Zero Rss

Massive Relax

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

Oil futures are being offered this morning after President Trump on Friday declined to continue strikes on Iran. The ‘pause’ was extended over the weekend and reciprocated by the Iranians, marking the first ‘cease’ of the ceasefire in almost a fortnight.

According to Axios, Donald Trump’s advisors had provided the President with attack plans for the day but CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper reportedly advised against further strikes, arguing that Iran’s ability to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz had already been substantially degraded and that the aerial campaign had reached the limits of its effectiveness.

In a similar vein, the New York Times published a report over the weekend revealing that General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had cautioned the President that further escalation was possible but that it would dangerously deplete CENTCOM’s stock of interceptor missiles. This would expose the nineteen-odd US bases across the Middle East to even greater damage than they have already sustained, to say nothing of the infrastructure of GCC allies and the strain on the US’s defence priorities in the Pacific and elsewhere. President Trump denied the reports, telling the Wall Street Journal “we have far more [interceptors] than we need.”

In a further hopeful sign, an Omani team of negotiators has reportedly met with counterparts in Tehran to discuss arrangements to re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Baqaei said that the talks had been “useful” and that progress had been made, but that there was no change in the status of the strait at this point. It also remains to be seen whether any agreement reached between Iran and Oman would be accepted by the United States.

Nevertheless, President Trump’s threats of ‘massive attack’ late last week that saw Brent crude surge above $100/bbl, higher bond yields, and equities under pressure has now given way to a massive relax, with Brent below $92/bbl, equity futures pointing higher and sovereign yields lower across the board.

Though it hardly bears noting, at this point it would behove us to caution that the war is not over and that we certainly are not out of the woods from either an energy security or financial markets perspective. 

To illustrate this point, the Wall Street Journal carried a story over the weekend regarding the escalating tit-for-tat between the Saudis and the Houthis that threatens to conflagrate into all-out war. Houthi attacks on Saudi Aramco infrastructure at the critical port of Yanbu (the Red Sea release valve for Saudi oil exports) over the weekend followed a declaration last week that Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports would be subject to a blockade that further threatens to starve energy-poor Asia of vital crude oil flows. For now, China is continuing to play the constructive role of balancing item by holding its crude imports well below the usual levels.

Similarly, Israel was reportedly bracing for escalation over the weekend with the Jerusalem Post noting that public bomb shelters had been re-opened in major cities. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the war would continue until the Iranian regime fell or gave up its nuclear ambitions, again highlighting the likelihood that hostilities will remain ongoing until one is forced to concede on the nuclear issue – and likely concede its regional influence in the process.

A further coalescing of an anti-Iranian bloc is also becoming more evident. Al Jazeera reports that Syrian President Al-Sharaa is seeking a security agreement with Israel that will apparently include several other countries and likely include provisions to stem to flow of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This as Israeli government sources indicate that Israel has dramatically stepped-up its engagement with the GCC since the outbreak of the war, which has perhaps already yielded fruit through the UAE’s decision to leave OPEC and OPEC+. Détente between Gulf states and Israel holds out the prospect of less fragile supply chains in the future, where oil flows West rather than East and Iran loses its leverage over the global economy, but that potential future is riddled with ‘ifs’, and solves none of our near-term problems.

Elsewhere, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi accused Ukraine of doing Israel’s bidding after the former struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing at least one crew member. Ukrainian President Zelensky defended the action by stating that Kyiv was targeting vessels involved in military cargo shipments alongside Russian warships, again raising the prospect of two conflicts merging into one.

While geopolitical considerations will doubtless continue to set the tone this week, the Fed, Bank of England and Bank of Japan will all be meeting to set their respective policy rates. None are expected to raise their rate targets this time around but the inflationary impacts of war, and considerations over how persistent those shocks may prove to be, will surely loom large in their deliberations.

This week will also bring Q2 GDP readings for the United States and the Eurozone, along with Q2 PCE for the former and July CPI for the latter.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 10:20

Shootout Erupts At Seattle Festival, Killing 3; Second Gunman On The Run

Seattle police are searching for a second suspect after two gunmen allegedly exchanged fire inside the crowded Bite of Seattle festival beneath the Space Needle, killing three people and wounding four others, including a 2-year-old boy.

BREAKING: 2 killed, 5 injured in shooting at Seattle Center, Washington pic.twitter.com/MPaA3lzO7W

— Rapid Report (@RapidReport2025) July 27, 2026

Assistant Seattle Police Chief Tyrone Davis told reporters late Sunday that investigators believe the suspects were shooting at each other when bystanders were caught in the crossfire.

Three people were killed and four others injured in a shooting at a Seattle food festival.

One suspect has been arrested, and authorities say the incident may have involved a shootout. Two firearms were recovered at the scene.

All 4 victims are in a stable condition.

Police… pic.twitter.com/V6ynVSdmNE

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) July 27, 2026

One suspect surrendered at the scene, while the second remains at large.

"We're still trying to figure this out," Davis said.

Suspect Number One:

BREAKING - SEATTLE SHOOTING 🚨🚨🚨

Two people are dead, 5 others were injured after shooting at a Seattle festival.

Alleged shooter in image below. https://t.co/IkEDa0ehh1 pic.twitter.com/DUs05mBGxV

— TERFs ‘r’ us ©️ (@Terfs_R) July 27, 2026

Davis described the suspect in custody as "a young person" who was being questioned by investigators. He said that individual was the only gunman officers witnessed opening fire. He noted that police did not discharge their weapons during the confrontation.

A Seattle Times reporter at the festival described hearing several loud pops followed by what sounded like rapid gunfire.

"It was just pure chaos," one festival attendee said.

Authorities have not indicated that the shooting is being investigated as terrorism, despite the heightened security following the Islamist attack at Berlin's Pride festival over the weekend. The State Department has also outlined a far-left threat across the West.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 10:15

Deutsche Bank Says Starship Flight 13 Made "Solid Progress" Despite Booster Setback

Following last month's record-setting IPO, SpaceX shares have plunged 50% from their peak and now trade about 15% below the $135 offering price. The post-IPO euphoria has faded, stripping Elon Musk of his trillionaire status - at least for now.

On Friday evening, SpaceX launched Starship on its 13th test flight and successfully deployed 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, making solid progress toward full reusability. The upper-stage spacecraft completed all its primary objectives, despite another landing-burn failure involving the Super Heavy booster.

Deployment of 20 @Starlink V3 satellites complete. Today's test will provide critical data as we prepare to expand our Starlink constellation pic.twitter.com/jWKLwXGlsk

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026

Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu offered clients a post-mortem on Flight 13, noting that the latest Starship test.

Here is Yu's take:  

Starship Test Flight 13 illustrated solid progress for the program, in our view. For context, this was the second time the upgraded V3 iteration of Starship was flown. Interestingly, the rocket's second stage (Ship) executed all primary objectives whereas the first-stage booster (Super Heavy) performed well for most of the mission until an incomplete engine relight led to a harder splashdown than planned which was also an issue observed on Flight 12. As such, it does appear SpaceX may attempt a catch recovery of the second stage on the next test flight; if successful, this would represent a key milestone given the very high technical difficulty. Additionally, Flight 13 saw the successful deployment of 20 functional Starlink next-gen V3 satellites. Overall, while the initial abort was optically not ideal, we think Starship continues to progress in line with our base-case expectations

What caused the initial abort?

During the first launch attempt on July 16th , Starship reached T-0 and began the engine start sequence. However, 4 of Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite. Therefore, the flight computer automatically aborted because the launch commit criteria permits a maximum of 2 engines out at liftoff. The company identified the cause to be off-nominal spin response in the liquid oxygen (LOX) turbopumps of 6 engines (4 failed to light plus 2 that displayed off-nominal behavior). The most likely cause of this dynamic was residual moisture that had collected inside the turbopumps from earlier operations. When the extremely cold cryogenic propellant was loaded, that moisture appeared to have frozen. As a result, the ice either slowed the turbopumps dramatically or stopped them from spinning up properly, so those engines never reached the required conditions to ignite. To address this, SpaceX removed and replaced 6 Raptor engines, performed verification testing including spin checks after chill. Then the attempt on July 23rd was postponed due to weather conditions in order to preserve visual coverage of the heat shield tiles during ascent. For background, the heat shield is still being iterated upon and considered one of the higher risk + less mature parts of Starship; therefore, gathering optical data is

What went well?

• Ascent & staging: All 33 booster engines and all 6 Ship engines performed well through their powered phases. Hot-staging was clean - rocket separation where the upper stage ignites its engines while still attached to the lower stage booster, which is also still firing.
• Boostback: First successful completion of the high-thrust portion of the boostback burn with all 33 engines running on V3 boosters. This is the maneuver that reverses first-stage booster's horizontal forward momentum and steers it back toward the ocean.
• Starlink V3 deployment: First flight of functional (not simulator) next-gen V3 satellites. All 20 sats deployed, extended solar arrays and antennas, established RF and laser links, and returned telemetry before burning up on reentry after ~20 minutes.
• In-Space Raptor relight: Successful single-engine restart in space; the longest demonstrated to date. Important capability for future orbital missions and controlled de-orbit.
• Ship reentry & landing: Soft, controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Ship 40 remained intact, continued transmitting telemetry and imagery, and provided the first high-quality views of an intact heat shield after a full reentry under higher dynamic pressure; should be ideal for heat-shield data collection.

What needs to improve?

• Booster landing burn: Only a subset of the Super Heavy engines (seemingly 8 out of 13) successfully relit for the landing burn. Hence, there was a hard splashdown rather than a soft, controlled impact. This remains the primary technical open item on the first-stage booster.

Next up: Flight 14

Following Flight 13, Elon Musk posted on X: "Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight." This would be the first attempt to catch the upper stage using the Mechazilla tower arms and if successful, would represent a major milestone for the program given the much higher technical difficulty level compared with catching the first stage (energy, speed, flip maneuver, margin of error, etc...). We estimate a target window in late August or September. Separately, we note that Starlink V3 satellites can be deployed on Starship even with partial reusability.t a catch recovery of the second stage on the next test flight;

SPCX shares dipped 1.5% in Monday premarket trading, falling to the $113 handle as the stock searches for a floor following its dismal post-IPO performance.

Looking ahead, SpaceX faces its first major post-IPO lockup expiration on Aug. 6, just two days after its scheduled quarterly earnings report. About 911.5 million shares will become eligible for sale, creating a potentially significant supply overhang.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 10:00

Appeals Court Blocks Trump Mail-In Voting Order In 23 Democrat-Led States, Setting Up SCOTUS Fight

Via American Greatness,

A federal appeals court sided with 23 Democrat-led states and blocked the Trump administration from enforcing key pieces of the president’s election integrity order, setting up a likely showdown at the Supreme Court just months before the midterms.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to deny the Justice Department’s request to pause a lower court injunction while the administration’s appeal moves forward, leaving in place a ruling that stripped federal agencies of the power to enforce several provisions of President Donald Trump’s order in those states through the Nov. 3 elections.

The Justice Department has signaled it may now turn to the Supreme Court for emergency relief, a path the administration flagged earlier in the litigation should it fail to prevail at the appellate level.

Trump signed Executive Order 14399 in March, directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed citizens eligible to vote and hand them to states, ordering the U.S. Postal Service to set new handling standards for mail-in ballots, and instructing the Justice Department to prioritize investigations of state and local officials who send federal ballots to people who should not receive them.

The measures represent one of the most significant pushes yet from the administration to shore up confidence in an election system Republicans have long argued is vulnerable to fraud and error, particularly through loosely regulated mail voting.

The administration argued the lawsuit was filed too soon, since federal agencies had not yet finalized the rules needed to carry out the order. The panel’s majority rejected that argument, finding the states already faced fast-approaching deadlines tied to the order and had no choice but to begin preparing for compliance.

“As the district court reasoned, the (executive order) lays out a clear set of rapidly approaching deadlines by which states must coordinate with federal officials and comply with new voting procedures,” the majority wrote.

“The Plaintiff States have no practical choice but to respond to the (order) now.”

The lawsuit, led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington, was joined by 19 other states and the District of Columbia, all governed by Democrats who have resisted the administration’s election security efforts from the start.

The states claim the Constitution gives them, not the president, primary authority over administering federal elections, an argument U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani accepted in June when she ruled several provisions likely exceeded Trump’s authority.

Saturday’s decision does not settle the underlying dispute over presidential power but keeps Talwani’s injunction intact while the case winds through the courts, a delay that could push final resolution dangerously close to the midterms.

Critics of the ruling argue that leaving basic safeguards, like verifying citizenship and tightening mail-ballot standards, in legal limbo only benefits officials in blue states with a history of loose election administration.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 09:40

Trump Accounts Are Now Open: What Parents And Grandparents Need To Know Before Contributing

Authored by Adam H. Douglas via The Epoch Times,

As of July 4, 2026, money can officially flow into Trump accounts, the new child savings vehicle created by last year's tax law.

rblfmr/shutterstock

Millions of families have already signed up, and millions more are asking the same practical questions: does my child qualify, how do I claim the $1,000, and is this better than the 529 plan we already have?

Most coverage explanations answer these questions in tax-professional language. Here are the essentials in plain terms, including one state-level catch that could surprise you at tax time.

Quick Answer: Who Qualifies for a Trump Account?

Any child who is a U.S. citizen with a valid Social Security number can have a Trump account, as long as it is opened before the year they turn 18. The one-time $1,000 federal seed contribution is narrower: it goes only to eligible children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. Parents or guardians claim it by submitting IRS Form 4547, which can be filed through the Trump Accounts app, at trumpaccounts.gov, through an IRS Individual Online Account, or when filing taxes. Once the Treasury confirms the account is active, it deposits the $1,000.

What Your Child Gets, by Birth Year

The seed money depends entirely on when your child was born.

