Monday Watch

Around X:

• @Business   

• US and Ukrainian negotiators said they had productive discussions about a framework for a peace deal, but there was no final breakthrough as Trump continues to push for a truce with Russia. 
• China’s factory activity improved but remained in contraction in November, extending its streak of declines to a record as the country’s economic slowdown deepens.
• Australia will soon ban children from social media in a world-first measure, with tech giants forced to comply or face fines up to $32 million.
• South Korea’s exports remained solid in November, a positive sign for policymakers as they navigate a wave of global protectionism. 
• Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has submitted a request for a pardon from charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
• Switzerland voted to reject a 50% inheritance tax on super-rich residents after wealthy entrepreneurs threatened to leave the country.
• OPEC+ will stick with plans to pause production increases during the first quarter, delegates said, amid growing signs of a surplus in global oil markets.
• White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett touted a positive market response to indications that Donald Trump could pick the next Federal Reserve chair before the end of the year.
• Walt Disney Co.’s Zootopia 2 brought in $156 million at the US and Canadian box office over the Thanksgiving weekend, making it the No. 1 film.
• As the US options market heads for a sixth straight year of record volume, some in the industry are growing nervous about its over-reliance on a small group of banks to guarantee trades for the biggest market makers.
• Marc Benioff has dumped ChatGPT for Gemini, but most of the world will remain addicted to the market leader, writes @parm.
• The Illinois-based data center that supports the CME installed backup cooling capacity after a catastrophic outage that roiled world markets on Friday. 
• Get up to speed on what's moving global markets. 
• Here's what you need to know to start your day. 

• @Zerohedge

• Tariff Revenue Surges To Record High Of $31.4 Billion In October. 
• "We Are Everywhere" - Fort Bragg Psychological Warfare Group Posts Chilling Video.
• Goldman Sentiment Check: 2026 Cross-Asset Views. 
• If you’d like to know why Epstein fell out of the news this week, here’s the smartest person in the Democratic Party to explain it for you. 
• Watch: Chevy Proves Woke Is Dead With New Ad.
• Zelensky has appointed Oksana Markarova as his advisor on recovery and investments. She previously served as Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, and House Speaker Mike Johnson @SpeakerJohnson accused her of political interference in the U.S. election for organizing Zelensky's visit to Pennsylvania in support of Biden's election campaign. Zelensky is empowering a figure whose dismissal Republicans had demanded. He has granted her powers that, under the Constitution, belong to the Cabinet of Ministers. This is another attempt by Zelensky to seize control and establish parallel centers of influence following the dismissal of the corrupt Yermak, who kept the entire system under manual control. At a time when U.S.-Ukraine relations require maximum transparency and neutrality, Zelensky is strengthening individuals who have already undermined American trust. -@Dubinsky_pro.
• DC Terror Ambush Forces U.S. To Reckon With $14 Billion Afghan Evacuation Program That Imported Chaos. 
• Microreactors will be a BIG deal in helping to unleash more energy in the United States. @GovNuclear. 
• Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL members and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to. -@Minnesota_DHS. 
• John McCain helped lead a Color Revolution in Ukraine which is the reason more than one million people have been killed or wounded and $100s of billions have been raided from America to fund the Ukraine War. -@KariLake. 
• That Ukraine's corrupt politicians have stolen tens of billions wasn't news since 2023. The question is which US and European politicians, NGOs and publications got kickbacks and bribes for years to allow the money laundering to continue. 
• Incidents Of Sexual Extortion For Money Targeting Youth Escalating: Financial Intelligence Agency. 
• Obamacare's Costly Illusion Of Affordability: From Subsidies To Serfdom. 
• Bull Vs Bear: The Pain Trade Is "Likely To Be Higher".
• Democrats Sue After Trump Cuts SNAP Benefits For Alien Migrants. 
• Watch: 'Seditious' Kelly Doubles Down On Military Mutiny Call. 
• Study Finds Tattoo Ink Accumulates In Lymph Nodes.

• @CNBC

• AI could be revolutionary, but don't ‘lose your diversification,' this wealth advisor says. 
• These cheap stocks should have a big 2026, Jefferies says. 
• Bank of America says these five stocks like Nvidia have room to run.
• December will begin with investors owning little stock. Is a year-end rally at play?
• Stock futures are little changed as traders get ready for the final month of the year: Live updates. 
• Asia-Pacific markets set to open higher ahead of private survey of China’s manufacturing activity. 
• CNBC Daily Open: Will December bring joy to round off the year?

