Wednesday Watch

Around X:

• @Business  

• Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the two parties are in talks with the White House over US government funding as Democrats threaten to force a partial US government shutdown over the immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
• Japan’s Finance Minister said the government will coordinate with the US when necessary as they continue to respond to currency moves.
• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrives in Beijing on Wednesday confident he can do what few leaders have shown the political dexterity to pull off: broaden trade ties with China without annoying President Trump. 
• Citadel, the most successful hedge fund in commodity markets, is finally taking a step into industrial metals — shifting its stance after years of avoiding the sector as prices from copper to tin hit record highs.
• Texas Instruments, the biggest maker of analog chips, gave a strong revenue forecast for the current period, indicating that demand for industrial equipment and vehicles is beginning to rebound.
• The US plans to slash the price it pays for Botox and diabetes drug Trulicity, the latest medicines to be targeted under legislation that’s expected to save the government more than $200 billion over a decade. 
• US public pensions could pay almost 90% of promised benefits if investment gains made in the first half of the fiscal year persist over the next six months, but risks are also climbing, according to S&P. 
• Deere is shifting the construction of excavators from Japan to a new $70 million facility in North Carolina and building a distribution center in Indiana as part of a bid to bolster American manufacturing. 
• SoftBank is in discussions to invest an additional $30 billion in OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reported. 
• Get up to speed on what's moving global markets. 
• Here's what you need to know to start your day.  

• @ZeroHedge

• If reports are true that Dems are demanding judicial warrants for all ICE arrests as part of DHS funding bill, that will take a massive amount of targets off the board for ICE. They would only be able to go after illegal immigrants who have committed a new *federal* crime *after* entering the U.S. illegally. State & local crimes would not apply. (Feds don’t enforce state & local). For instance, if an illegal immigrant gets arrested in Minnesota for a DUI crash causing great bodily injury (state crime) and bonds out of jail, ICE would not be able to target him for arrest because there would be no judicial warrant (not a federal crime). ICE would not be able to target anyone for just being in the U.S. illegally. They would have to wait for a federal crime to be committed, then a federal judge would have to sign off on probable cause for arrest. It would cripple any hopes of “mass deportations” or widespread immigration enforcement. 
• After Benny @bennyjohnson went digging on Illan Omar, I went digging a little bit on "the squad". Rashida Tlaib is a broke ass mf'r btw. However, Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) has some interesting things going on. Her husband is pulling in $1M/yr from "government funded" sources. So I dug through her congressional financial disclosures and used AI to break some things down. Let's go. THE NUMBERS: * 2018 net worth: -$12,500 (per OpenSecrets) * 2024 net worth: ~$8,000,000 That's an $8 MILLION increase in 6 years on a $174K congressional salary. How'd that happen? 
• 'Trans was a trend'. One of the most disastrous trends in human history. 
• GS is bullish on $BE as they expand capacity. Overloading power demand + grid congestion and interconnection timelines extending up to 5 years = behind-the-meter (BTM) generation solutions. If a quarter to a third of the incremental electricity demand from data centers is BTM, that suggests up to 25 GW of BTM generation will be deployed over the next five years. Fuel cells could supply 25%-50% of total behind-the-meter power demand by 2030, equivalent to 8-20GW of the installed capacity required to supply electricity amidst 5-7+ year lead time on gas turbine equipment and new nuke builds. 
• China just released Kimi K2.5 and like clockwork the performance is on par with American frontier AI models. Just tested it for the first time and it identifies as Claude with a simple "hi" prompt lol. American AI companies all hire foreigners and clearly they are leaking the model weights back to China and Lord knows who else. Hiring foreigners at American AI companies is a massive national security issue. H1B's are a national security issue. 
• Mag 7 Earnings Preview: All You Need To Know.
• Iran Activates Emergency Contingency Plan As Trump Boasts Of "Beautiful" Armada Nearby.
• Bigger headline from the Homan meeting: Frey says he won't play ball on WH ask to cooperate on criminal illegal aliens, in exchange for reduced federal footprint. FREY: "I also made it clear that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws".
• Patel Says FBI Has Discovered Groups Funding Minnesota Protests.
• "*Spoiler Alert* OpenAI’s GPT-6 will probably launch during Q2 2026 and be awesome. It will probably beat Gemini 3 on most, if not all, LMArena metrics. All else being equal, this will be a bad set of headlines for GOOGL. Please keep that in mind in the coming months." - JPM.
• Dollar: Most Oversold Since August 2020.
• Coinbase CEO Reveals AI "Oracle" Now Helping Him Run Company.
• Someone frontran Trump's dollar announcement by going all-in gold. At exactly 3pm, a large block of gold‑linked call (GLD) trading went through, coinciding with the sharp move higher in spot gold. In over‑the‑counter equivalent terms, a trader rolled 250k deltas out of an in‑the‑money 4,950/5,050 call spread, and into a Feb. 20 5,250/5,400 call spread, representing 1.1 mm ounces of gold exposure ($5.1BN). The client paid $30MM in net premium to implement the new structure.        
• HOLY SMOKES. Minnesota federal Judge Patrick Schiltz is a DONOR and VOLUNTEER for the pro-illegal alien Immigrant Law Center... ...and is the same judge who shielded DON LEMON from accountability after storming the church, AND is threatening to hold ICE Director Todd Lyons in contempt, per @BillMelugin_ The judicial cartel IS REAL. It needs to be purged. How can we have a republic when the judiciary is tainted like this? 
• Trump Sparks Bullion Bid As Goldman Sees Dollar Demise 'Just Getting Going'; 'Gamma Wall' Gags Equity Gains.