Dozens of companies, including several major banks and technology firms, have pledged to match the federal $1,000 for employees' children. If you or your child's other parent works for a large employer, it is worth asking human resources before assuming the seed money is all your child will receive.

The Contribution Rules in Plain Terms

Once the account exists, here is how money goes in:

• The combined cap is $5,000 per year. Parents, grandparents, and anyone else contribute after-tax dollars, and all of it counts toward one shared limit per child. The cap adjusts for inflation after 2027.
• Employers get special treatment. An employer can put in up to $2,500 per year for a worker's child. That amount counts toward the $5,000 cap but is excluded from the employee's taxable income.
• Some money does not count against the cap. Contributions from qualifying charities, states, tribes, and local governments sit outside the $5,000 limit, as does the federal seed itself.
• Contributions stop the year before the year your child turns 18.

For grandparents, the practical takeaway is coordination. Because the cap is shared, a grandparent writing a $5,000 check uses up the entire year's room for everyone.

How the Account Actually Works

A Trump account is best understood as a special kind of IRA with training wheels. The money is invested in a low-cost index fund tracking the S&P 500, so the balance rises and falls with the stock market.

Earnings grow tax-deferred at the federal level, and the funds are locked until the child turns 18, with only limited exceptions. On January 1 of the year the child turns 18, the account essentially converts to a traditional IRA in the child's name.

That last detail matters: Withdrawals in adulthood are generally taxed as ordinary income, the same as any traditional IRA.

The State Tax Catch Almost Nobody Explains

Here is the wrinkle buried in most coverage explanations.

Federal tax deferral does not automatically mean state tax deferral. State tax codes must conform to the new federal rules, but some states have not done so.

California is the most prominent example: Unless state law changes, annual earnings inside a Trump account could be taxable on your California return each year, even while federal taxes wait until withdrawal.

That does not make the account worthless in a nonconforming state. The $1,000 seed is still free money, and federal deferral still helps. But it changes the math on large voluntary contributions and creates a recordkeeping chore.

Before contributing beyond the seed, check your state's current treatment with your state tax authority or a tax professional, because conformity decisions are still moving in several states.

Trump Account vs. 529: The Short Version

If you already fund a 529 plan, the two are not interchangeable.

• A 529 offers tax-free withdrawals for qualified education expenses, and many states add a deduction for contributions - a Trump account offers neither.
• A Trump account has no education restriction - at 18 it becomes retirement-oriented IRA money, giving your child a decades-long compounding head start.
• The sensible sequence for most families: claim the free seed money if your child qualifies, keep education savings in the 529, and treat additional Trump account contributions as a separate, long-horizon decision.

FAQs About Trump Account Eligibility Is the $1,000 Seed Contribution Automatic?

No. Eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 do not receive the money by default. A parent or guardian must first open the account and elect the contribution by submitting IRS Form 4547, whether through the Trump Accounts app, trumpaccounts.gov, an IRS Individual Online Account, or a tax return. After the Treasury confirms with the account trustee that the account is active, it deposits the $1,000. No account, no seed money.

Can Grandparents Contribute to a Trump Account?

Yes. Grandparents, other relatives, and even friends can contribute, but everything counts toward the single $5,000 combined annual cap per child, alongside contributions from parents and employers. Contributions are made with after-tax dollars and are not deductible. Families should coordinate before year-end so a well-meaning gift does not crowd out an employer match, which carries the added benefit of being excluded from the employee's taxable income.

What if My Child Was Born Before 2025?

Your child can still have a Trump account, opened any time before the year they turn 18, and family or employer money can go in under the normal rules. They simply will not receive the federal $1,000. Children born from 2016 through 2024 may qualify for a $250 Dell Foundation deposit if they live in a ZIP code where the median income is $150,000 or less, which covers most of the country.

Will My State Tax the Earnings Each Year?

Possibly, depending on where you live. The accounts are tax-deferred under federal law, and states must conform to that treatment, but some, including California, may tax annual earnings at the state level unless their laws change. In a nonconforming state you could owe state tax on gains yearly while federal tax waits. Check your state's current position before making large contributions, since several legislatures are still deciding.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 09:00

Futures Jump As Brent Tumbles Below $90 On Fresh Round Of Iran Ceasefire Optimism

A sharp drop in oil prices prompted by a quieter weekend for geopolitics and a pause in MidEast hostilities also sparked a drop in bond yields and the USD. A powerful relief rally in stocks and bonds emerged after a lull in hostilities in the Middle East, and started a week packed with earnings and a stack of interest-rate decisions on a positive note. As of 8.00am ET, Nasdaq futures surged after the index logged its first back-to-back weekly declines since March; S&P 500 futures rose 1%. After Friday's rout, all Mag 7 stocks gained amid the relief rally in tech and AI-related stocks (Meta Platforms +1.8%, Alphabet +1.7%, Amazon +1.4%, Tesla +1.3%, Microsoft +1%, Nvidia +0.9%, Apple +0.1%). While Asian markets closed mixed, European stocks advanced as broader risk sentiment gets a boost from a pullback in energy prices. Brent crude futures for September fell 9% to around $88 a barrel (these hit $100 late last week) after a lull in hostilities in the Middle East over the weekend. Bond yields fell around the world, with the rate on 10-year Treasuries declining four basis points to 4.64%. The easing came after the US paused a nearly two-week run of strikes against Iran for a third straight night, sending Brent 8.2% lower to $89 a barrel. The dollar fell 0.2%, while gold hit $4,100 an ounce. UK and German 10-year borrowing costs dropped 4-5 bps each. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2%; the Swedish krona and Swiss franc are the best performing G-10 currencies, rising 0.4% each. Precious metals advance, with spot silver up around 2%. Today's eco calendar has US Durable goods and the Dallas Fed Mfg Activity (est. 2.0). A slew of earnings, including fresh clues on the pace of AI infrastructure investment, will keep traders on their toes in coming days. On top of that, there’s a Fed interest-rate decision and a reading of its preferred, core PCE inflation index this week. 

In premarket trading, Magnificent 7 stocks all gained, boosting US stock futures, as a sharp drop in crude prices spurred a relief rally in tech and AI-related stocks (Meta Platforms +1.6%, Alphabet +1.2%, Amazon +1.2%, Tesla +0.8%, Microsoft +1.4%, Nvidia +0.6%, Apple +0.2%)

• Chipmakers and other AI infrastructure stocks are rallying as traders return to risk, heartened by a pause in US strikes against Iran that’s causing oil prices to slide.
• D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) climbs 8% after AT&T signed an agreement to expand its use of the company’s quantum computing technology.
• Ford Motor (F) gains 2% as Jefferies upgrades to buy ahead of second quarter earnings report, saying with US market conditions healthy, management could raise guidance.
• Forte Biosciences (FBRX) rises 39% after Argenx SE agreed to buy the company for about $2.2 billion in cash to expand its portfolio of immunology medicines.
• General Motors (GM) rises 1.9% as Jefferies upgrades the stock to buy on confidence that 2027 will further strengthen the automaker’s position “within the US profit oligopoly.”
• Gossamer Bio (GOSS) climbs 30% on plans to submit a new drug application for seralutinib in pulmonary arterial hypertension in September 2026.
• MapLight Therapeutics (MPLT) sinks 54% following Phase 2 trial results for a drug aimed at treating adults with acute schizophrenia.

Elsewhere in AI, Nvidia is in talks to back OpenAI’s lease of a $500 billion data center, highlighting the circular financing supporting the AI boom. Samsung won a contract worth more than $200 billion to make chips for Broadcom. And memory is back in focus, after CXMT’s blockbuster trading debut in Shanghai and a WSJ report of Micron warning the US against letting Apple buy China chips. In deals news, Jack Daniel’s owner Brown-Forman said its board of directors rejected an unsolicited takeover offer from Sazerac, which asked the company to reconsider the $15 billion bid that was rebuffed earlier this year. Meanwhile, Argenx agreed to buy Forte Biosciences for about $2.2 billion in cash to expand its portfolio of immunology medicines.

Traders are finding some respite from weaker oil prices after Brent surged by more than a third this month, stoking concerns that central banks will need to tighten monetary policy to contain inflation. Questions over whether Big Tech firms’ spending spree on artificial intelligence is sustainable have also fueled a prolonged stretch of volatility.

Monday’s rally is doing little to ease caution ahead of the busiest week of the earnings season, when a raft of megacaps including Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. will put AI spending back in the spotlight. Another major event is the Federal Reserve’s rate decision on Wednesday, with markets still pricing around a one-in-three chance of an interest rate hike.

“I expect a volatile week with the Fed, tech results, and a bunch of European inflation data coming out,” said Andrea Gabellone at KBC Securities. “Moreover, the Iran situation is still very fragile. For now, the President said that ‘all options are still open,’ so it will be difficult to put risk back on the table.”

US equity investors are likely to rotate into high-quality stocks as the focus returns to free cash flow generation and margin expansion, according to Morgan Stanley strategists. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank’s Parag Thatte notes positioning has fallen sharply in large-cap tech from extended levels to near neutral, with rotation out of the sector about three-quarters of the way through.  

A busy week of data releases includes June durable goods today, consumer confidence Tuesday and the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge of core PCE for June on Thursday. Sandwiched in between is the FOMC rate decision, when a hawkish hold is expected. Dissent may come from some officials - possibly Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan and Cleveland’s Beth Hammack - who favor a rate increase now. There’s also been widespread discussion over whether new Chairman Kevin Warsh might surprise investors with a hike. No major US earnings are due ahead of the bell on Monday, but that’s the calm before the storm. More than 170 companies in the S&P 500 are set to report this week. The narrative around AI capex is in sharp focus, with last week’s selloff in Alphabet signaling a market in revolt about spending on the tech. It creates a tough setup for earnings from Microsoft and Meta Platforms due on Wednesday and those from Apple and Amazon on Thursday.

Big tech’s appetite for AI investment is also driving a wave of bond sales, having a greater impact on the US corporate debt market than might be obvious. SoftBank’s $40 billion bridge loan for its investment in OpenAI has attracted a new group of 21 lenders in a broader syndication phase.

In the latest market structure lunacy, CME Group will launch single-stock futures today, allowing investors to hedge or speculate on more than 50 of the largest US companies. The contracts, offering leverage without the complexity of options, will be cash-settled on the closing price of the stocks they’re tied to.

The political uncertainty surrounding November’s US midterm election adds to a near-term argument for owning index volatility, according to Goldman strategists. Record low correlations across stocks continue to suppress index volatility, a trend highlighted over the weekend. 

Turning to earnings, of the 135 S&P 500 companies to have reported to date, 86% have beaten analysts’ EPS forecasts, while 10% have missed. On sales, 69% of companies have positively surprised, while 15% have missed.  Bank of Hawaii and Northwest Bancshares are among those due to report before the market opens. Earnings from Welltower and Cadence Design come later in the day.

European stocks also rose as tensions ease in the Middle East, broadly shrugging off comments from a European Central Bank rate-setter, who said the institution will have to raise interest rates at least one more time to curtail inflation risks. Energy is the worst performing sector as oil prices slid while tech and retail outperformed. Stoxx 600 rises 0.8% to 649.47. Here are some of the biggest movers on Monday: 

• AstraZeneca shares rise as much as 2% after the drugmaker reported better-than-expected core earnings per share for the second quarter.
• Evolution shares rise as much as 4.4% in Stockholm, the most in a week, after Candle Lake crossed the threshold for a mandatory offer for the Swedish gaming company.
• Vodafone shares are up as much as 4.3% after the telecom operator reported growth in organic service revenue in Germany, a positive surprise to analysts that have forecast almost no growth in the company’s biggest market.
• SES, Eutelsat rally on Monday after both companies said they are expecting to receive payments from the release of C-band spectrum in the US.
• Interroll jumped as much as 7.5% after Oddo Bhf raised its rating, arguing that a drop in the shares of the Swiss maker of automation equipment and storage solutions had made them “too cheap to be ignored.”
• Pharos Energy shares soar as much as 31% after the firm agreed to a takeover by fellow London-listed Serica Energy, with shares almost reaching the total offer price.
• Kinepolis shares rise as much as 6.2% after Degroof Petercam set a Street-high price target for the Belgian cinema chain and reiterated its buy rating ahead of 1H results due on Aug. 20.
• Irish Continental Group surged as much as 30% after agreeing to a management buyout, with the stock hitting a new all-time high and briefly surpassing the offer price.
• Inditex shares climb 3.3% after Barclays raises its recommendation on the Zara parent to overweight from equal-weight, saying recent muted shareholder return performance presents an opportunity with the Spanish retailer’s valuation at reasonable levels.
• Zabka shares fell as much as 14%, the most on record, after Seven & i abandoned plans to buy an equity stake in the Polish convenience-store operator.
• Havas shares fall as much as 3.8% after JPMorgan analysts say the stock had outrun its growth potential and reduce their rating to neutral from overweight.
• Cranswick shares erase early gains to fall as much as 2.2% after the British meat producer reported a slowing in its like-for-like revenue growth rate.
• IP Group shares fall as much as 3.3% after Railpen said it does not intend to make an offer for the science investor in a statement.
• Vesuvius shares plunge as much as 12% as analysts warned of potential cuts to consensus estimates after the materials technology company adjusted its guidance lower due to ongoing operational issues.

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks gained after Friday’s selloff, boosted by a slump in global oil prices and gains in Chinese internet companies as investors brace for an event-heavy week. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1%, with SK Hynix, Samsung and Tencent the biggest contributors. Chinese equities gained, with sentiment getting a lift as memory chipmaker CXMT debuted with a 466% jump. Stocks also rose in Australia and India, helped by a more than 7% drop in oil prices. 