• @WSJ.com

• Surprise heirs are popping up because of DNA test kits and wreaking havoc for families handling their loved ones’ estates.
• From the 10-hour workday movement to OSHA: Here are seminal moments in the development of the U.S. workplace since 1776. 
• Drones, sensors and AI platforms developed for other theaters are being rebranded as tools for the fight against “narco-terror.”
• Surging demand for workers means six-figure pay and more perks. 

• @Barron's 

• Had bullish commentary on (D) and (RBLX).

• @MarioNawful

• TESLA PATENTED THE HOLY GRAIL OF LITHIUM REFINING, AND CHINA'S ENTIRE CHOKEHOLD IS CRACKING. Tesla's new patent isn't an improvement. It's a full execution of the old lithium refining model. They figured out how to generate the soda ash reagent on-site from the CO2 waste produced during calcination, turning the biggest emissions into the exact chemical needed for the leach process. Result: - ~30% lower refining costs. - 0 hazardous sodium-sulfate waste. - Near-0 external soda ash purchases. - Massive reduction in energy and water use. This is the refinery equivalent of discovering how to turn exhaust fumes into gasoline while you're driving. China controls 60% of global lithium refining and almost all soda ash supply chains; they’ve been weaponizing both for years. Tesla built the bypass.
• STANFORD SCIENTISTS JUST CURED TYPE 1 DIABETES IN 100% OF MICE - AND THE PHARMA LOBBY IS ALREADY SHARPENING THEIR KNIVES. Stanford Medicine dropped the bomb: a "gentle" immune reset using low-dose radiation, T-cell-killing antibodies, and mismatched donor stem cells + islet transplants flipped the autoimmune switch off in every single mouse - preventing diabetes in 19 pre-diabetics and reversing it in all 9 long-term cases. No lifelong insulin jabs. No constant finger-pricks. No more 10-year-olds rationing candy like it's contraband. The hybrid immune system - part original, part donor - plays nice without nuking the whole defense grid or requiring a lifetime of immunosuppressants. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, this isn't sci-fi: the core steps are already in clinics for blood disorders and organ transplants. Lead researcher Seung Kim:

• @LauraLoomer.

• Surprise surprise! Valerie and Stanley Creighton, the rich white liberals in Bellingham, Washington who allowed the Islamic terrorist who shot 2 National Guardsmen in DC yesterday to live inside their home as they raised money for him and his family, are Democrat donors. They have since deleted the GoFund Me page they created for their jihadist guest. FEC records reveal Valerie has donated to Act Blue, she supported
  @KamalaHarris @HillaryClinton and @ossoff.

• @ValerieAnne1970

• FLU SHOTS: The Hidden Truth That's Making You SICKER – Backed by Studies & the Package Insert! The flu shot is the opposite of protection…it makes you 27% MORE likely to catch flu & 440% MORE likely to get COVID or pneumonia. This isn’t conspiracy...This is 2025 science...

• @wideawake_media

• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink boasts that his company's global reach grants him unparalleled influence over future world leaders, including Keir Starmer, "before they win". "It's based on years of relationships and trust." (video)

• @TheSCIF

• 51% to 49% is the most common margin of victory in recent elections for some reason. But there is no coincidence. Do you know why it is usually those numbers? 

• @IanJaeger29 

• Republican Rep. Andy Barr who is running to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate, wants to give more Afghan migrants visas to stay in the United States. This guy is a total fraud. (video)

• @WallStreetMav

• Johnson & Johnson has done a voluntary recall of sun screen products that contain carcinogens which cause cancer. Those forms of cancer are THE SAME types of cancer that the company makes huge profits on selling treatment drugs. Weird coincidence. They sell the products that cause the cancer AND the treatment for the cancer. (video)

• @EmeraldRobinson

• 33. So who is actually running the CIA right now while Ratcliffe does nothing? According to my sources: Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan is still in charge. How’s that possible? Because his allies & subordinates were never fired at Langley. And Trump has not arrested Brennan.