• @CNBC

• Wednesday's big stock stories: What’s likely to move the market in the next trading session. 
• Asia markets set to open mostly higher after S&P 500 hits record.
• S&P 500 futures are little changed ahead of Fed decision, major tech earnings: Live updates.
• Intel says it will match government's 'Trump Accounts' contribution to kids of employees.
• Stocks making the biggest moves after hours: Texas Instruments, Seagate Technology, Qorvo and more.
• Read the memo: Amazon's grocery boss details restructuring, says more 'deliberate' strategy needed.     

• @TheTranscript 

• Anthropic CEO last week: "Our revenue has grown 10x in the last three years… from zero to $100M in 2023, $100M to $1B in 2024, and $1B to $10B in 2025."
• Texas Instruments CEO: "Revenue decreased 7% sequentially and increased 10% from the same quarter a year ago". $TXN: +6% AH. 

• @TheSCIF

• Dominion voting machines in Ware County, Georgia were flipping Trump votes to Biden. The machine's tabulators were programmed to give Biden a 26% lead per vote, and Trump less than 100% per vote, down to 87%. Joe Biden, 113% per vote. You don't need to do any hacking when the voting machines themselves have back doors built in to them or can be simply programmed to commit fraud. (video)
• An election worker from Maricopa County, Arizona stated that the ballot fail rate confirmed by her higher up was not 70%, but more around 90%, easily pushing ballots into adjudication to commit fraud. Another worker put her city council on the spot asking why Florida can count 12 million more ballots and get their election total in 5 hours during a hurricane warning, and Maricopa County, Arizona took 9+ days to finish their counting? (video)

• @WallStreetMav

• JUST IN: Majority leader for Republicans, Senator John Thune, is receiving massive pressure from Republicans to bring the SAVE Act for a vote. The SAVE Act would mandate that only citizens can vote and photo ID is required to vote in all 50 states. More and more Republican senators have been signing on as co-sponsors. Republicans in the House are threatening to attach it to other must pass legislation. Senator Mike Lee from Utah has been pushing hard and the pressure is building.