Traders are closely watching as an event-packed week gets underway. The US Federal Reserve is set to review monetary policy, while mega-cap technology giants like Meta and Microsoft are scheduled to report earnings. Investors will be paying particular attention to hyperscalers’ spending plans for signs of continued AI investment. Indonesian stocks fell as much as 0.8% before paring losses after the country’s central bank head Perry Warjiyo resigned citing personal reasons.

“For Asia more broadly, a falling oil price is very beneficial,” said Leonid Mironov, portfolio manager at Gavekal Capital Ltd. “There are outstanding issues with the yen weakness, but the core drivers of performance this year — chip and AI names — are more levered to global AI capex rather than domestic issues.”

Looking at today's calendar, the provisional June reading of durable goods due at 8:30 a.m. ET, followed by Dallas Fed manufacturing activity for July at 10:30 a.m. The Fed’s external communications blackout continues. 

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight News

• Iran will halt its own attacks as long as the United States does the same, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday. The development comes as the United States pressed ‌pause on its bombing campaign after President Donald Trump's advisers told him they were running out of targets and expressed worries about depleting the U.S. arsenal. RTRS
• A US appeals court refused the DOJ’s request to let federal officials move ahead with Trump’s mail-voting overhaul ahead of the November midterm elections. BBG
• DeepSeek is said to have told prospective investors it’s pausing a fundraising round, after comments widely attributed to its founder about US-China AI competition went viral. BBG
• CXMT jumped 466% in its Shanghai debut after the chipmaker raised $9.8 billion in its IPO, turning it into China’s largest onshore-listed company. BBG
• The ECB will have to raise interest rates at least one more time to ensure that inflation risks don’t spin out of control, Governing Council member Peter Kazimir said. BBG
• The Agriculture Department is lifting a more than yearlong ban on Mexican cattle imports, a move that could ease soaring beef prices. The U.S. plans to resume importing Mexican cattle at the port of entry in Douglas, Ariz., in 30 days and eventually open two additional ports of entry in New Mexico.
• Big Companies Are Starting to Hire Again, Defying Predictions of AI Wipeout. After a year of holding back on new hires, companies from tech and transportation to defense now say they need more people to work alongside AI. WSJ
• Employers fear labor shortage as many immigrants lose protected status. A recent Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the Trump administration to end a humanitarian program that has allowed about 1 million immigrants to work illegally in the US. NYT
• Nvidia is in talks to provide a guarantee of as much as $250 billion to help OpenAI lease computing from a data center project in Ohio, people familiar said. BBG
• Mirroring the pre-election patterns in uncertainty, volatility, and investor flows, US equities have typically traded sideways in the few months ahead of midterms. US equity returns are generally modest during this part of the calendar year but have been weaker on average in midterm election years. During midterm election years of the past few decades, the S&P 500 has generated a median return of 0% from the start of August through Election Day. Returns have typically improved as uncertainty subsided post-election, with the S&P 500 returning a median of 6% in the subsequent 3 months. Goldman Research
• Sources say Bipartisan Senate talks over funding federal agencies past the 30th September deadline are trending in the right direction: Punchbowl
• A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly positive, with risk sentiment underpinned as oil prices and yields declined following a halt in US-Iran strikes over the weekend, although some of the gains are capped, with price action somewhat choppy during the session as participants also await several major central bank meetings and key earnings later in the week. ASX 200 was led higher by strength in tech, materials and miners, while energy and defensives lag.
Nikkei 225 swung between gains and losses with price action choppy amid recent currency moves, intervention risks, lower yields, and softer-than-expected Services PPI data, while participants also await the BoJ later in the week. KOSPI saw two-way trade and ultimately declined despite reports of NVIDIA deals with South Korean firms including SK Group and Naver, with the sector cautious ahead of key tech earnings. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were positive as Hong Kong was led higher by tech stocks including CXMT stakeholders such as Xiaomi and Meituan, with energy at the other end of the spectrum following the drop in oil prices, while the attention in the mainland was on CXMT, which soared over 500% on its debut in Shanghai's STAR Market, making it mainland China's most valuable company by market cap.

Top Asian News

• Chinese President Xi holds phone talks with Brazilian President Lula, while Xi called for China and Brazil to play a greater role in improving the global governance and upholding international fairness and justice. said:. China is ready to further strengthen bilateral multilateral strategic coordination with Brazil. China and Brazil should jointly promote high-quality development of the Greater BRICS Corporation. Supports Brazil in rejecting external interference.
• Seven new suspected H5 bird flu cases were identified in South Australia.
• Japanese PM Takaichi said the government is ready to take further timely action as needed to cushion economic blow from the Middle East conflict, adds FX rates move on various factors and it's hard to identify impacts of any specific factor. said:. Raising Japan's growth potential and its competitive advantage will boost market trust in the yen. Monetary policy adjustment and specific monetary policy means are up to the BoJ to decide.
• Japanese PM Takaichi will address measures including a consumption tax reduction in her press conference later today.
• Japanese PM Takaichi said cutting debt-to-GDP ratio is key to fiscal management.
• Japanese PM Takaichi does not comment about the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle.
• Japanese panel said to be looking at revising up minimum wage target; looking at hiking to "high JPY 1100 range", Kyodo reported.
• Japan PM Takaichi noted Japanese inflation is amongst the lowest in the G7, adds that there are encouraging signs emerging for the wage outlook.

European Bourses - Begin the week firmer (STOXX 600 +0.8%) as oil prices and yields fall after the US halts strikes on Iran. The DAX outperforms as SAP continues to climb, while Spain’s IBEX is supported by strength in Retail and Travel. The FTSE 100 and OMX Copenhagen lag as Shipping and Oil majors come under pressure. Sectors - Trade broadly higher, with the exception of Energy and Utilities. Moves are driven by geopolitical de-escalation, with Retail and Travel & Leisure leading, while Tech also outperforms following CXMT’s surge on its Shanghai debut.

Top European News

• European Commission is considering watering down a large business levy which was designed to raise funding relating to the next 7yr budget, Politico reported citing sources. Officials said to be considering exempting loss-making companies and raising the revenue threshold to exclude smaller businesses for the "Corporate Resource for Europe" charge.
• UK PM Burnham hinted he will make it more difficult to claim benefits to bring down the welfare bill, according to Huffington Post. It was separately reported that Burnham said UK must get really serious about cutting welfare.
• France questioned UK involvement in EU’s EUR 5bln tech start-up fund, according to FT.
• Italy cabinet to meet at 16:30EDT/17:30CET to discuss diesel costs.

FX

• DXY - Softer (-0.2%) as oil and yields moderate following the US halt to strikes on Iran. The index trades within a tight 101.11–101.32 range, with the geopolitical pause and easing tightening bets weighing on the Buck, though the outlook remains fluid ahead of the Fed this week.
• JPY - Firmer amid the softer USD backdrop and lower yields though moves remain contained in a 163.32-163.71.
• EUR- EUR is stronger against the USD, with EUR/USD briefly moving above 1.14 to a 1.1418 peak before paring gains. Newsflow light, with Ifo broadly in line and focus turning to upcoming growth and inflation data later in the week.
• GBP - GBP is modestly firmer vs USD but underperforms EUR, with EUR/GBP higher. Price action is likely driven by the unwinding of recent Sterling outperformance, while attention turns to the BoE meeting where a pause is expected, with the vote split in focus.
• Antipodeans - Antipodeans outperform as risk sentiment improves, supported by the pullback in oil and yields alongside the broader USD softness.
• RBI likely sold USD via state run banks to lift INR past 96, according to traders.
• PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.7911 vs exp. 6.7703 (prev. 6.7939).

Fixed Income

• UST - Firmer, benefiting from the pullback in energy prices following the pause in US strikes on Iran. The contract reaches a 108-22 peak, up around 10 ticks on the day, though remains shy of recent 109-00 and 109-08+ highs. Focus turns to upcoming 2yr and 5yr supply, while broader attention also builds around US midterm developments.
• Bund - Bunds move in tandem, lifting to a 124.95 peak but failing to test the 125.00 handle or last week’s 125.10 high. There was little reaction to the Ifo release, which is broadly constructive despite softer current conditions, nor to ECB’s Kazimir, who reiterated a hawkish stance with a high bar to avoid a September hike.
• Gilt - Gilts gap higher and extend gains by over 50 ticks, approaching but not reaching last week’s 87.37 peak. The move is driven by the broader fixed income bid on lower yields, with some additional support from reporting around PM Burnham's approach to the welfare bill.
• Australia sold AUD 300mln 3.00% March 2047 bonds b/c 3.22, avg yield 5.4319%.

Commodities

• Crude futures - Crude was sharply lower following the US pause in strikes on Iran, though losses were trimmed into the European morning. Brent Oct’26 fell over 7% at worst to USD 84.91/bbl (vs high USD 88.95/bbl), while WTI Sep’26 dropped to a USD 82.46/bbl trough (vs peak USD 86.20/bbl). Dutch TTF also slumped, dipping below EUR 58/MWh before recovering towards EUR 59.50/MWh.
• Precious metals - Precious metals were firmer intraday but off best levels as energy pared losses. Spot gold traded towards the lower end of a USD 4,083.80–4,116.19/oz range (vs Friday’s USD 4,052/oz close). Spot silver similarly sat towards the bottom of a USD 59.08–60.09/oz range (vs Friday’s USD 58.20/oz low).
• Base metals - Base metals posted modest gains but also came off highs as energy recovered. 3M LME copper traded within a narrow USD 13,615.00–13,730.43/t range.
• CPC’s Black Sea terminal expected to resume oil loadings today following a one week suspension after drone attacks, sources say.
• Iraqi militias and political parties have received official approvals to establish oil facilities; Iraq has allocated about 1.5mln BPD for domestic consumption, including 300K BPD for the Ministry of Electricity. The reported note that more than a third of Iraq’s oil production revenues since 2011 have gone to militias and political parties.
• A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck the Antofagasta region of Chile, according to EMSC.

Central Banks

• ECB’s Kazimir said second round effects are costly to reverse, ECB must act before they are visible; at least one more hike needed as part of measured adjustment to inflation risks. A rate hike will be warranted even if the inflation situation improves somewhat. Should the situation escalate, with the price pressures becoming stronger and more persistent, we will need to tighten more over the next quarters than is currently expected. Incoming data and geopolitical developments would need to be very convincing to do for me not to advocate another hike in September; We didn’t surprise the markets now, we shouldn’t surprise them in September.
• Swiss Total Sight Deposits (w/e Jul 18) 469.27bln (prev. 469.4bln W/W), Domestic 442.66bln (prev. 443bln W/W).
• Indonesia Central Bank Governor Perry Warjiyo steps down due to personal reasons, while Deputy Governor Destry Damayanti will act as interim Governor. Damayanti said Bank Indonesia will continue to prioritise professional governance and will work with the government to run the economy, also said they will do their mandate as normal and in accordance with best practices.
• Monetary Authority Singapore slightly raises the rate of appreciation of the SGD NEER policy band, while it makes no change to the width and level it is centred. said:. Inflation could pick up more strongly than anticipated if energy price spikes anew. MAS core inflation is projected to step up from July and remain elevated, but should moderate discernibly from around mid-2027. Expectation is that overall GDP will be sustained at high levels in the near term. Singapore's economy is forecast to record a firm pace of growth for 2026 as a whole. Singapore's imported costs are likely to rise in the quarters ahead.

Trade/Tariffs

• China Foreign Ministry said China's countermeasures on EU do not target any one country.

Geopolitics: Russia-Ukraine

• US President Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky at the White House on Tuesday, according to Axios.
• Ukraine air force noted ballistic missile threat from the east and UAV detected in Dnipropetrovsk region.
• Multiple apartments and 15 vehicles are on fire in Russia's Belgorod after a UAV attack, according to TASS.

Geopolitics: Middle East

• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said some countries in the region are continuing to be involved in the conflict, they need to stop. The conversation between Iran and Oman regarding Hormuz have been positive.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, in an interview on Sunday, said Iran has no fear of negotiations, but it will not accept negotiations whose goal is to dictate or impose demands.
• Yemen Navy official said that a Navy patrol boat was attacked and destroyed on Sunday in the Red Sea, which left three crew members missing and the official blamed Houthi militants firing from several small boats.
• Fewer than 10 ships transited the Strait of Hormuz daily over the weekend, according to shipping data. It was separately reported that shipping traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell on Sunday after Yemeni Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations along the ‌Red Sea coast.
• US Central Command Commander Cooper stressed that the two weeks of strikes in the Strait of Hormuz area had significantly degraded Iran's ability to attack ships, according to Axios's Ravid.
• Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said diplomacy remains open, but our priority is defending the nation.
• Yemen's Houthis said on Sunday that it attacked three Saudi oil tankers in the past 48 hours and is enforcing maritime blockade measures against vessels linked to Saudi Arabia.
• Houthi-Affiliated Al Masirah TV said Saudi strikes attack Yemen’s Kamaran Island.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry Araghchi met with his Chinese counterpart, Mehr News reported; the sides discussed the Middle East situation.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said they have not accepted a 10 day ceasefire.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said they have not requested the resumption of talks with the US, intermediaries are conveying messages to the US. Kuwait has effectively made its territory available to the US.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the situation around Hormuz has not changed, it remains shut.
• IDF intercepted two drones over the border with Jordan, TimesofIsrael's Fabian reported.
• Iranian army reiterates that it will response more severely to "any possible incursions by the enemies", Tasnim reported.
• Saudi Foreign Ministry said Saudi Arabia discussed with Oman the issue of ensuring the freedom and safety of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, Al Hadath reported.
• Iranian TV said a ship was involved in an accident, and five ships that attempted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz via the unsafe passage this morning were turned back.
• Explosion reported in Erbil, Northern Iraq, according to Press TV.
• Israeli forces raid areas in West Bank and Jerusalem, according to IRNA.
• Sources told Asharq that Trump and Aoun are discussing a security agreement between Washington and Beirut.
• UK PM Burnham and Saudi Crown Prince MBS discussed regional developments in a telephone conversation, according to IRNA.
• An oil tanker exploded in the Strait of Hormuz after hitting a naval mine when it deviated from a navigation route designated by Iran, Mehr News reported.
• Iranian media reported of explosions in Jordan.
• Jordan Army said it downed two drones.
• Israel PM Netanyahu is travelling to Washington for a White House meeting with President Trump tomorrow, I24 reporter said.

