Friday Watch

Around X:

• @Business  

• China’s economy likely capped 2025 with its weakest quarterly growth in three years, exposing a lopsided reliance on exports over consumption that is set to extend into coming months.
• China is pulling the plug on a key advantage held by high-frequency traders, removing servers dedicated to those firms out of local exchanges’ data centers, sources say.
• Ford is in talks with China’s BYD about potentially supplying batteries for hybrid vehicles to the American automaker’s overseas factories, according to people familiar with the negotiations. 
• Britain risks widespread job losses across the clean-energy sector if global supply chains are hit by shocks, according to a new report that warns the country is too reliant on China for its climate ambitions. 
• Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee proposed a higher tax on millionaires to help fill a hole in the state’s budget and offset cuts to other levies that would benefit lower-income residents.
• TSMC will try and quicken its US chipmaking endeavors while keeping the most advanced tech at home.
• The two Los Angeles ports that dominate US container shipping had a bumper year in 2025, even amid the tumult of President Trump’s trade policy.
• Soaring prices for silver are putting an extra squeeze on solar panel makers as they look to end more than two years of losses amid brutal competition in the sector.
• President Trump and US Northeast governors will direct the nation’s largest grid operator to hold an emergency power auction putting technology giants on the hook to pay for the construction of a fleet of new plants.
• Get up to speed on what's moving global markets.
• Here's what you need to know to start your day.   

• @ZeroHedge

• SUBMITTED: Minneapolis school employees tell us these whistle packs are being handed out at every school in the district. “We are directed to follow instructions in the flyer if we spot ICE near or in the school,” the tipster said. (pic)
• Independent journalist was able to gain access to a building in Los Angeles, California because the page-in system to get in was broken. What he discovered was DOZENS of home healthcare and hospice businesses IN ONE BUILDING. Some of the doors don’t even have signs for the business and many of the names just sound fake. If you were running a business for hospice, you wouldn’t want 20 other hospice businesses right next door for competition…. California is going to be 100x the fraud of Minnesota. (video) 
• Polar Air Madness Returns As East Coast Winter Threat Rises.
• Unusual event in Israel just now: major and very short (1.5 seconds) earthquake in the immediate vicinity of Dimona (where Israel develops a very explosive kind of candy). More unusual: an earthquake drill was scheduled a few days ago for the precise moment of the actual earthquake. Israel is trying to tell the US something, that's my guess, having learned of Trump's latest U-turn on Iran. A nuclear option may have just been made real, with Israel choosing to risk actual extinction and the fate of the entire region. Establishing a colonial European Jewish outpost in Palestine will be remembered as one of history's biggest and most fateful international blunders.
• Chaos Is The Strategy, And Too Many Are Helping It Succeed.
• MrBeast Broke? Billionaire YouTuber Claims He Has "Negative Money" As Tom Lee Invests $200M.
• How Certain Semiconductors Companies will Need Short-Supplied Isotopes.
• *AT LEAST 1 US AIRCRAFT CARRIER MOVING TO MIDDLE EAST: FOX NEWS. *US MILITARY TRANSIT TO REGION EXPECTED TO TAKE A WEEK: FOX NEWS.
• President Trump Unveils 'The Great Healthcare Plan'.
• "The Left Is Coming For Us"; Larry Klayman Warns "It's Going To Get More And More Violent".
• *MACHADO SAYS SHE PRESENTED NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO TRUMP: FOX NEWS.
• Banks & Big-Tech Lift Stocks As 'De-Escalation' Sends Oil, Gold, & Crypto Lower.     

• @CNBC

• CNBC Daily Open: TSMC earnings draw investors' eyes back to AI.
• Friday's big stock stories: What’s likely to move the market in the next trading session.
• Asia-Pacific markets set to track Wall Street rally; chip shares in focus after U.S-Taiwan deal.
• Stock futures are little changed after rally in banks and tech lifts major averages: Live updates.
• This year, there won’t be enough memory to meet worldwide demand because powerful AI chips made by the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Google need so much of it.
• The U.S. and Taiwan have reached a trade agreement to build chips and chip factories on American soil, the Department of Commerce announced Thursday. Read more here:   
• Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native
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• AI trade back on? The company behind chip leaders like Nvidia and AMD just raised its spending forecast
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• @LauraLoomer

• The AI Overwatch Act (H.R. 6875) may sound like a good idea, but when you examine it closely, it’s pro-China sabotage disguised as oversight. What will this bill do? It yanks control of advanced AI chip exports away from President Trump who is aggressively blocking CCP access to these chips, and instead hands veto power to Congress. When the Democrats take back the House in 2026, Hakeem Jeffries @RepJeffries could greenlight sales of these chips to China or delay Trump's America First crackdown to help our adversaries. This is the likely outcome, because today’s Democrat Party openly supports Communism, and @TheDemocrats are sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

• @EmeraldRobinson

• Americans are now waking up to the truth: there is no Republican party. The GOP does not actually exist. There's just one uniparty elected by rigged machines. The real power that controls Congress: FBI/CIA.
• Trump tells us every day: the 2020 election was stolen. So where are the military tribunals? It's a major mistake to treat a COUP as a routine law enforcement matter to be investigated by DOJ/FBI. Why? Because DOJ/FBI was the CENTER OF THE COUP. 
• Yes, there are secret indictments. Yes, there are secret grand juries. Yes, there are secret taskforces. But Trump's awful advisors and DOJ picks are trying to stop those efforts. Crazy but true.  