• @ShadowofEzra

• Ilhan Omar is being accused of staging an assassination attempt just one day after the Department of Justice opened an investigation into her. According to people who say they were in the room, the substance involved smelled foul, yet Omar continued on, presenting herself as “bravely” unfazed. Was this staged, or did some people do something? (video)

• @overton_news

• Bill O’Reilly just EXPOSED what he says is the most important detail of the Minnesota saga…and proves that the media is refusing to report it. Listen closely. It starts with a billionaire living in Shanghai. O’REILLY: “Now, here’s the most important part of this whole thing, UNREPORTED.” “There is a man in Shanghai, China, an American citizen, his name is Neville Roy Singham. He works with the Beijing government.” “He is funneling MILLIONS of dollars into the United States of America through 501s, like Party for Socialism and Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America, Minnesota Immigration Rights Action Committee.” “He is funneling money here to these radical organizations who are then agitating professional people, communists mostly — because Singham’s a communist — to go in and foster rebellion.” “You heard that story reported? That is ABSOLUTELY true.

• @EricLDaugh

• WOW. James O'Keefe reveals the Leftist network in Minneapolis INSTANTLY ran his license plate and immediately interrogated him, demanding ID, before he was assaulted WITHIN SECONDS, they got him. (video)

• @WallStreetApes

• Openly spraying our skies is getting ridiculous. Both Robert F Kennedy Jr and Head of the EPA Lee Zeldin promised to stop the spraying our skies with chemicals in America. It was also just confirmed at the World Economic Forum BlackRock is behind cloud seeding projects in America. (video)
• WOW! Virginia Democrats just introduced a new bill that makes it ILLEGAL for state agencies to vet the clients nonprofits give money to. READ THAT AGAIN. Democrats are making it illegal to know where your tax money is being sent “Abigail Spanberger — There is literally a bill that makes it illegal for state agencies to actually demand that the 501C3s and the charitable organizations that they give money to vet their clients to make sure that the money is going to people that are actually eligible. (video)
• Rep Tim Burchett confirms MEMBERS OF CONGRESS are buying real estate and then renting it back to the government. He says there are EVEN FEDERAL BUILDINGS owned by Congress reps that are being rented back to government. A TRILLION DOLLARS in duplicate records payments “I found out that through government duplication, I've got a chart. (video) 

• @GuntherEagleman

• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna just went FULL HARD BALL MODE! She’s teamed up with a group of House Republicans who are REFUSING to send ANY bill to the Senate unless it locks in the SAVE Act, no exceptions! LUNA: “A handful of us will tank every single piece of legislation going to the Senate unless there’s a rule that stops them from stripping out the SAVE Act. If they shut down the government, when they reopen it, they’re voting on SAVE Act too. Game over.” We’re playing chicken and WE’RE NOT BLINKING. Ban illegals from voting. Secure our elections. NO COMPROMISES! (video)

• @HustleBitch_

• HOLY SH*T! RAINMAKER CEO ADMITS WEATHER CONTROL - HIS TARGETS GET HIT WITH RAIN AND ICE RIGHT ON SCHEDULE. ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION YET? This is Augustus Doricko, CEO of Rainmaker, explaining weather modification on camera with Shawn Ryan, as the timeline snaps perfectly into place. Doricko lays out the system in plain English: “You find the water with the radar… you fly your drone up into these conditions… you disperse the material… and with the same radar, you can now see it freezing, growing into bigger snowflakes… and measure how much precipitates downwind.” “For every pound of this that you put up, you get in excess of 40 million pounds down on the ground.” That’s not modeling. That’s control. He confirms the footprint: “We’re operating in Utah, Colorado, Oregon, California - and Texas… we’ve been in our own rain there.”

• @illuminatibot

• I finally found this video after months of searching. They've tried to keep this off of social media because it exposes all of the young people who died suddenly because of the vaccines. (video)

• @MrAndyNgo

• New Ngo Comment: I got inside the Signal chats being used by far-left extremists in Minnesota to organize obstructionist conspiracies against the U.S. government. Here’s what I saw:

• @shanaka86

• Xi Jinping just arrested his childhood best friend for selling nuclear secrets to America. Zhang Youxia. Second most powerful man in China’s military. Their fathers fought together in Mao’s revolution. Untouchable. Until Saturday. The numbers: 6 generals appointed to the Central Military Commission in 2022. All 6 gone. 29 of 44 uniformed officers purged. “Total annihilation of the high command.” — Christopher Johnson, former CIA analyst. The man who was supposed to lead China’s invasion of Taiwan is accused of nuclear treason. Every general who planned the Taiwan operation is gone. Xi just told every Chinese officer that childhood friendship and 60 years of service mean nothing. This isn’t the military that invades Taiwan in 2027. This is a system eating itself.