Geopolitics: Other

• Israeli official said PM Netanyahu’s planned visit to Washington has been postponed; no reason cited, and no new date has been set.
• CPC’s Black Sea terminal expected to resume oil loadings today following a one week suspension after drone attacks, sources say.

US Event Calendar

• 8:30 am: Jun P Durable Goods Orders, est. 1.8%, prior -4.5%
• 8:30 am: Jun P Durables Ex Transportation, est. 0.8%, prior 1.4%
• 10:30 am: Jul Dallas Fed Manf. Activity, est. 2, prior 0

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Thankfully, in light of my weekend golf-a-thon, the escalating conflict in Iran has paused somewhat. After 13 consecutive nights of US strikes aimed at degrading Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping, Washington has refrained from further attacks since late Friday, while Tehran has publicly stated that it has also suspended retaliatory operations. The pause falls short of a formal ceasefire, but both sides are presenting it as an opportunity for diplomacy, with Omani-mediated talks continuing over the weekend focused on navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. US officials, including UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, have stressed that all military options remain on the table and that President Trump is simply giving negotiations more space. However, reports from the New York Times and Axios suggest an active debate within the administration over both the effectiveness and costs of further strikes, with some military officials reportedly arguing that key objectives have largely been achieved. For now, the market is treating the lull as a positive development, although the situation remains highly fluid.

The main market risk remains the energy and shipping front. Traffic through Hormuz remains severely disrupted, while the conflict has broadened into the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthi forces reportedly launched missile and drone attacks against Saudi energy infrastructure around Jizan and Yanbu over the weekend, prompting retaliatory Saudi strikes. This raises the prospect of simultaneous disruption to both Gulf and Red Sea export routes. So a welcome pausefrom the main actors but a fragile one, especially with side battles still ongoing.

However there is no doubt the weekend news is positive and this morning Brent crude prices are around -4.5% lower to $92.42  and 10yr USTs are down -4.5bps. S&P 500 futures are up +0.71% with Nasdaq futures gaining +1.17%.

Also on the positive side, the S&P/ASX 200 (+1.14%) is leading regional gains, while the Hang Seng (+0.81%), CSI 300 (+0.25%), and Shanghai Composite (+0.40%) are all higher. However the KOSPI (-0.28%) and Nikkei (-0.14%) are lagging with their tech stocks on the weaker side.  

Looking forward, and as more and more of the financial world steps off the ever-turning carousel of market news and disappears towards sunnier shores, a busy global week lies ahead, with central bank decisions, major economic releases and a heavy slate of corporate earnings all competing for investors’ attention. The Federal Reserve meeting concluding on Wednesday remains the standout event, but investors will also hear from the Bank of England (Thursday) and the Bank of Japan (Friday). Meanwhile, key economic releases include US Q2 GDP and June core PCE inflation (both Thursday), Euro Area Q2 GDP and July inflation data (Thursday/Friday), Japan’s Tokyo CPI (Friday) and China’s official PMIs (Friday). Adding to the significance of the week, four of the world’s most influential companies—Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon, which together account for 17% of the S&P 500—will report earnings, with the first two on Wednesday and the latter two a day later.

The headline event of course comes with the FOMC meeting (Wednesday), where our economists continue to expect the Fed to leave rates unchanged. However, the decision appears unusually finely balanced. The renewed escalation in the Middle East and the sharp rise in energy prices have complicated the inflation outlook, while recent market-based measures of inflation compensation have moved higher as concerns around energy supply disruptions have intensified. Against that backdrop, policymakers face a difficult trade-off between evidence that inflation had been moderating and growing signs that higher oil prices could create a more persistent inflation shock.

It’s rare for a Fed meeting to be this finely balanced so close to the decision. Futures are still assigning a 34% probability to a rate hike this week (-4pps overnight in Asia), a level of uncertainty we seldom see at such a late stage. During the post-Covid hiking cycle, markets did receive a steer via the financial press during the blackout period if the Fed was considering a surprise move. Under the current regime, that appears far less likely.

The Fed decision will sit in the middle of several important data releases. Durable goods orders (today) and the advance goods trade balance (tomorrow) will help shape expectations for the first estimate of Q2 GDP (Thursday). Our economists expect annualised GDP growth of 1.9% in Q2. Although this would mark a downgrade from earlier estimates, much of the weakness reflects a drag from net exports linked to strong AI-related imports. Beneath the surface, domestic demand remains considerably healthier. Indeed, our economists expect final sales to private domestic purchasers, their preferred measure of underlying demand, to rise by a robust 3.3%, which would be the strongest reading since Q3 2024.

Attention will then turn to inflation. The June personal income and spending report (Thursday) includes the latest reading of core PCE, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. Our economists expect core PCE to increase by 0.19% month-on-month, which would leave the annual rate at 3.3% assuming no significant revisions. That will be followed by the Employment Cost Index (Friday), one of the Fed's preferred measures of labour cost pressures. Our economists expect the annual growth rate to remain at 3.4%, a level many policymakers would still view as broadly consistent with returning inflation towards target over time.
Alongside the macro data, earnings season moves into a critical phase. Around 35% of the S&P 500's market capitalisation is scheduled to report this week. Technology will dominate attention, with Microsoft and Meta releasing results (Wednesday), followed by Apple and Amazon (Thursday). Together, those companies account for 17% of the S&P 500 and will help determine whether investor enthusiasm around AI-related spending remains intact. Elsewhere, notable US earnings releases include Visa and Mastercard in financials, ExxonMobil and Chevron in energy, and Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble in consumer staples.

In Europe, attention will be split between monetary policy and inflation. The Bank of England announces its latest policy decision (Thursday), and our UK economists expect Bank Rate to remain unchanged at 3.75%, accompanied by a 7-2 vote split. See more in their full preview here.

On the data side, Germany and Spain release flash July CPI figures (Thursday), before France, Italy and the Euro Area publish their inflation readings (Friday). Our European economists expect Euro Area headline HICP inflation to rise to 3.0% from 2.8%, while core HICP is forecast to edge higher to 2.52% from 2.36%. The Euro Area's preliminary Q2 GDP estimate is also due (Thursday), while Germany's Ifo survey (today) should provide an updated read on business sentiment.

In Asia, the Bank of Japan decision (Friday) will be the key event. Our economists expect policymakers to keep their current policy settings unchanged. See the preview here. Japan will also release Tokyo CPI, retail sales, industrial production, labour market data and housing starts (all Friday), offering a comprehensive snapshot of the economy at the start of the third quarter. In China, the official manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMIs (Friday) will provide the latest evidence on growth momentum. Elsewhere, Australia's June CPI report (Wednesday) will be closely watched for indications about the Reserve Bank's policy path. See the day-by-day calendar at the end for the fuller slate of events this week.

Recapping last week now and oil prices continued to surge as the US-Iran conflict escalated further, with Brent crude up another +9.85% last week (-3.88% Friday) to $96.78/bbl, and peaking above $100. So that added to fears that the global economy was facing a prolonged inflation shock, and that the Fed might need to hike rates more aggressively in response. Indeed, market expectations for a Fed rate hike on Wednesday moved up from 14% to 38% over the course of the week.  

The prospect of more inflation and faster rate hikes meant that sovereign bond yields rose sharply around the world. For instance, the US 10yr Treasury yield was up +12.9bps last week (-1.6bps Friday) to 4.68%, and on Thursday it closed at its highest level since January 2025, at 4.69%. There were also some big milestones for real yields, with the US 30yr real yield up +7.9bps last week (+0.3bps Friday) to a post-2008 high of 2.97%. It was a similar story elsewhere, with Germany’s 10yr bund yield up +4.7bps last week (-3.1bps Friday) to 3.17%, and on Thursday it closed at a post-2011 high of 3.20%.   

Against that backdrop, equities put in a mixed performance around the world. In the US, the S&P 500 fell -0.61% (+0.05% Friday), marking back-to-back weekly declines for the first time since March. That happened despite a recovery in chip stocks, with the Philly semiconductor index up +1.24% last week (-4.25% Friday). And outside the US, equities put in a stronger performance, with the STOXX 600 up +0.46% last week thanks to a +0.82% recovery on Friday as hopes for new US-Iran talks rekindled. The Nikkei was up +0.73% (-2.73% Friday).

Finally in other asset classes, geopolitical fears offered support to the US dollar, with the dollar index +0.70% last week, whilst gold rose +0.88%. Meanwhile, credit spreads widened in the US, with IG spreads (+2bps) and HY spreads (+12bps) both moving higher. And in Europe, IG spreads were flat, while HY spreads widened by +5bps.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 08:22

Iran Blasts "Freeloader" Zelensky For Ordering Deadly Attack On Caspian Vessel "At Israel's Behest" Summary:

• Iran Accuses Zelensky of Ordering Deadly Caspian Vessel Attack
• Weekend US Crude via IG Markets Down 5% 
• Iran Will Halt Tit-For-Tat Strikes If US Maintains Pause
• Iran, Oman Hold Hormuz Talks As US Pauses Airstrikes For Second Day

*  *  *

//--> //--> US x Iran Effective Ceasefire by August 31?
Yes 75% · No 26%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Iran Lashes Out at "Freeloader" Zelensky for Caspian Sea Attack

Iran has accused Ukraine of attacking an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, which it says resulted in an explosion that killed one sailor and injured another.

As we previously reported of the Saturday maritime incident, Ukraine seems to be openly boasting of this escalation. President Zelensky himself announced soon after on X, "We also have very good results from long-range strikes in the waters of the Caspian Sea. In particular, these are vessels that were involved in transporting military cargo from Iran, and a warship."

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran to severely protest the "hostile and criminal" attack on Saturday, IRNA reported. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has further warned that the "blatant UN Charter violation" which was "done at Israel's behest" could serve to "drag Europe into its war." Araghchi also denounced and attacked Zelensky personally, calling him the "freeloader in Kyiv"...

Zelenskyy has attacked an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor. A blatant UN Charter violation done at Israel's behest to drag Europe into its war.

In calls with EU High Rep Kallas and FM Lavrov, made clear that what the freeloader in Kyiv did CANNOT GO UNANSWERED.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 26, 2026

The risk of the Russia-Ukraine conflict merging with the US-Iran conflict seems plausible, but still remains low, and yet the Caspian Sea situation shows that it is actually possible. The Iranians have sought alternative trade and shipping routes via the Caspian, and early in Operation Epic Fury Israeli warplanes reportedly targeted and took out Iranian naval vessels there.

This isn't the first time that FM Araghchi has called out Zelensky. Back in January of this year, for example, he called Zelensky a "confused clown", and said that the Ukrainian leader had been "rinsing American and European taxpayers to fill the pockets of his corrupt generals." The two countries have previously clashed over Iran supplying Russia with Shahed suicide drones.

Iran Will Halt Tit-For-Tat Strikes If US Maintains Pause 

The diplomatic track appears to have opened with the Trump administration's move to pause strikes as a goodwill gesture ahead of the weekend - now in its second day. That created space for Omani officials to meet their Iranian counterparts over the weekend, with Tehran reporting "some progress." The talks have now produced a reciprocal stand-down, under which Iran would halt retaliatory strikes on US bases as long as the US maintains its pause in airstrikes.

Reuters reports:

Iran will halt its own attacks as long as the United States maintains its latest pause on air strikes, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday, after President Donald Trump abruptly called off ‌his two-week-old bombing campaign.

After 13 nights of intensifying U.S. air strikes on Iran, the Pentagon abruptly suspended the campaign late on Friday, with no U.S. attacks reported on either Saturday or Sunday.

Iran, which had been following each night of U.S. attacks with its own strikes on neighboring countries that host U.S. bases, has also so far held fire for two days.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, told Fox News on Sunday that Trump had decided to pause U.S. attacks to allow more time for diplomacy.

"He's giving talks some space, he's giving it a little bit of room," Waltz said, without providing further details.

The senior Iranian source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters: "Iran's position remains 'attack for attack': if the attacks stop, Iran will also halt its operations. That message has already been conveyed to the United States."

The source added: "However, Iran is prepared to mount a broad response should the U.S. launch another attack."

Asked about the pause, a senior official in Trump's administration said on Saturday that the president "has always been clear that his preference is diplomacy, but he has shown Iran what will happen if they fail to come to the table in a serious way."

The senior Iranian source said Tehran did not hold much hope that Trump's decision to pause strikes represented a major shift in the U.S. negotiating position.

"There is more skepticism than optimism about the halt in attacks. The prevailing view is that the pause is tactical rather than genuine. Iran has accumulated enough bitter experience with what it sees as U.S. deception," the source said.

As a result of both sides trying to find a diplomatic route to ending the intensifying tit-for-tat strikes that sent Brent crude futures north of $100 a barrel last week, Weekend US Crude via IG Markets is down about 5% as of late morning New York time.

Iran, Oman Hold Hormuz Talks As US Pauses Airstrikes For Second Day

The US military paused its air campaign against Iran for a second consecutive night after nearly two weeks of tit-for-tat strikes. US strikes were aimed at degrading Tehran's one-way attack drone and missile capabilities around the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran hit US bases in the region.

The pause offers the clearest signal yet that a diplomatic off-ramp may be emerging, with Iranian and Omani officials reporting progress in talks to reopen the critical waterway.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in a Telegram post that he met with the Omani deputy foreign minister and held talks on Friday and Saturday about restoring safe transit for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

Baghaei said the officials exchanged views on principles and operational mechanisms for managing safe maritime navigation through the strait.