• @GenFlynn

• This 3 Judge panel should Free Tina Peters and Jail these prosecutors or at least consider some ethics violations. My God no wonder the American people have lost trust in our judicial system. (video)
• Want to know what you can do…? Audit & hold accountable the NGO’s in your states. LOCAL ACTION. NATIONAL IMPACT. Get involved citizens! (directions)

• @RenzTom

• $15–$30 trillion changed hands worldwide, by many estimates, as a result of the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the people of the world. COVID was created in a lab with funding and material support from places like EcoHealth Alliance, USAID, and others. This man-made bioweapon was then “accidentally released” and killed millions—a fact used to steal the 2020 election, shut down the global economy, destroy small businesses and families, and push untested and unsafe gene therapy drugs that killed even more. Absolutely no one has been held accountable. Pfizer Pam Bondi represented Pfizer just before becoming AG. Then, in Bondi’s first days as AG, she shut down two DOJ OFAC investigations into Pfizer. I see no chance of this DOJ holding accountable the people who killed millions or stole billions. We need a new AG and real accountability, or this will all happen again.

• @TheSCIF

• It's not just Dominion & Smartmatic with foreign connections and influence. There's another company called UNISYN Voting Solutions that's directly connected to the CCP. Unisyn is owned by a Chinese Billionaire who lives in California named Vincent Tan, who supplies voting machines to 9 states for U.S. elections. No other country should be involved in our U.S. elections in any way, shape, or form, besides the U.S. itself. Period. (video)
• A forensic dive into DOMINION Voting Systems by Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), proved that Antrim County, Michigan's election management system was accessed remotely by an anonymous user on Nov. 5th with "escalated privileges" and made changes to the database when they were trying to retabulate the election. This alone PROVES the machines were remotely accessible, and by an "unknown" 3rd party. The second massive finding was that the "black solid boxes" on the side of the ballot were altered to trick machines and trigger and automatic error, "adjudication," if Republican candidates were selected on the ballot. (video)
• Not a single military ballot matched a registered Michigan voter in the system. Every ballot she inspected, without exception, was marked for Joe Biden. "There wasn't a single Trump vote." The IT contractor and poll challenger at Detroit's TCF Center, describes processing thousands of military ballots that appeared suspiciously uniform—each one looking like an identical "Xerox copy" with no variations in paper, ink, or markings. She estimates handling 30,000+ ballots that night, many of which were scanned multiple times. She alleges supervisors dismissed challenges and even threatened challengers with expulsion for questioning the process. (video) 

• @MJTruthUltra

• Unimaginable fraud in Maryland. #BREAKING - The state of Maryland “accidentally overpaid” $807.4 MILLION in unemployment benefits — Problem is, a large percentage of people NEVER RECEIVED A CHECK. The state says this money cannot be recovered. Oops our bad.. So, who got that money??? NATIONWIDE FRAUD… they are stealing our money in every single state and now it’s all being exposed! (video)

• @ShadowofEzra

• Lindsey Graham is going viral after appearing drained and miserable, looking deeply disappointed as reports spread that President Trump refused to bomb Iran. Graham is considered one of the most corrupt politicians in Congress today. (video)

• @LaraLogan

• “You don’t leave China without the CCP owning you.” In Episode 54 of Going Rogue with Lara Logan, four-star General Michael Flynn explains how the CCP controls who leaves China, who gets student visas, and who gains access to U.S. universities while turning placement and access into an intelligence pipeline. This isn’t traditional espionage. It’s systemic, coerced, and embedded in open institutions. China uses people as leverage. America assumes goodwill. (video)

• @MikeBenzCyber

• Remember the names of every Republican member of Congress who votes no today against defunding the National Endowment for Democracy. That list of names is your primary-the-shit-out-of-them map for 2026. (list)

• @WallStreetApes

• Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says BILLIONS of dollars, not millions, are being spent to bribe US politicians behind closed doors “There's billions of dollars being spent in dark money, and that completely disproves the transparency predicate” He says there are Super PACs created to spend on each different Congress Rep to bribe them for corporate initiatives “There's enormous coordination between Super PACs and candidates. In fact, in most cases, the Super PAC is specifically designed not to represent ExxonMobil's views, but to be for a single candidate. That's right. It's a one candidate Super PAC”. (video)

