JPM: Counting Down To The Next Wave Of Shut‑Ins On Friday, day seven of the conflict, commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained virtually nonexistent, with activity largely limited to Iranian vessels.  Unable to move crude through the waterway, JPM reminds its clients that producers have effectively shifted storage onto the sea and other facilities. Since the end of February, roughly 76 million barrels (mb) of […]

Trump Ready To Continue Operations Until Iranians “Can’t Fight Any Longer” Summary: Trump sticking to surrender demand, freshly telling Axios, but tweaking the messaging a bit compared to earlier: “Unconditional surrender could be that [the Iranians] announce it. But it could also be when they can’t fight any longer because they don’t have anyone or anything to fight with.”  Trump’s expected timeline on Operation Epic […]

Nearly 20,000 Americans Have Safely Returned Home From The Mid-East: State Dept Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Nearly 20,000 U.S. citizens have returned safely from the Middle East since Feb. 28, when the Iran conflict broke out, Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary at the Bureau of Global Public Affairs, said in a March 5 statement. Smoke rises from a reported Iranian strike in the industrial […]

ASP Isotopes Signs MOU With Major Nuclear Operator ASP Isotopes announced Thursday that its Quantum Leap Energy (QLE) subsidiary has entered “a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a large publicly traded U.S. energy company that operates nuclear power stations”. Under the agreement, the utility will evaluate options to provide support and potential financing for QLE’s planned U.S. facilities focused on High […]

Did Trump Force China’s Hand? Beijing Nears 500-Jet Boeing Deal Ahead Of Xi Summit Boeing shares moved higher in late-afternoon trading in New York after Bloomberg News reported that the planemaker may be nearing one of the largest sales in its history, potentially to be unveiled during President Trump’s trip to China later this month. People familiar with the potential Boeing-China jet deal said it could be announced during […]

It Was All A Mirage: 2.5 Million Native-Born US Workers Were Just Revised Away One of Donald Trump’s core pre-election promises (along with cracking down on immigration and no more foreign wars) was to boost employment for local-born Americans at the expense of the record employment for foreign-born, mostly illegal, workers. And for a while it worked: four months ago, when discussing the September jobs report, we said that while the […]

“Most Dangerous Geopolitical Blitz Since Bretton Woods”: Trump Says Cuba’s Communist Regime Is Next To Fall “We’ve got plenty of time, but Cuba’s ready,” President Trump told CNN in an interview on Friday morning. The president told CNN reporter Dana Bash that Havana will “fall pretty soon” and that he will “place Marco over there.”  2/7 ON CUBA: President Trump said, “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon.” He said he’s going to “put […]

Virginia Democrats Move To Require Teaching Jan. 6th As An “Insurrection” Authored by Jonathan Turley, Virginia Democrats are moving to require teachers to tell students that Jan. 6th was an “insurrection” and effectively bar them from referencing “peaceful protests” or election irregularities. The characterization of the riot as an insurrection is historically and legally false. However, any parents who want to send their […]

Anthropic CEO Apologizes For ‘Dictator Trump’ Meltdown Memo, Downplays ‘Supply Chain Risk’ Designation, And Is Going To Sue As Anthropic attempts to salvage their relationship with the Trump administration, CEO Dario Amodei publicly apologized Thursday for the inflammatory tone of his leaked internal memo that accused the White House of targeting his company because it hadn’t offered “dictator-style praise” to President Trump. The […]

What If The Automatic Stock Buying Just…Stops?  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance My readers know that for the last couple of years I’ve repeatedly warned about the “passive bid” in markets. By that I mean the constant, automatic buying of stocks driven by retirement plans, ETFs, and other systematic investment programs. This bid isn’t discretionary. It doesn’t ask whether valuations are reasonable and it doesn’t […]

Trump Says He’s “Not Concerned” About Biggest Gas Pump Price Spike In Years Americans are experiencing a sharp rise in gas prices this week, with the national average gasoline price posting its largest weekly jump since the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war. If fuel prices continue to climb as the U.S.-Israeli Operation Epic Fury intensifies against Iran, the fallout for consumer sentiment may weigh on the broader economy and […]

Appeals Court Rules Trump Can Suspend Refugee Admissions Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump has legal authority to indefinitely suspend the admission of foreign nationals who are trying to enter the United States through its refugee resettlement program, a federal appeals court ruled on March 5. Trump froze refugee resettlement programs as he took office in January 2025. A three-judge panel of […]