"The talks were constructive, and some progress was made," he added, noting that technical and political consultations remain ongoing. The Omani delegation left Tehran on Saturday evening.

Camera zooms in to reveal LINE of ships all 'stopped in Strait of Hormuz' — Fars News pic.twitter.com/F8wDPdBDBT

— RTVisual (@RT_Visual_on_X) July 26, 2026

The talks coincided with the US military's two-day pause in strikes and came as Brent crude futures surged into triple-digit territory and the national average for regular gasoline jumped above the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon mark.

JPMorgan's head of Global Commodities Research and Strategy, Natasha Kaneva, told clients last week that Brent prices at this level could increase pressure on Washington to reopen diplomatic channels.

Meanwhile, Iranian Army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia appeared on state television on Sunday and warned the US that any further strikes would widen the conflict.

"I believe that if the Americans once again fall for the Zionists' deception, or move in line with them, and insist on continuing the war, particularly through air strikes, geographically this will expand further," Akraminia warned.

Akraminia said the conflict has already expanded to the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the southern Red Sea, referencing the recent Houthi attacks on tankers.

"The scope of our operations now encompasses the entire region, from US bases in Jordan to the countries along the Persian Gulf," he said.

Earlier, United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported an incident in the southern Red Sea after a "tanker witnessed a splash from an unknown projectile in proximity to the vessel." Details are scant at the moment.

Next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Washington, DC to meet with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

Latest overnight headlines, courtesy of Bloomberg:

US-Iran Strike Pause

• The US paused its nearly two-week run of nightly strikes on Iran for a second consecutive night as of Sunday morning.
• According to the Telegraph, Trump paused plans to escalate the war after being warned the US is running low on missiles; the pause also allows time for negotiations with Iran.
• Iran's army spokesman said Iran has also paused its retaliatory operations in response to the US halt. Still, he warned that if the US carries out ground operations, American vulnerability would increase.
• Netanyahu said he will discuss the Iran situation with Trump.

Diplomacy & Negotiations

• Trump said Friday the US was "locked and loaded" for major new strikes but had not yet decided whether to proceed while talks with Iran were ongoing; he said Iran would "love to make a deal" but it's not time yet.
• Trump leaned toward diplomacy on Friday, referencing negotiations with Iranian officials six times during a 38-minute Oval Office appearance, while leaving open the possibility of military escalation.
• Iranian and Omani deputy foreign ministers held talks in Tehran on Friday and Saturday on managing safe maritime navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, with some progress reported.
• China urged Iran and the US to return to the ceasefire agreement, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressing deep concern over renewed escalation in the Middle East.

Regional Spillover

• Iran-backed Houthis claimed to have fired missiles and drones at Saudi Aramco facilities in Jizan and Yanbu on Saturday; Saudi authorities briefly issued emergency warnings before saying the danger had passed, with no immediate confirmation from the Saudi government or Aramco.
• A UK Navy report on Sunday noted a projectile fell near a tanker in the southern Red Sea; the vessel and crew were reported safe.
• An LPG tanker with 28 Indian crew members was attacked in Iranian territorial waters on Friday; India's embassy confirmed the crew are safe.

Background & Context

• The US had gradually expanded the scope of its strikes over two weeks, hitting bridges and infrastructure deeper inside Iran, after a brief ceasefire in June collapsed over a battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warned that the war's outcome hinges on the Strait of Hormuz, calling a decisive clash imminent.

Previous US-Iran Wrap

• Trump Pursues Diplomatic Off-Ramp As Omani Delegation Arrives In Tehran: Report

Regional Risks

• War Zones Converging? Zelensky Says Ukraine Hit Ship "Transporting Military Cargo" From Iran

Energy Market

• Gas Prices Nearing Levels That Could Push Trump Towards Iran Talks, Says JPM Commodities Expert
• Goldman Warns Brent Could Top $120 If Gulf Chokepoint Crisis Deepens
• RBC Commodities Chief Warns "War Entering Dangerous Phase" As Chokepoint Chaos Risks Oil Above 2008 Peak
• "It's Getting Worse": HSBC Warns Commodities Face Squeeze As Chokepoint Chaos Spreads

Rewiring Gulf Energy Supply Chains

• Seven Pipeline Projects That Could Break Iran's Grip On Hormuz Chokepoint
• Gulf States Considering Network Of New Pipelines To Bypass Strait Of Hormuz
• Great Rewiring: US Supports Iraq-Syria Oil Pipeline To Erode Tehran's Hormuz Leverage
• Dubai's New East Coast Port Signals The Beginning Of End For Iran's Hormuz Leverage

 

 

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 08:05

Nvidia Weighs $250 Billion Backstop For OpenAI's Gargantuan Ohio Data Center Campus

Nvidia is in early talks to provide up to $250 billion in financing guarantees to help OpenAI lease computing capacity from a planned $500 billion, 10-gigawatt data center facility in Ohio, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. The proposed deal highlights investor concerns that the AI bubble has been fueled by circular financing.

The SoftBank-led project is located in southern Ohio and, when fully built, would support 10 gigawatts of computing capacity, or roughly equivalent to the output of 10 large nuclear reactors. The first 800-megawatt phase is targeted for 2028. This would rank the facility among the world's largest AI infrastructure hubs.

The potential backstop would help SoftBank secure financing while supporting future demand for Nvidia's chips, further highlighting the circular nature of the AI boom. Sources said Nvidia-OpenAI negotiations are still ongoing and could change at any time.

"While Nvidia's investments and partnerships reinforce confidence in long-term AI buildouts, investors remain concerned about circular financing," said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, as quoted by the media outlet.

Last week we noted ...

The problem with the $2 trillion in circular AI financing is that it is all contingent on the frontiers (Anthropic/ OpenAI) being money good on their $1.5+TN in unfunded commitments. Which they won't be if Chinese open LLMs grab market share

Hence the push against Chinese LLMs

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 23, 2026

The Bank for International Settlements warned last month (read report) that a "disappointment in returns could trigger a sudden pullback in financing and turn the capex boom into a protracted investment bust, with potential knock-on effects on financial conditions." It added that a "major equity-market correction could have larger macroeconomic consequences today than in the past."

Against that backdrop, traders will be laser-focused on this week's Big Tech earnings for signals regarding the trajectory of AI capital spending and, more importantly, whether those investments are beginning to generate adequate returns (read report). Given the high concentration of AI stocks powering major equity indexes higher, the results could determine the market's next big move.

Ed Dowd, writing on the Beyond the Narrative Substack, previously warned that the AI-capex rocket fuel propelling markets may be starting to fade. He identified four factors behind the potential inflection point. Read more here.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 07:20

Chamath Warns A Government Ban On Open-Source AI Would Tank The Market And Crater Anthropic And OpenAI

Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya warned that any U.S. move to ban open-source AI would blow a hole in corporate balance sheets and drag the stock market down.

"If the United States government intervenes, it will tank the stock market. Not debatable," Palihapitiya said on the "All-In" podcast released over the weekend. "Now, you can debate which companies get tanked. For example, if they said, 'No more open source. American companies cannot use open source.'"

Chamath: Banning Open Source AI Will Crash the Stock Market. @chamath: "If the United States government intervenes, it will tank the stock market. Not debatable. Now, you can debate which companies get tanked..."

— The All-In Podcast (@theallinpod) July 25, 2026

"Okay, let's take an average normal company, Coca-Cola," Palihapitiya continued. "'Hey, Coca-Cola, you're trying to use AI to improve your business. You know what? You can only use these two options. And those things cost 50-100x more than your other best alternative that you may use otherwise.'"

"That will eventually show up in your costs. And so this incredibly important input into your cost model is now orders of magnitude, multiples greater than your competitors that are outside the United States, simply because you're in the United States," he added. "You're forced to absorb costs that aren't rational nor market-driven. So then Coca-Cola has to get re-rated."

Palihapitiya then turned on the labs themselves, arguing that their revenue depends on government-erected barriers rather than real market demand.

"But then you look at the people who are selling those tokens, and this is where Anthropic and OpenAI need to understand, if the government comes in and actually tells you that there's no open source, their valuation will crater," he said.

"Why? Because all of that revenue is artificially being propped up. It's not being driven by market demand where you're being forced to compete. It's because of regulatory capture where you now get an artificial constraint. But it only works in one market.

"All roads lead to market chaos if anybody gets involved, so we should just not get involved."

Palihapitiya's co-host, former AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, went further, accusing Anthropic of running to Washington for regulatory cover.

"This is literally the most successful tech company of all time, and they're racing to the government to basically say you need to protect us against our competitors. Not just our Chinese competitors, our American competitors," Sacks said. "Frankly, it's gross."

"This is literally the most successful tech company of all time, and they're racing to the government to basically say you need to protect us against our competitors... Frankly, it's gross." - David Sacks

— (@innovationcncl) July 25, 2026

"If you say that American companies can't use what's in the public domain, or that somehow it's tainted with IP theft, you are basically going to put a dagger through the heart of the entire American open source ecosystem," he added.

The fight has consumed Washington since Moonshot AI's release of Kimi K3. The Beijing startup's open-weight model beat Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in blind front-end coding tests, according to Axios, and unlike its closed American rivals, anyone can download it.

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir and more than 20 other companies fired off a joint letter on Friday urging policymakers to avoid "premature restrictions" on open-weight models, warning that such limits would "stifle competition or drive innovation overseas," CNBC reported.

Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.

— Jensen Huang (@JensenHuang) July 24, 2026

Anthropic did not sign.

If the letter was meant to cool things off, it didn't. The Trump administration spent the week accusing Moonshot of stealing American technology outright. White House science chief Michael Kratsios said Wednesday that Moonshot built Kimi K3 by distilling Anthropic's technology, and accused the startup of obtaining restricted Nvidia GB300 chips through servers in Thailand.

We have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable. They developed a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large scale distillation against U.S. models... acquired GB300-equipped servers and has accessed GB300s in Thailand, likely to train its AI models.

— Michael Kratsios (@mkratsios47) July 22, 2026

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also weighed in, writing on X: "We support open-source AI and the innovation it unlocks. But open source is not open season on American IP. When PRC firms conduct covert, industrial-scale distillation attacks that cross the line into IP theft, sanctions and Entity List designations will be on the table."

We support open-source AI and the innovation it unlocks. But open source is not open season on American IP. When PRC firms conduct covert, industrial-scale distillation attacks that cross the line into IP theft, sanctions and Entity List designations will be on the table.

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) July 22, 2026

However, there were signs over the weekend the open-source camp may be winning. Luther Lowe, head of public policy at Y Combinator, posted on X that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told him at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner: "This White House will protect open source AI."

I had a chance to chat with @howardlutnick tonight at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and he said directly to me: "This White House will protect open source AI."

— Luther Lowe (@lutherlowe) July 25, 2026 Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 06:55

Elizabeth Warren Claims Crypto Clarity Act Would Help Trump... And 'Criminals & Cartels'

Authored by Matthew Di Salvo via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has blasted the Clarity Act draft bill, claiming it would allow criminals and cartels to move money. 

Speaking in a video statement on X Wednesday, Warren hinted that the potential law would allow President Donald Trump to make money from crypto. 

Lawmakers are currently mulling over the latest draft of the Clarity Act, which aims to set in stone digital asset regulation. The latest draft bans officials and their families from issuing or promoting crypto. 

“This latest draft bill would make it easier for criminals, oh, and cartels and terrorists to move money and finance their operations — and it fails to protect investors and our financial system,” Warren said in the video. 

“It’s going to a vote on the floor. There’s a glaring omission: it does not stop Donald Trump from cashing in on his presidency.” 

“This isn’t regulation — this is a giveaway. This bill should be dead on arrival,” added Warren. 

The new draft of the Senate GOP crypto bill does nothing to stop President Trump from making his next $1.4 billion from crypto.

It’ll supercharge Trump’s crypto corruption.

This bill should be dead on arrival. pic.twitter.com/HuNY52n3ex

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 22, 2026

But X users added clarification to Warren’s video, highlighting that the Senate GOP’s updated draft includes ethics provisions banning federal officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets. 

Trump’s crypto ventures 

Warren has long been a crypto critic, initially arguing that billions of dollars go missing every year thanks to tax dodging crypto users. 

Most recently, Warren has called for a probe into the Trump family’s top crypto ventures. 

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto space but some Washington lawmakers have criticized the way the Trump family has profited from digital asset ventures, such as the Republican’s meme coin, TRUMP, and World Liberty Financial project. 

Trump and the White House have always denied any conflicts of interest. 

Latest Clarity Bill 

Senate Republicans began circulating new text of the bill this week, ahead of a possible floor vote. 

US banking representatives, regulators and crypto bigwigs have been meeting at the White House to work on the Clarity Act since last year. 

The bill was passed by the House of Representatives but banking chiefs raised concerns over stablecoins and the yield they will potentially pay customers. 

Banking representatives have warned they could lose their deposit base and, in turn, their ability to lend to U.S. businesses if companies are allowed to pay rewards on stablecoins.

On Thursday, Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO David Solomon became one of the first big bankers to throw his support behind the bill. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 06:30

Left-Wing Activists Rush To Defend Islamic Migrants After Attack On Berlin Pride Parade

Is "suicidal empathy" the real cause of the western world's immigration crisis?  Or, is the political left completely devoid of empathy?  Is the multicultural agenda so important to them that they're willing to sacrifice their own people to protect it? 

The problem of "intersectionality" and engineered mass immigration is that progressive ideals are not shared or respected by most cultures.  Leftists envision a sweeping coalition of socialist and minority groups joining forces to destroy the "evil colonial west", but they seem to be ignoring the fact that foreign elements entering Europe and the US hate liberals as much as they hate conservatives.   