• @iluminatibot

• This is why they had Charlie Kirk executed in public. This is what they fear most. (video)

• @BehizyTweets

• BREAKING: The United States just opened its first graphite mine since the 1950s to crush China's monopoly on critical minerals. The mine is located in Upstate New York. Graphite is needed for virtually all modern technology. It's used in EV batteries, aerospace (heat shields, rocket nozzles), etc. (video)

• @OcxrazioCornPop

• RINO ALERT: 46 House "Republicans" VOTED NO on an amendment to CUT FUNDING for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by 20% and eliminate staff and office budgets for 2 federal judges: - James Boasberg. - Deborah Boardman. IS YOUR REP ON THIS LIST OF TRAITORS? (list)

• @ThePatriotOasis

• BREAKING: Rep. Tim Burchett reveals the DIRTY SPENDING that was PASSED today in Congress... It totals a whopping $90.1 BILLION DOLLARS! "Sends $1.425 Billion to Egypt." "Build Jordan a wall and they're firing missiles at other people—I mean, what the hell, folks?" "$6.15 BILLION for foreign military financing program." (video)

• @Sadie_NC

• The reason Republicans won't abolish the filibuster is that it gives them an excuse to block President Trump's agenda without admitting they're siding with Democrats. Between 6 and 12 Republican senators refuse to budge. The number of backstabbers in Congress is truly troubling. They need to be called out and removed, starting with Thune!

• @EvaVlaar

• I’ve been banned from traveling to the UK. No reason given. No right to appeal. Zero due process. Just an email saying the UK government deems me "not conducive to the public good" - exactly three days after I criticized Keir Starmer. I guess my point that the UK is no longer a free country has been indisputably proven. (video)

• @HealthRanger 

• They state reserves the right to murder you for any reason they want. That's what SCOTUS just said. Remember this as the robots are deployed. (pic)

• @mattvanswol

• SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT… DOGE has spent 20 hours a day since January 20th, SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR to find waste/fraud... DOGE decided to FREEZE FUNDS to NED... ...and the GOP today is just like, "Nah, let's give them $315 million!!!" What’s going on with the GOP?!!!!!!!

• @RogerJStoneJr

• So Trump advisor Peter Navarro declines to answer a House subpoena based on Executive Privilege and he is humiliating arrested, shackled ,tried,convicted and jailed for contempt. Bill Clinton refuses to answer a House subpoena and.... crickets.

• @RedPillMediaX

• BREAKING. ADL leader Jonathan Greenblatt says Americans who criticize Jews and Israel will be monitored by the FBI. “We will monitor social media and check your bank accounts.” (video)

• @WallStreetMav

• The “Republican” majority backstabbed their voters for the second time tonight. 81 Republicans voted with Democrats to keep funding the National Endowment for Democracy, a left-wing, NGO slush-fund that worked with the Biden administration to censor Americans on the Right. Elon’s DOGE efforts specifically targeted this organization for defunding and some of the same Republicans who cheered it on for the cameras voted with Democrats to stop it. (video)
• MORE BETRAYAL: Chip Roy offered an amendment to defund the staff budgets for Judges Boasberg and Boardman, two of the most rogue, leftist judges in the federal courts. 46 REPUBLICANS voted with Democrats to stop it. The Deep State survives because our real enemies are within our own ranks. Republicans must PURGE IN THE PRIMARIES! I will be posting the no votes when the House clerk puts them into the record. (video)
• Every time I think about the complete inaction by the DOJ on pretty much everything, I remember this post from back when Trump nominated Pam Bondi. We should’ve known then. (pic)

• @DataRepublican

• Everyone needs to read this thread to understand how the Constitution is being targeted and that NED is a key player in this. NED is my red line for Republicans. If you vote for NED, you deserve primarying. I don't care if you have sentimental attachments to NED as being founded by Reagan to destroy Communism, or that the people you know in NED are conservative and well-meaning. NED is now working to destroy the Constitution. (video)

• @mattgaetz

• Gowdy would be a disaster of epic proportion. (video)

Night Trading 

• Asian equity indices are -.25% to +.75% on average. 
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 64.75 -1.0 basis point.
• China Sovereign CDS 43.0 -1.25 basis points.
• China Iron Ore Spot 107.2 USD/Metric Tonne +.1%. 
• Gold 4,600.0 USD/t oz. -.5%. 
• Swiss Franc/Offshore Chinese Renminbi Cross 8.67 -.05%.
• Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 36.09 -.05%.
• Bloomberg Global Risk-On/Risk Off Index 101.0 -.9%.
• US 10-Year Yield 4.16% -1.0 basis point.
• Japan 30-Year Yield 3.47% -1.0 basis point. 
• Volatility Index(VIX) futures 18.2 -.6%.
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures -.33%. 
• S&P 500 futures +.23%.
• NASDAQ 100 futures +.34%.

Morning Preview Links

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