• @elonmusk

• The Woke Mind Virus was easy to measure. Now, it is being purged. (graph)

• @songpionganq

• Banned, Broke, and Homeless: The Human Cost of China’s Social Credit System. It began as whispers — a few people under bridges, a few families gone overnight. But soon, it became impossible to ignore. Across China, tens of thousands vanished into digital silence — not criminals, but victims of an algorithm. Behind the promise of “trust,” a hidden system now decides who can live freely… and who disappears from society itself. (video)

• @AlexBerenson

• The admission the mRNA Covid shots killed kids is devastating. Remember: the under-12 clinical trials for the mRNAs were so bad (including a protocol change for a third shot bc they were failing) no one knows if they even stop infection. (pic)

• @EricLDaugh

• IMAGINE THAT: Seditious Mark Kelly “started spy balloon company funded by China”. He’s not for America or Americans.

• @TheLastRefuge2

• Notice how quiet the United States Senate has been about this new development in the Ukraine corruption scandal? Why? Because the U.S. Senate are recipients from the money laundering. (pic)

• @Real_RobN

• Here it is: THE CHILDREN! “The Biden-Harris child sex-trafficking administration did everything it could to make sure you knew nothing about the children.” Tens of thousands of little girls trafficked across the U.S. border were found loaded up with birth control pills—given to them because they were being raped repeatedly throughout the journey. And after arriving on American soil, between 300,000 and 500,000 children went missing. Fox News was the only one reporting on it: The rest of the mainstream media were in on it.

• @LaraLogan

• Smartmatic set up its office inside Venezuela’s election commission with engineers working side by side to steal elections and defeat audits. Gary Berntsen explains how ballot images are swapped, source code is hidden, and fourteen methods of fraud are mixed so no pattern is ever found. The same engineers later moved into U.S. counties and flipped long-red districts overnight. (video)
• “I was in the CIA for 24 years. The agency has been defeated. We’ve been penetrated so badly that our enemies now influence U.S. foreign policy. It’s time to shut the CIA down and build an OSS-style service with a dedicated MI5-type counterintelligence arm.” — Gary Berntsen, former CIA operations officer. (video) 
• So what are we doing to stop these “rogue” elements of the CIA? What is CIA Director, Ratcliffe, doing? If the man in charge won’t stop them, why not? Why doesn’t the Pres use his power to make him? What about the Nat Sec Advisor, Marco Rubio? They are unlikely to ever have more power than they do right now & these seditionists are still running the show, subverting w impunity & slow-rolling every move. We have six months before everyone says you can’t do anything because of the midterms. Not looking good for the home team. (video)

• @StockSavvyShay

• $SPY is about to trigger the Zweig Breadth Thrust indicator which basically means the market goes from “no one is buying” to “everyone is buying” in a very short amount of time. It almost never happens & when it does it usually marks the beginning of a real trend rather than a short bounce. Perfect example was the last time it triggered was near the April lows & that ended up being the start of a HUGE move higher. Every single instance going back to the 1950s has led to higher S&P levels one year later.
• $GOOGL CEO basically just said quantum is entering the same acceleration curve AI hit five years ago. (video)
• Even if China releases millions of small open models, the highest-value workloads still end up running on $NVDA hardware, inside $AMZN, $MSFT & $GOOGL clouds & on enterprise platforms like $PLTR, $SNOW & $NOW. China’s open-source push widens the funnel but the top of the value chain stays the same. (video) 

• @JoshHall2024

• BREAKING: A former Obama administration official says he “hates to say this but there is now incontrovertible evidence that Barack Obama was the spearhead of a seditious conspiracy to subvert the will of the American people and overthrow The United States government.” He is calling for Obama and all of his co-conspirators behind the Russiagate hoax that literally brought our country to its knees to be criminally charged and held accountable for their heinous crimes. Even Obama’s own people are privately cooperating and publicly turning on him now. (video)

• @DeItaone

• U.S. BLACK FRIDAY SALES HIT RECORD HIGH. U.S. online Black Friday sales reached a record $11.8 billion, up 9.1% from last year, according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe expects Americans to spend $5.5 billion on Saturday and $5.9 billion on Sunday. Salesforce reported $18 billion in total Black Friday spending, with luxury apparel and accessories among the top sellers. Despite higher spending, shoppers bought fewer items due to rising prices. In-store traffic was quieter as many consumers worried about overspending amid inflation and economic uncertainty. Cyber Monday is projected to lead the season with $14.2 billion in online sales, Adobe said.
• MASTERCARD SPENDINGPULSE: US RETAIL SALES EXCLUDING AUTOS WERE UP 4.1% ON BLACK FRIDAY, COMPARED TO BLACK FRIDAY 2024. MASTERCARD SPENDINGPULSE: U.S. RETAIL SALES UP +4.1%, WITH E-COMMERCE UP +10.4% COMPARED TO 2024. 