This might not be stupidity - it might be a calculated risk on the part of woke leaders who are happy to throw a few of their "comrades" to the third world wolves in the service of the "greater good."  A common tactic of Antifa and related organizations in the face of a terror attack or criminal event that makes them look bad is to counter by diverting the public discourse.  The pattern is undeniable and undoubtedly well planned. 

For example, public information on the assassination of Charlie Kirk was immediately diverted with false claims that the shooting suspect (Tyler Robinson) is "right wing".  When that narrative fell apart, they fabricated an elaborate conspiracy theory blaming Israel, Kirk's own organization and his wife. 

As it turns out, Robinson confessed to his family members and his transgender partner that he committed the murder.  The fraudulent theories have been destroyed by the evidence, but the mission was already accomplished - Leftists and their allies were able to derail public outrage and avoid retribution.

Jimmy Kimmel said the Charlie Kirk shooter Tyler Robinson was MAGA. Is he right?pic.twitter.com/n6fhA8mr2k

— You Have to See This (@UHave2C) September 17, 2025

When a minority or migrant commits a heinous crime against a white person, activist groups organize protest events against "whiteness", as if white people are liable for the actions of minorities.   

When attacks on LGBT groups are committed by Muslim suspects, progressives often step in and protest:  Not against Islam, but against western conservatives as the cause of the violence.  The slaughter at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida is often associated with US conservative movements; the fact that the perpetrator (Omar Mateen) was Muslim is completely washed over.

Someone else is always the culprit and leftists and their "allies" always escape scrutiny.

Now, we see the same pattern in Germany where a Muslim (Abdul Ballout) was shot and killed after ramming a vehicle through a pride parade, killing one person and injuring 29 others.  Leftists are desperate to divert attention away from the Islamic issue and they are brazenly blaming conservatives for the attack. 

The organizers of the parade have made a public statement admonishing anyone who points out that the attack once again proves that Muslim immigration into Europe is a problem.  They assert that the attempted mass murder should not be used to "create division" and at no point did they cite Islam as a potential motivating ideology.

"People are trying to divide our society and set some people against others. As the CSD in Berlin, we will not allow this."

The organisers of Berlin Pride say yesterday's attack must not be used "for political ends".

Latest: https://t.co/1S1CaCFVtz

📺 Sky 501 and Virgin 602 pic.twitter.com/41qBdUbRoL

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 26, 2026

Activists have rushed to social media to scapegoat the right wing.  In many cases, simply acknowledging the connections between constant attacks in Europe and the mass immigration of third worlders is treated as a trigger for further violence.  In other words, the more conservatives point out the source of the threat, the more responsible they are for the violence against LGBT groups. 

As expected the deranged left wing liberal blames White men for the Islamic terror attack at the Berlin pride event

Says we shouldn’t blame an entire community for the Muslims actions but blames an entire community (white men) for a Muslims actions 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/b61Ev0rroV

— Zee •*. 🔥 (@Zeeeee_xx) July 26, 2026

Of course, Christians in Europe are also the regular targets of attack by Muslim migrants.  Numerous Christmas festivals in Germany have been cancelled in recent years for this very reason.  Muslims keep driving trucks into them and killing people.  But that's of no concern to progressives, and neither is the murder of their fellow activists.  They simply cannot allow conservatives to be right about immigration.

“Hopefully it's a white Christian person, not a person of color” — the vigil speech about the car crash into the CSD now has English subtitles and is ready...

Subscribers skip this queue — their videos get translated first.

Tap Subscribe on @translatemom to jump the line ⚡ pic.twitter.com/DRxmlbTD7b

— TranslateMom (@TranslateMom) July 26, 2026

“Hearing the news that a car — a man in a car [drove into the crowd]… the first thing I thought was: ‘Hopefully it’s not a Kanake (Muslim foreigner)… hopefully it’s a Christian white person.’  But it wasn’t.  That’s where intersectionality comes into play again. We don’t all fight the same battles, but we’re there for each other in moments like these. And that’s beautiful.”

That's right, whenever these attacks occur, leftists are hoping it was a white conservatives behind the wheel or on the trigger, but this is rarely the case.  When it's one of their own or a migrant, they call for unity and intersectionality and shift the blame. 

It's obvious that the multicultural agenda is more important to progressive leaders than the LGBT agenda.  If the woke left actually gets what they want (which is total invasion of the west by the third world) many of their supposed principles will face elimination by those same migrants.  Leftists don't care.  What they want is to burn the west to the ground.  The ends justify the means.  

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 05:45

If This Isn't Treason, What Is?

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A newly revealed internal memo from the final days of the Biden administration exposes a calculated scheme to grant de facto amnesty to more than 3 million foreign nationals through Temporary Protected Status expansions, explicitly designed to block President Trump from carrying out the mass deportations the American people voted for.

Senator Eric Schmitt obtained the document, which laid out options to shield vast numbers of Guatemalans, Ecuadorians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and others from removal.

The plan aimed to force everything through activist judges and trap the incoming administration in years of litigation. As one post put it bluntly, this was a last-minute bid to protect foreign invaders before Trump took office.

? HOLY CRAP. A bombshell new memo exposes Biden officials in their final days plotted to grant DE FACTO AMNESTY to 3 MILLION FOREIGN INVADERS via TPS, in a last-minute bid to block President Trump from deporting them, forcing everything through activist judges

"BEFORE Trump... pic.twitter.com/zL1LmXK6OS

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 25, 2026

The memo, dated around January 2025 though erroneously marked 2024 in places, estimated potential new TPS eligibility for roughly 1.5 million Guatemalans, 600,000 Ecuadorians, 464,000 Nicaraguans, 455,000 Venezuelans, plus smaller groups from Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan.

The total exceeded 3.1 million people. Senior advisors recommended creating 2.1 million new TPS designees in the administration's closing weeks, even while acknowledging that TPS applications take six months to process.

Schmitt commented, "My investigation uncovered that the Lame Duck Biden White House tried to keep millions of illegal aliens in our country by abusing the 'Temporary' Protected Status program."

"After the American people voted for President Trump's promise to end the TPS scam, the Biden administration tried to subvert the will of the American people," he continued, adding "This was mass amnesty-by-decree. America is for Americans, and it is our home - it is not a permanent refugee camp."

Schmitt further urged that "Biden tried to turn TPS into a 3.1-million-person deportation shield, protect Tren de Aragua members, and trap President Trump in years of litigation."

The most disturbing part, Schmitt noted, was the push to create millions of new designees so late in the term. "Luckily, that never happened and we have been deporting Ecuadorians and Guatemalans."

The memo itself referenced past court battles. It noted that prior federal litigation during Trump's first term had successfully halted efforts to terminate TPS for countries including Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, El Salvador, Nepal and Honduras, largely because of incomplete factual records.

It suggested the Biden team was prepared for more of the same under the new administration. Stakeholders, including a list of Democratic senators, had requested new designations for Ecuador and Guatemala in particular.

One week after the memo's circulation, the Biden administration extended TPS protections for nearly a million noncitizens. The full 3-million-plus plan was not fully executed, but the intent was clear: leave Trump with an even larger protected population and a thicket of lawsuits.

The contrast with what Trump has already delivered could not be sharper. Under this administration, migrant encounters at the southwest border have collapsed to historic lows not seen in more than half a century.

Fiscal year 2025 recorded just 237,538 Border Patrol encounters - the lowest annual total since 1970 - after years of Biden-era peaks above 2 million. Monthly southwest border apprehensions have stayed under 10,000 for consecutive months, with June 2026 at 9,848, a 94 percent drop from the Biden monthly average and 96 percent below the previous peak.

Fourteen straight months of zero releases by Border Patrol have turned the border from a free-for-all into a controlled line. Would-be crossers are staying home because the message is finally clear: you will not be released into the interior.

Trump Administration senior official Stephen Miller has recently made plain that every single Haitian migrant is going back to Haiti under Trump. The administration is not playing games with "temporary" status that somehow becomes permanent.

We have seen the dire consequences of the open-borders years stacking up. Most recently, an illegal alien was alleged to be the ringleader in a terror plot targeting government officials at the UFC White House event.

The real price of this mass illegal immigration is measured in American lives destroyed. Young women, fathers, toddlers, ordinary citizens going about their days have paid the ultimate price because politicians and bureaucrats treated the border as a suggestion and enforcement as optional.

The pattern repeats without mercy.

 

In one case, an illegal alien bit a portion of a toddler's face off and ate it. The horror is almost beyond comprehension, yet it occurred on American soil under policies that prioritized foreign nationals over citizens.

Biden officials wanted to facilitate more of this.

 

Democrats empowered sick criminal illegal alien predators to prey on women and children. The record is clear and damning.

Even CNN has been forced to concede that Democrats are now cooked on immigration. The public saw the chaos, the crime, the costs, and rejected it.

These are the predictable results of deliberate policy choices that flooded communities with unvetted people, stretched law enforcement thin, and treated American citizens as an afterthought.

TPS was never meant to become a permanent shield for millions. "Temporary" was the operative word. Turning it into a mass-protection racket against the explicit will of voters crosses a line that should alarm anyone who still believes sovereignty matters.

The memo's authors understood the stakes. They knew Trump intended to end the TPS scam. They prepared litigation strategies in advance. They calculated the numbers. They recommended action in the lame-duck window.

That is not ordinary bureaucratic inertia. That is an attempt to lock in the results of open-borders policies after the public rejected them at the ballot box.

All the officials who did this should be on trial for treason pic.twitter.com/MOLVAdgB6v

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 25, 2026

President Trump's team is already moving to reverse course. Deportations are underway. Extensions are being challenged and terminated where the law allows. The Supreme Court has cleared paths in key cases. The era of treating TPS as a backdoor amnesty is over for those serious about restoring the rule of law.

Mass deportations must be supercharged, not slowed by leftover bureaucratic landmines. The people who wrote and advanced this memo sought to aid and abet the continued presence of millions who have no right to remain.

If that does not qualify as a profound betrayal of the constitutional order and the citizens it exists to protect, the word has lost its meaning.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 05:00

Intern At NATO Military Headquarters In Belgium Faces Spying Charges

Belgian authorities arrested an intern working inside NATO's military headquarters, accusing her of spying.

Nato’s sprawling military HQ close to Mons in western Belgium is where commanders plan and execute global operations and co-ordinate responses to threats © AP

The intern was working at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, (SHAPE), in Mons, Belgium, where NATO commanders plan operations and coordinate the alliance's response to threats across the continent.

"A Canadian national of Chinese origin, an intern at SHAPE, was served with an arrest warrant on Friday 24 July 2026," the The Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement. "She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization."

Investigators withheld her name and offered no details about the country she allegedly served or the criminal organization prosecutors say she joined.

According to the Associated Press, the Federal Prosecutor's Office "launched an espionage investigation after NATO's security services tipped off Belgium's military intelligence."

More from AP:

The arrest in Belgium comes at a crucial time for the alliance as it weathers deep criticism from President Donald Trump who has drawn down the U.S. security role in Europe. Trump has been pressing allies to spend more on defense and join the conflict in Iran while at the same time threatening to seize by force Greenland from NATO-member Denmark, a move that rattled Europeans and the alliance.

Last year, following pressure from Trump, 32 NATO nations agreed to invest 5% of their gross domestic product on defense - 3.5% on defense items such as jets and missiles and 1.5% on infrastructure, including roads, bridges and ports, as well as cybersecurity.

Investigators searched the intern's home and her workplace the day before her arrest, according to the prosecutor's office. The raid and the arrest that followed suggest Belgian authorities moved with unusual speed once SHAPE flagged the concern, though prosecutors have released none of the evidence that triggered the case.

It is not entirely clear what kind of sensitive information the intern had access to, if any at all, but NATO downplayed any fallout from the arrest.

"At this time, there is no indication that NATO or SHAPE operational readiness, command and control arrangements, or ongoing tasks have been adversely affected," SHAPE spokesperson Martin O'Donnell said. "SHAPE continues to fulfil its responsibilities without interruption."

That reassurance arrives from an organization with every incentive to project calm, and NATO offered nothing to explain how a single intern managed to draw suspicion of espionage in the first place. The vagueness extends to the identity of the country prosecutors believe she served. Belgian officials named neither the nation nor the criminal organization, leaving observers to guess whether Beijing sits behind the case or whether the "Chinese origin" detail amounts to a red herring prosecutors chose to disclose regardless. Last year a Chinese cyberattack against Belgium's own intelligence services came to light, and Belgian police detained one of their own officers on suspicion of spying for both China and Russia at once.

Even Canadian officials kept their public comments thin. "As the matter remains under investigation, we are not in a position to comment on specifics at this time," Public Safety Canada told CBC News. The department added that "Canadians can be assured that all Government of Canada law enforcement and intelligence agencies maintain strong relationships with partner agencies that assist in addressing threat-related activity like those described in relation to the arrest made in Belgium on Thursday."

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 04:15

European Wildfires, Net-Zero Stagnation, & The Great Industry Displacement

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

Europe’s wildfire crisis has also exposed the failure of public spending rhetoric unsupported by effective land and forest management. EU governments spent 40.6 billion euros on fire protection services in 2023. In 2022, the total expenditure stood at EUR 37.4 billion. The European Court of Auditors discovered that spending oversight was incomplete, result monitoring was weak, and there was no assurance that the most impactful actions received financing. At the same time, the average annual burnt area in the EU rose to 527,000 hectares in 2021-2024, up sharply from 268,000 hectares in 2006-2010, showing that more money has not guaranteed better outcomes.

European Commission policy documents acknowledge that sustainable forest management, vegetation thinning, firebreaks, access roads, buffer zones, mixed grazing, and prescribed burning are essential to reduce wildfire risk.