Kuwait Cuts Oil Output As Qatar Warns Hormuz Chokepoint Chaos Risks Global Shock Update (1126ET): Kuwait began cutting crude oil output after storage tank farms began filling up, as crude could no longer be loaded onto very large crude carriers and transported through the Strait of Hormuz, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sources say the OPEC founding member is now weighing broader reductions in crude production and refining, […]

Jobs Shock: US Lost 92K Payrolls In February, Far Below Lowest Estimate, As Unemployment Rate Rises In our nonfarm payrolls preview, we quoted JPMorgan’s Market Intel desk which said that “for this print, the stronger the better”, which by implication means that a poor number would be bad. By that logic, the actual number couldn’t be any worse, because moments ago the BLS reported that in February, the US lost 92,000 jobs, a huge […]

Iran’s Financial Hub, The UAE, May Freeze Billions In Assets Over Retaliatory Strikes The United Arab Emirates is pissed after Iran targeted Dubai and other US allies with over 1,000 drones and missiles in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks over the last week – and is now weighing freezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets held in the Gulf state, according to the WSJ, citing people familiar with the discussions. If that […]

From ‘Model Migrant’ To Wife-Chopper: Integration Poster-Boy Accused Of Grisly Murder Via Remix News, The Eritrean migrant accused of dismembering his partner and the mother of his daughter was once held up as a “model migrant” 10 years ago in a variety of German newspapers. These papers reported that he was an example of how “integration” could work. Today, 41-year-old Asmerom G. is accused of butchering his own wife. […]

Russia Giving Iran Targeting Intelligence Of American Warships, Aircraft: US Officials The Trump-ordered US-Israeli attack on Iran is continuing to create an array of ‘unknowns’ while steadily drawing in outside powers, with the most significant Friday development being The Washington Post reporting that Russia has been providing Iran with intelligence on the locations of US military assets in the Middle East, including warships […]

US Retail Sales Dropped In January As Weather, Weak Gas Prices Weigh This morning’s retail sales data is for January (still lagging due to the govt shutdown) and is expected to be a decline (BofA’s omniscient analysts see a worse than consensus drop MoM, due in large part to weather disruptions). The actual print was a decline but slightly better than expected at -0.2% MoM. Despite two months of no increase, sales rose 3.2% YoY […]

Futures, Global Markets Tumble As Oil Soars Amid Fears Of Lenghty Energy Crisis Seven days into the war on Iran and markets are getting increasingly shaky. US equity futures tumbled ahead of the February jobs report, and are on pace to close the worst week for global markets since 2020 deep in the red as the selloff in global bonds deepened after another jump in oil prices fanned fears that the war in the Middle East is fueling […]

Senate Democrats Introduce Bill To Break Up Major Meatpacking Companies Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and 12 other senators introduced legislation on March 5 that would force the nation’s largest meatpackers to break up their operations across beef, pork, and poultry, in the latest push in the Democratic affordability agenda heading into the 2026 […]

First A China-Linked Ship, Now A US-Sanctioned Gas Tanker Transits Hormuz Chokepoint A US-sanctioned tanker carrying Iranian LPG, the Danuta I, transited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday without incident, shortly after a China-linked bulk carrier also exited the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, suggesting IRGC forces may, for now, be allowing Iranian- and Chinese-linked vessels to pass. That said, the strait remains paralyzed […]

Berkshire CEO Greg Abel Commits Salary To Buying Company Stock Greg Abel said he plans to put all of his after-tax compensation into shares of Berkshire Hathaway for as long as he runs the company, according to Yahoo Finance/Bloomberg. He recently followed through by buying about $15.3 million of Berkshire stock, according to a regulatory filing. Abel said repeating the purchase each year after the company reports results could […]

In Major Win For Putin, US Grants Russia License To Sell Oil To India While Strait Of Hormuz Is Blocked The world desperately needs oil, but can’t get it as 20% of it is literally stuck behind the blockaded Straits of Hormuz. Putin has tons of oil because sales are metaphorically stuck by US sanctions. If the world does not get access to oil soon enough, there will be a global recession or worse, and every day the price of oil rises […]

February Payrolls Preview: “For This Print, The Stronger The Better” The February jobs report is expected to show 55k jobs added to the US economy in the month, a sharp drop from 130k in January but slightly above the Fed’s 50k breakeven estimate. Private payrolls are expected to rise by 60k versus the prior 172k. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 4.3%, while wages are seen rising 0.3% M/M and 3.7% Y/Y. […]

“Bruh, You Were Calling For War With Iran A Month Ago” Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news, In a stunning display of hypocrisy, neocon warmonger Bill Kristol is now trashing the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran—dubbed “Epic Fury”—despite agitating for military action against the regime for the past 25 years. Kristol has spent years pushing to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and was even still doing so […]