• @remarks 

• JUST IN: DOJ withdraws request for arrest warrants against Don Lemon and four others over Minnesota church protest, NYPost reports.

• @Libsoftiktok

• Meet Melinda, a healthcare worker at @VCUHealth. She posted a series of videos encouraging people to inject ICE agents with succinylocholine, a temporary paralysis drug, and spray poison on them. She also encourages woman to go on dates with agents and drug their food. Any comment @VCUHealth? How can you have such a vile person working with patients? How can anyone feel safe at your facilities if you employ such people? (video)

• @Shilohmarx

• Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) won the 2022 New York gubernatorial election by 377,834 votes over @LeeMZeldin. New York processed 556,051 new voter registration applications between 2020 and 2022. These 556,051 applications required no proof of citizenship.
• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won by 207,570 votes. New York reported 272,130 duplicate registrations between 2022 and 2024. 

• @RyanAFournier

• Sen. Tom Cotton is sounding the alarm on a massive national security risk inside America’s own national labs. In a new letter led by Cotton to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, he warns that THOUSANDS of Chinese nationals have been granted access to cutting-edge U.S. AI and defense research through DOE labs, potentially compromising President Trump’s “Genesis Mission” to win the global AI race. Cotton says simple vetting isn’t enough and calls for a FULL policy ban on Chinese nationals accessing national laboratory sites, information, or technology. America cannot beat China while letting China inside the building.

• @Ryanmatta

• I’ve never once in my life heard of someone seeing or recording a tornado and a blizzard at the same time. Geo engineering is a national security threat. Why would any government allow this to happen to their country. (video)

• @amuse

• IMPEACHMENT: The odds Trump spends the second half of his term embroiled in the impeachment process are climbing for one main reason - as many as eight Republican Senators are refusing to pass the SAVE Act to secure our elections. Leader Thune needs to suspend the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act and to prevent the Democrats from shutting down the government this week.
• ELECTION INTEGRITY: Texas Democrats and Beto are going to swamp the midterms will mail-in-ballots. They're training ballot harvesters to help Texans vote-by-mail - the crazy part is that the trainers don't have to live in Texas or even in the US. 

• @ProjectVirginia

• The "caring nurse" narrative has cratered. Reality: unemployed Communist terrorist whose wife divorced him and employer fired him because he was dangerously insane.

• @DC_Draino

• I find it very interesting that Tim Walz called President Trump to work with him on ICE less than 24 hours after all the 5,000+ donors to the anti-ICE domestic terror network were indexed and exposed by Data Republican. I have a feeling a few of those big donors called Walz and said cut a deal with Trump ASAP to protect them.

Night Trading 

• Asian equity indices are unch. to +1.0% on average. 
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 65.0 unch.
• China Sovereign CDS 42.0 +.5 basis point.
• China Iron Ore Spot 103.1 USD/Metric Tonne -.6%. 
• Gold 5,274.7 USD/t oz. +3.0%. 
• Swiss Franc/Offshore Chinese Renminbi Cross 9.07 +.45%.
• Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 36.45 -.01%.
• Bloomberg Global Risk-On/Risk Off Index 100.5 -.7%.
• US 10-Year Yield 4.24% -1.0 basis point.
• Japan 30-Year Yield 3.67% unch. 
• Volatility Index(VIX) futures 18.4 -.9%.
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures -.22%. 
• S&P 500 futures +.26%.
• NASDAQ 100 futures +.54%.

Morning Preview Links

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