• @AmyMek

• THIS IS A RED STATE - AND THIS IS YOUR “CONSERVATIVE” LEADERSHIP. Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in America - Republican governor, Republican legislature, Republican everything. And yet THIS is what your so-called conservative leadership brought into your state: Thousands of unvetted, Sharia-adherent Afghan refugees - flown in under Biden’s 2021 mass-importation program, then welcomed, housed, and "integrated" (Islam conquers) using your tax dollars. This didn’t happen by accident.

• @KobeissiLetter

• BREAKING: The S&P 500 posts its best November reversal in history, rising +5% since the November 21st low, and closes November GREEN. The S&P 500 just added +$2.75 TRILLION in 1 week. Ignore the noise. (graph)
• Global financial conditions are easing: Global financial conditions have reached their easiest level since 2021. The 2020-2021 period was when world governments and central banks stimulated the global economy on the largest scale in history as a response to the pandemic. Financial conditions have eased over the last 2 years from one of the most restrictive levels since 2001. The move has been similar to the one seen following the 2008 Financial Crisis. (graph)

• @JKylebass

• China property crisis alert: Vanke, once the largest real-estate developer in the middling kingdom, has seen its USD bonds plunge 60% this week, falling to record lows. Despite repeated efforts from state-owned Shenzhen Metro to stabilize the company, free-fall continues. (graph)

• @MaryanneDemasi

• Major journal under fire for omitting Pfizer’s failed flu data in seniors. Pfizer’s mRNA flu shot failed in the over-65s, but the @NEJM never published the data — prompting calls for accountability.

• @redpillb0t

• Ursula Von Der Leyen commits to "vaccinating" over 500 million children with Bill Gates. “I’m pleased to pledge $290M for Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Together with Gavi, we have the goal to vaccinate these children by 2030”. (video)

• @annvandersteel

• QUICK QUESTION: If Trump won the election, why are Democrats still running our country? ACTIVIST JUDGES overrule every thing our democratically-elected president WAS MANDATED BY THE PEOPLE to do. This isn’t “checks and balances.” This is a multi-front SWAMP COUP spitting in the faces of 77 million voters. Our US Constitution is on life support until we crush this INSURRECTION MACHINE. Your move, America.

• @RealHickory

• In 40 days, the statute of limitations expires on one of the greatest crimes ever committed against the American people, Nancy Pelosi's J6 Insurrection hoax! After that, everyone involved will have gotten away with it. If indeed that happens, it'll be a worse crime!

• @AlexBerenson

• I hope people get what this failed @pfizer trial means for mRNA shots. They tested an mRNA flu jab head-to-head against an older, standard shot - mRNA had FAR worse side effects and didn’t work any better. The Nobel prize, the promises - everything they said in 2021 was a lie.

• @drjamesbjoyce

• Curious… Remember when all the chicken farms kept either blowing up, burning down, or getting closed for various excuses? Okay, now remember just the other day we found out Campbell’s has been using 3D chicken? (video)

• @hodgetwins

• #1 federal witness to the 2020 electoral heist Tina Peters still rotting in a Colorado prison while Jena Griswold and Jared Polis celebrate on Thanksgiving. That's two Thanksgivings that Gold Star Mom and Cancer survivor Tina has missed in a row. This is unacceptable @realDonaldTrump @JDVance. Do something!

Night Trading

• Asian indices are -.5% to +.5% on average.
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 68.5 +1.0 basis point.
• China Sovereign CDS 47.75 +.5 basis point.
• China Iron Ore Spot 102.5 USD/Metric Tonne +.24%.
• Swiss Franc/Offshore Chinese Renminbi Cross 8.80 +.16% 
  
• Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 36.22 +.02%.
• Bloomberg Global Risk-On/Risk Off Index 91.6 +.9%.
• US 10-Year Yield 4.03% +2.0 basis points.
  
• Volatility Index(VIX) futures 20.2 +1.4%. 
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures -.23%.
• S&P 500 futures -.57%.
• NASDAQ 100 futures -.73%.

Morning Preview Links

BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly lower, weighed down by technology and consumer 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 week.