insane that I did that.” (video)

• @DC_Draino

• How about this. RFK fires every HHS worker who signs the petition demanding his resignation Pretty easy way to clean out the far left radicals.
• Ok someone is murdering Germany’s right wing politicians. 7 are dead in the months leading up to next week’s election. This is a battle of good vs evil. 

• @LeadingReport

• BREAKING: Nearly all errors from the 2020 Census disproportionately hurt red states, with many undercounted and many blue states overcounted, per Census Bureau audit.

• @BreitbartNews

• 5 House Republicans voted with Democrats to block the censure of LaMonica McIver for assaulting federal agents. These are their names: 1. Don Bacon (NE). 2. Mike Flood (NE). 3. Dave Joyce (OH). 4. Michael Turner (OH). 5. David Valadao (CA). Andrew Garbarino (NY) and Nathaniel Moran (TX) voted present.

• @Holden_Culotta

• Dr. Robert Malone just REVEALED the CDC is about to revisit the entire childhood vaccine schedule. “Everything is on the table.” “The mission space that we have … includes revisiting the entire pediatric schedule, insisting on data for vaccine-vaccine interactions, insisting on control data, addressing the appropriateness of immediate after-birth vaccination with hepatitis B vaccine [and] the appropriateness of the current human papilloma virus vaccine.” (video) 

• @dreamy12122

• While she repeatedly voted to NOT lower interest rates for us, this Fed Governor was lying on her own mortgage documents to get a lower interest rate for herself. Let that sink in. Arrest Lisa Cook.

• @newstart_2024

• Naomi Wolf reveals a bombshell: Pfizer knew of 1,225 deaths within just three months of vaccine rollout. They also knew by April 2021 that the shot was damaging minors' hearts, per warnings from Israel and pediatric experts. Instead of warning the public, internal emails show a full freak-out at the highest levels. The chain reached 15 White House officials and even a template for POTUS. Their response? A 17-page redacted script on how to lie to the American people. The plan: downplay it as "mild, transient, and rare" myocarditis. Then, they launched a summer-long propaganda campaign using influencers and TikTok stars to push the shot on teens. They knew. They lied. And they marketed it to your children. (video)

• @TheChiefNerd

• BILL GATES: “The President and I are talking about taking American innovation to the next level to cure, and even eradicate, some diseases”. (video)

• @MikeBenzCyber

• So the calls for RFK Jr. to resign didn’t come out of nowhere. A leaked April 3 “BIO Vaccine Policy Steering Committee” memo shows industry insiders openly plotting to “go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr. to go.” This is worth reading in full.

• @EricLDaugh

• JUST IN: CNN is now reporting that even in BIASED POLLING, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is "THE MOST POPULAR OFFICIAL in Trump's Cabinet." The attempts to make him resign must fail. RFK Jr. needs all the support he can get. (video)

• @bennyjohnson

• SEN. WARNER: "You're saying the Biden Administration politicized all of the Covid data?” RFK JR: "Yeah. They fired all of the people who questioned the orthodoxy.” Boom! (video)
• RFK Jr. just went off for 2 minutes straight tearing into the politicization of COVID. The entire room went silent. Watch: “The whole process was politicized. Senator, I mean, we were lied to about everything.” “We were lied to about natural immunity. We were lied to about, you know, we were told again and again, the vaccines would prevent transmission. They'd prevent infection. It wasn't true. They knew it from the start. It wasn't true because that's what the animal studies in the clinical trials showed. We were told that there was science behind cloth masks.” “The CDC allowed the teachers union to write the order closing our schools, which hurt working people all over the country, and then pretend it was science-based.” 
• This is the most important video on X right now: Attorney for the Epstein victims standing outside of a Florida Courthouse CONFIRMING that Donald Trump was the ONLY high-profile figure who HELPED him prosecute Epstein: (video) 

• @Bannons_WarRoom

• BANNON: You’re watching it play out in real time. The oligarchs of Big Pharma, Big Medical, and Big Insurance are coming after RFK JR. and the entire MAHA movement, yet he isn't flinching. And neither will we. (video)

Night Trading 

• Asian equity indices are +.5% to +1.0% on average. 
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 64.5 -1.5 basis points.
• China Sovereign CDS 40.75 -.75 basis point.
• China Iron Ore Spot 104.2 USD/Metric Tonne -.6%. 
• Swiss Franc/Offshore Chinese Renminbi Cross 8.87 +.09%.
• Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 36.4 -.04%.
• Bloomberg Global Risk-On/Risk Off Index 79.6 -1.6%.
• US 10-Year Yield 4.15% -1.0 basis point.
• Volatility Index(VIX) futures 18.8 -.4%.
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures +.21%. 
• S&P 500 futures +.13%. 
• NASDAQ 100 futures +.27%.

Morning Preview Links

BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are modestly higher, boosted by industrial and technology shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open mixed and to rally into the afternoon, finishing modestly higher.  The Portfolio is 100% net long heading into the day.