Therefore, the worsening wildfire record is not only a climate story but also a policy failure in land management, prevention design, and execution.

This is just another example of how big government does not mean better services. The European Union spends more and gets worse results. What do governments say? Of course, they need more revenue.

Net zero is proving to be a failure wherever it is implemented. From 1996 to 2024, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada cut CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions, but most of the reduction came from economic stagnation and deindustrialization, higher domestic energy costs, and a rising dependence on imported manufactured goods from more carbon-intensive economies such as Russia, China and India. EDGAR’s 2025 release provides country and sector time series from 1970 to 2024 and shows that global greenhouse gas emissions reached 53.2 Gt CO₂eq in 2024, up 1.3 percent from 2023, even as many advanced economies continued to report lower domestic emissions.

The central issue is not whether emissions in Europe, the UK and Canada fell. They did. The issue is whether almost two decades of tax-based climate policy, net-zero mandates, and CO₂ price mechanisms delivered durable decarbonization without hollowing out productive industry. The evidence shows that most of the apparent success came from weaker domestic industrial output and a larger share of energy-intensive production moving abroad.

Since the late 1990s and especially after the mid-2000s, European climate policy has relied on carbon pricing, emissions caps, renewable mandates, massive energy taxes, and direct subsidy programs, added to net-zero targets. The EU Emissions Trading System, the UK’s successive carbon budget framework under the Climate Change Act, and Canada’s federal and provincial carbon-price architecture all aimed to make emissions expensive and low-carbon investment more attractive.

These policies did reduce domestic emissions intensity in several sectors, but they also increased costs for energy-intensive industries that compete globally on thin margins. OECD analysis of the clean-energy transition and job displacement in energy-intensive industries finds significant adjustment costs and employment losses in exposed sectors across OECD economies, even where aggregate employment data obscure the local and regional damage.

EDGAR’s long-run database shows that for Europe and the UK, emissions trends since 1996 show substantial territorial declines, especially after 2005, while Canada’s progress is more limited and uneven.

In 1996, the advanced industrial economies of Europe, the UK, and Canada still retained a larger share of heavy industry and manufacturing capacity than they do today. By 2024, these economies had reduced domestic emissions significantly, but global emissions had risen, with China and India accounting for a far larger share of world industrial output and CO2 emissions. EDGAR’s 2025 report shows that global emissions continued to climb in 2024, despite the years of climate policy architecture in Europe and the expanding net-zero agenda in advanced economies.

If the policy model were decisively successful, one would expect falling emissions in high-tax, high-regulation economies to be matched by a broader flattening of global emissions, especially after years of carbon pricing and climate spending. Instead, emissions have often been redistributed geographically through trade and offshoring. Furthermore, if the green policy framework had worked, there would have been stronger job creation, economic growth and manufacturing output from these policies. It was the opposite.

The IEA notes a changing landscape of global emissions in which advanced economies account for a smaller share while emerging Asia’s role expands rapidly. EDGAR’s country data and reports indicate that China and India have posted large increases in absolute emissions over the same broad period in which Europe and the UK pursued ever tighter climate goals. Global supply chains absorbed a meaningful share of the industrial activity no longer produced domestically in the West.

This is why territorial accounting for emissions is misleading. A country can reduce emissions on its balance sheet while increasing consumption of imported goods whose production is more carbon-intensive abroad. In that case, domestic policy changes the location of emissions more than the level of global emissions.

The economic cost is visible in the structure of output, employment, and investment. Research on net zero in power and industry shows that job creation and value added depend heavily on keeping supply chains local. Therefore, as production is imported, the economic gains shrink while domestic adjustment costs remain. The Resolution Foundation’s work on net-zero jobs highlights that the shift to a greener economy affects jobs differently in various regions and industries, with industrial areas suffering even though overall green investment figures are not enough.

All this has meant slower industrial investment, higher electricity and fuel costs for consumers, and more reliance on fiscal transfers, subsidies, and industrial-policy packages to offset the damage caused by the initial policy shock. Thus, governments first make domestic production pricier through taxes, carbon prices, and mandates, then spend billions of public funds trying to compensate some firms and households for the resulting loss of competitiveness and purchasing power.

Canada is a clear example of this policy failure. Climate spending and carbon-pricing frameworks are justified as tools for long-run competitiveness. However, none of that has happened and it has been virtually impossible to preserve industrial activity when firms can relocate investment to lower-cost jurisdictions. The same logic applies in Europe and the UK, where subsidy races and compensation schemes have become a permanent feature of climate policy rather than a temporary bridge.

The strongest criticism of tax-heavy climate policy is empirical. Global emissions are still rising nearly two decades after the expansion of carbon markets, energy taxes, and net-zero commitments. EDGAR reports that global greenhouse gas emissions hit 53.2 Gt CO2eq in 2024. The IEA similarly describes a global emissions landscape in which reductions in advanced economies are offset by increases elsewhere, particularly in countries where coal remains central to power generation and manufacturing.

China and India became indispensable to global manufacturing during precisely the period in which Western governments tightened domestic climate policy. In essence, European, UK and Canadian climate policies have worked as a giant subsidy to Chinese and Indian growth paid by domestic consumers.

The result is a model that can be called net zero stagnation. Although domestic emissions fall, so does industrial capacity and real net wage growth, while the world remains on a rising emissions path. Europe, the UK, and Canada have proven that taxes, carbon pricing, and public spending suppress local emissions at the expense of  displacing domestic industry. These policies tend to reduce global emissions only by displacing production, weakening competitiveness, making citizens poorer, and increasing the role of the state in the economy.

A stronger climate strategy would focus less on symbolic targets and punitive taxation and more on technological innovation, free markets, domestic energy supply, productivity growth, and open competition. Until then, much of the celebrated emissions progress in advanced economies will come from disappearing factories and weaker competitiveness.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 03:30

Which NATO Countries Boosted Defense Spending The Most In 2025?

NATO’s European members and Canada increased defense spending by 20% in 2025, the group’s biggest military buildup in the last decade.

Created in partnership with Inigo, this graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross, shows which NATO countries increased spending the most and how much they now spend as a share of GDP.

Spending Heavyweights, Ranked by Annual Increases

Our analysis covers NATO countries that spent over $10 billion on defense in 2025.

Belgium was the country with the biggest spending jump of 58%. Once among NATO’s lowest defense spenders, Belgium has boosted its budget to meet the alliance’s current 2% of GDP target. The country’s increased spending is focused on operations, maintenance, and research and development.

Source: NATO. Figures for 2025 are estimates.

The next largest jump among big spenders was Denmark, with a 49% increase. Threats from Russia and a bid from the U.S. administration to buy Greenland prompted the focus on defense. In the Arctic, Denmark is investing in two new ships, maritime patrol planes, drones, early-warning radar, and a new command headquarters.

Defense Spending of NATO Countries Relative to GDP

Among NATO countries, Poland spends the most on defense compared to its economic size. The country began significantly increasing its spending in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. In 2025, its focus has been on equipment, which climbed to over half of the country’s total defense spending.

All NATO allies now meet or exceed the previous defense spending target of 2% of GDP. Most have also pledged to reach 5% by 2035, split between 3.5% on core defense and 1.5% on broader security-related investment such as infrastructure and cyber resilience. However, Spain secured an exemption from the 5% target, and pledges of that length carry their own uncertainty.

Why Increased Defense Spending Matters

Underlying the rise in spending is growing uncertainty around the stability of the rules-based international order. As alliances are strained and tensions build, geopolitical events can create interconnected losses.

Insurance risk managers and brokers can take time to understand indirect exposures and accumulation risks across energy markets, supply chains, political violence, trade credit, and business interruption portfolios.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 02:45

No-Go-Zone: Rotterdam Imposes Unprecedented Nighttime Exclusion Area

Via Remix news,

Rotterdam has introduced an unprecedented nighttime exclusion zone across large parts of the De Esch neighborhood following nearly three years of street racing, drug use, intimidation, prostitution, and persistent noise from migrant youth gangs.

The order, which took effect on Thursday evening, makes it a criminal offense to enter the designated area between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. without a valid reason. Police can fine anyone unable to explain why they are there.

Residents, workers, visitors to local homes, and people attending events, restaurants, or bars are exempt. The measure will remain in force for three months before being evaluated.

“Calm must return to De Esch, and residents must feel comfortable and safe. That is why I am using this power,” said Rotterdam Mayor Carola Schouten.

🇳🇱 Parts of Rotterdam are now a no-go zone because of migrant gangs and anti-social behavior.

The city has introduced an unprecedented night-time ban on entering De Esch neighborhood, with those falling foul of the rules liable for a fine and a criminal record.

The council had… pic.twitter.com/uQAYWZBs9U

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) July 24, 2026

Locals told NOS that large groups of outsiders have gathered in the neighborhood after dark since shortly after the Covid pandemic. At weekends, dozens and sometimes hundreds reportedly arrive to race cars, sound horns, consume drugs, party in the streets, and leave rubbish behind.

“Once it gets dark, they go completely wild,” one resident told the broadcaster.

Previous measures, including concrete barriers, increased police patrols, and talks with those responsible, failed to bring the disruption under control.

The first night of the ban was noticeably quieter.

“I slept wonderfully,” one resident told Rijnmond. She said she had previously endured screaming, honking cars, and noise almost every night, even while wearing earplugs. “Now, the street is completely clean,” she said.

Another woman said she had stopped walking her dog alone at night because of dangerous driving and aggressive behavior. Her parents were nearly struck by cars being driven side by side on the sidewalk, while attempts to confront those responsible sometimes resulted in insults, threats, and filming for social media.

“Until now, there was little that could be done about the nuisance,” another said. “Thanks to the restraining order, it is now legally possible.”

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 02:00

China's Two-Front Squeeze On America's AI Build-Out

Authored by Sean Tseng via The Epoch Times,

In early May, the head of an American chipmaker told investors his company was running short of a material most people have never heard of. A week later, he was on a plane to China alongside President Donald Trump, hoping to pry loose the export licenses his factories needed.

People view an AI data center at the SK networks stand during the MWC (Mobile World Congress), the world's biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona on March 3, 2025. Manaure Quintero/AFP via Getty Images

The company was Coherent, the executive was chief executive Jim Anderson, and the material was indium phosphide, a compound that turns electricity directly into laser light.

Anderson went in part to press China over the delays it had placed on shipments of the material, according to Reuters, citing three people familiar with the matter. Without indium phosphide, the warehouse-sized computer facilities behind America's push into artificial intelligence cannot move data between chips fast enough to keep up. China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, produces about 70 percent of the world's supply.

That bottleneck is one half of a broader squeeze on America's AI build-out. On the material front, China has restricted exports of indium phosphide and other critical minerals, raising prices and stretching timelines.

On the information front, OpenAI and several lawmakers say operatives in China have tried to turn the American public against data centers.

Experts studying both fronts told The Epoch Times that the effort has done little so far - but it reveals how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) competes when it is behind.

The Material Behind the Machines

Stephen Xia, a former People's Liberation Army (PLA) engineer who has been following the development of AI technology, said the AI contest cannot be separated from the materials that underpin it.

"AI competition is an integrated contest across algorithms, data, talent, and computing power, and it is tied to supply chains for chips, electricity, data centers, and critical minerals," he told The Epoch Times. If the CCP chokes off rare minerals, he said, it would "at the very least slow the pace at which the United States expands its high-end chips and data centers."

Indium phosphide is one of those materials. Data centers are buildings packed with servers, and as the AI systems running on them grow, the chips inside need to exchange information faster than copper wiring can carry it.

So the industry is shifting to light, sending data as laser pulses through fiber-optic cable, and indium phosphide is the standard material for the tiny lasers that feed it.

China began restricting its export in February 2025, and prices have moved sharply since: a six-inch wafer now costs about $5,000, up roughly 250 percent, industry sources told Reuters in June.

One major supplier, Lumentum, is sold out through 2028. The world's second-largest maker of the wafers, AXT, produces most of them inside China, where its export permits have been delayed.

Mark Smith, a 45-year veteran of the mining industry who formerly ran the rare-earths producer Molycorp and is now the CEO of the company behind a planned critical-minerals mine in Nebraska, NioCorp Developments, said China's grip on indium is real but not absolute.

"It's not 100 percent," he told The Epoch Times. "If we take a look at all the bits and pieces that make up the supply chain, it's probably greater than 70 percent." A few other producers exist, he said, but "it's nowhere near enough to take care of what's going to be the demand for these AI chips."

Even so, he said, indium is a milder case than some rare earth elements "where we have basically 100 percent controlled by China."

Both Smith and Xia cautioned against overstating what the CCP's restriction on these critical minerals can do.

The controls "only affect the speed and cost of data-center expansion," Xia said. "They cannot exert a decisive impact on the U.S. AI industry."

The reason, he said, is that the United States holds the higher-value ground in the competition - the advanced chips and the software - while the CCP leans more heavily on American technology, from high-end graphics chips to the software used to design semiconductors.

In an all-out fight, Xia said, the CCP "would suffer the greater losses," which is why, in his view, "even if the CCP had the means to cut off raw-material supplies, it would not dare to act unilaterally."

Smith also described the standoff from China's side. When Beijing restricts a material, importers panic - but China also needs to sell. "China needs the technology the United States has for these AI chips, and yet the United States needs the indium to make those AI chips," he said.

"We both kind of need each other - just in different ways, but for the same application." He expects that mutual need to force a degree of cooperation, at least until the United States can build its own supply, which for a mine like his takes about three years.

For now, China's leverage has held. When Washington and Beijing reached a trade truce in November 2025, China agreed to ease its controls on gallium, germanium, and antimony - but not on indium phosphide, which remained restricted into June 2026.

And where exports have resumed, Smith said, China still blocks anything tied to defense. NioCorp learned this firsthand. After it announced a Pentagon-funded partnership with Lockheed Martin in October to develop a scandium alloy for fighter aircraft, the company found it could no longer buy scandium from China, and an attempted workaround through another firm was denied. "So it's real," Smith said.

The Campaign to Turn the Public

The clearest evidence of the CCP's efforts on the second front came from OpenAI, which uncovered a China-based influence operation because the people behind it were using its chatbot to write their material.

In a June report, the company said it banned two clusters of accounts it traced to China. One, which it named the "Data Center Bandwagon," produced comments and comic strips claiming that data centers were driving up families' electricity bills; a second targeted U.S. tariffs.

OpenAI said the operators used ChatGPT through tools that hid their location, wrote their instructions in simplified Chinese, and most likely worked for a private China-based firm serving provincial government clients. It also said the direct Chinese effort reached almost no one.

That account rang familiar to Ethan Tu, the founder of Taiwan AI Labs, a Taipei-based nonprofit that uses artificial intelligence to expose coordinated influence operations and has documented Beijing's campaigns targeting Taiwan's elections.

Tu, a former principal development manager in Microsoft's AI and Research Group who worked on its Cortana assistant, told The Epoch Times that OpenAI's findings matched his own team's research.

The energy sector, he said, is a recurring target of Chinese and Russian influence work "from Taiwan to the United States to Europe," and U.S. data centers are the latest version of that.

He pointed to one detail OpenAI disclosed: the operators' written instructions told the chatbot to feature President Donald Trump but never to mention Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

"They're forbidden from mentioning their own boss," Tu said, "but Trump is fair game to attack." Because the disclosure came from the maker of the tool, which can see where accounts are based and their actions, he said it "carries a great deal of credibility."

Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor who co-leads the school's Media Forensics Hub and has spent years studying foreign influence campaigns, said he trusted OpenAI's attribution and described the CCP as "very aggressive" in its attempts to shape opinion abroad.

Beijing pours resources into controlling how the world sees China, he told The Epoch Times, and works hardest to bury narratives that make it look bad, including by harassing Chinese diaspora communities.

On the use of AI to run fake accounts, Linvill said China was "still experimenting." For now, he said, "they aren't very good yet. But they are getting better."

Washington Sounds the Alarm

Officials in Washington have made broader claims. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told an audience at a policy discussion hosted by Breitbart News in May that state efforts to ban AI data centers are "not organic and local," and that "some of this is foreign-source dark money coming in."

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to examine foreign influence campaigns about the build-out, and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said his investigators had traced Chinese money to U.S. nonprofits organizing the protests and pressed the Treasury Department to revoke their tax-exempt status.

The groups most often named sit within a network funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman who lives in Shanghai and, according to a 2023 New York Times investigation, finances left-wing/Marxist-oriented 501(c)(3) organizations around the world that echo the CCP's positions.

They include the anti-war group CODEPINK, The People's Forum, and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, which are all under congressional scrutiny.

The three Singham-linked groups did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Other groups behind opposition voices describe motives closer to home. Residents "want to feel heard in decisions that will impact their lives for decades to come," said Elizabeth Hutchings, communications manager of Alliance for a Better Utah, which has fought a major data-center project in that state and denies any foreign hand in its work. The group's core concern, she told The Epoch Times, is "a lack of transparency" from the government.

The experts who study these campaigns warn against mistaking foreign manipulation for the source of the backlash.

Taipei-based Tu put it most plainly: the manipulation is real, and so is the grievance it feeds on. The claim the bots push - that data centers compete with households for power and can raise electricity bills - is "actually true," he said, and opposition to data centers "genuinely exists," in Taiwan as much as the United States.

But there's a danger that once people become aware of manipulation campaigns targeting public opinion, they dismiss any and all grievances as manufactured, Tu warned. "When people object and you label all of it cognitive warfare, I think that oversimplifies the issue," he said.

The influence operators' real skill, he said, is blowing issues out of proportion - taking "a scattered case here and there" of genuine resentment and engineering it "into what looks like a full-blown social phenomenon."

Linvill said the data-center fight was plainly homegrown. "This debate real Americans are already very interested in having," he said, adding that China "may be trying to amplify the conversation, but I'm not sure why they need to bother."

Stoking divisive issues inside a rival's population, he noted, is "influence 101." And opposition to America's data center build-out is no fringe phenomenon: research group Data Center Watch has counted blocks or delays from local opposition to at least 75 data center projects, worth some $130 billion, in the first quarter of 2026 - mostly over concerns about electricity prices, water use, and noise.

Linvill said China's homegrown Data Center Bandwagon campaign "had no meaningful effect whatsoever" and that this was typical of China, which he said was better at suppressing unwelcome stories than amplifying them.

Xia similarly said Beijing's direct sway over American opinion was "very limited" and unlikely to "fundamentally alter the strategic direction" of the U.S. build-out.

It was the first time that China has tried to directly influence public opinion. In 2022, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant uncovered a Chinese operation that posed as worried local residents to stir opposition to American and Australian rare-earth projects, warning of radioactive contamination and calling for protests. That effort, too, gained little traction.

For Tu, the issue at hand is rarely the real target. Most of the influence operations his team tracks support no single party or position; their aim, he said, is to push democratic argument toward the extremes until "there's no room left for a neutral, objective third party," and to wear down public trust in institutions - courts, the press, elected leaders.

The end state, he said, is a creeping belief that "democracy is really just chaos, no better than China."

The Deeper Contest

For Xia, the more important competition is the one underneath the supply chains. In AI generally, he said, the CCP still trails the United States, and in military AI, the gap is wider - but the threat is pushing the U.S. military to move faster.

The real divide, he said, is moral.

American military AI is built around what is called a "human-in-the-loop," meaning a person must approve any decision by an autonomous weapon to take a life.

The CCP, Xia said, "has no moral bottom line in its AI applications" and gives no clear account of what human control, if any, oversees its autonomous weapons - one reason the United States has pushed for international rules on such systems.

The two militaries, he said, could end up developing AI in entirely different directions.

But the CCP's path, Xia said, may not be sustainable. Military AI freed of moral limits "would first bring lethal risk to its own developers," he said, "so this path is unlikely to prove workable."

A worker conducts testing in a Coherent manufacturing facility where lasers are developed for transmitting data among chips, which could decrease power use by AI systems, in Sherman, Texas, on June 16, 2026. Data centers are switching to light, transitioning from copper to fiber optics as AI systems grow. Jeffrey McWhorter/AP Photo Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 23:20

US Military Forced To Let Some Iranian Projectiles Through Its Defenses: NBC

Some US lawmakers have begun to complain that American troops stationed in the Middle East have become sitting ducks and are in a highly dangerous situation with Iranian ballistic missiles increasingly reaching their marks. This is especially in the wake of the four US troop deaths earlier this month.

The Iranian attacks particularly on US bases in Jordan have been especially fierce of late. Also there are ongoing concerns of dwindling anti-air defense missiles in the Gulf and the region. Fresh weekend NBC news reporting has highlighted these growing problems, and has gone so far as to say that US commanders are having to ration Patriot missiles.

The Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq, Jordan, which has come under attack of late. via X/The Week

"U.S. military commanders have been picking and choosing which Iranian missiles and explosive-packed drones to intercept and are allowing some attacks through their defenses, amid an effort to preserve the Pentagon’s diminishing supply of weapons that block projectiles from reaching their targets," two senior U.S. officials were cited as saying in the NBC report.

This is an astounding revelation if true, constituting an admission that American bases and host countries are much less protected than previously thought.

"Military commanders have opted not to expend munitions if they determine an Iranian projectile won't hit American forces, significantly damage critical U.S. facilities or threaten allies in the region, the officials said," NBC continues. "The strategy has been in place since the early days of the war."

While on the one hand it would make sense to not try and intercept a projectile that's clearly headed far off course into the distant desert, the host governments are likely to be alarmed at these instances of US military defenses in effect standing down.

But the report also highlights that this strategy has actually resulted in Iranian hits on US bases, in instances where those bases are said to be abandoned: 

The result of the strategy, the sources said, is that some Iranian attacks make impact, particularly those that are on track to miss their intended targets, inflict minimal damage by striking an abandoned building or hit areas where there are no U.S. troops.

The U.S. officials said there also have been times when the U.S. military has allowed some Iranian missiles and drones to strike U.S. bases as long as Americans are not present. That is a departure from past practice, the sources said, where typically drones or missiles that threaten to hit bases would be shot down.

Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) previously found that during the opening weeks of Operation Epic Fury the Pentagon burned through almost 50% of its Patriot missiles, more than half of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems - designed to counter short, medium, and intermediate-range threats - and over 45% of its Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) during the Iran air and missile campaign.

MOMENT Houthis SHOOT DOWN ‘Turkish-made Saudi drone’

Barefoot Yemenis POSE next to BURNING WRECKAGE of $20 MILLION+ drone pic.twitter.com/lxdFczSOhB

— RT (@RT_com) July 26, 2026

US interceptors have from the start of the war been working in overdrive trying to protect sensitive Gulf facilities and bases, as dozens of inbound Iranian drones and missiles were a daily thing back in March into early April, before the tenuous ceasefire took effect. But the last couple weeks have seen a return to a high intensity air war over the region after the ceasefire broke down.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 22:45

The Hinge Of History That Was 2020

Via The Brownstone Institute,

“Shocking 105 million Americans are not working – more than during Covid or the Great Recession,” blared the New York Post. 

Finally that’s something. 

The graph alone tells the story. You thought that having the government forcibly send millions of people into lethargy and sloth, bankrupting millions of smaller businesses, slicing and dicing workers into essential and nonessential, would be devastating for labor force participation. It’s actually worse now than in the depths of the lockdowns, and 10.8 million more than were out of the labor force in 2019, for a total of 105 million. 

The growing crisis of labor drop outs since 2020 hits men more substantially than women: Woman not working up 10.9%; Men not working up 13.6%; Overall number not working up by 11.19%.

The labor force participation rate reveals the trends, not as grim as the lockdown days but still trending downwards – the opposite of what should be happening. 

The topic is still taboo – but the longer time goes on, the more scholars and people will mark the Covid lockdowns as a grave turning point in the history of our times. We are now at enough distance to see this clearly in ways we could not. More than that, it was frequently denied. 

Today it is undeniable. We have enough real-world data to point to the lockdowns and forced injections as a decisive desideratum of decivilization. 

It’s not just the aggregate data that is sounding alarms. We have a generational shift in the works, as noted by journalistic conventions that conveniently leave out causality. “Gen Z Fell Out of Love With Work,” writes Emi Nietfeld.

“Gen Z-ers are often accused of shrugging off work — in fact, they say so themselves — and who can blame them? They’ve watched millennial workers burn out, wages stagnate, degrees turn worthless and institutions crumble. Now, they’re entering what’s widely called the worst job market in years. Almost half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. The cost of living has soared; buying a house feels impossible. Who knows where we’ll live anyway once the Earth is uninhabitable. One viral meme captured the prevailing sentiment that ‘basically nobody under 40 right now expects good things to happen ever again.’”

There are many factors at work here including tight labor markets, forced retirements, and self-reported injury. There has been a sharp rise in disabilities post-2020, reaching 38 million. So-called “long Covid” continues to get the blame despite mass forced distribution of a dangerous experimental shot. 

We’ve witnessed historic declines in student reading proficiency, as 12th-grade reading scores hit their lowest level since tracking began (1992), with only 35% proficient (down from 37% in 2019). Elementary-grade reading has also dropped sharply, the largest declines in decades, worsened by prolonged school closures and remote learning. 

Broader proficiency gaps appear in incoming college students, with reports of 14% of US college students testing at or below a 10-year-old’s reading level. This aligns with K-12 pandemic losses compounding into higher education, hence pervasive ignorance despite high graduation rates. 

Overdose fatalities surged dramatically post-2020, with annual deaths often exceeding 100,000 in recent years — a major contributor to excess mortality. Isolation, economic stress, and disrupted treatment access during lockdowns amplified the crisis. 

Researchers report nothing but confusion as to why “excess deaths in the United States kept rising even after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 1.5 million in 2022 and 2023 that would have been prevented had US death rates matched those of peer countries.” 

Younger adults, minorities, essential workers, and caregivers reported disproportionately worse mental health, with elevated depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation during/after lockdowns. Social isolation directly correlated with higher distress levels in surveys.

Meanwhile, there is no end to the discovery of strange anomalies always attributed to long Covid but which are more likely due to the unmentionable injectable countermeasure. For example, one study found surprising cognitive issues such as an inability to retrieve words and their close substitution which fillers. What immediately comes to mind is the sudden ubiquity of slop language: like, you know, literally, going forward, well, to be honest, and so on to the point of unintelligibility, all massively worsened since 2020. 

Total fertility is experiencing a historic decline in the US, accelerating dramatically since 2020. 

So much for demographics. Let’s talk economics. 

JP Morgan reports that 40-45 percent of small businesses closed temporarily while government stimulus only delayed permanent closure for millions. New firms started out of necessity – old jobs could not be recovered – but with a much higher failure rate. This has led to business consolidation as new firms are a falling percentage of total firms. 

Inflation since 2020 has eroded 27% of purchasing power in official data and 37% in alternative measures. 

The causal connection is rather obvious: some $8 trillion in new printed money. The result: a third or more of purchasing power was stolen from the public. 

This in turn has driven down the savings rates to a low of 3%, falling after boom via stimulus payments. 

The Covid period put on hyperdrive a tendency that had been in place for decades, a Fed-forced low interest rate that rewarded leverage, punished savings, and gamed a high return on rising valuations in financials. The savers were the chumps while indebted speculators made the high returns. This flipping of the entire logic of capitalist production has now been institutionalized to the point of addiction. Any stepping away from this balancing act risks default and a crack up. 

The indebtedness affects not only individuals but the US government too. The year 2020 was a fundamental shift. 

There are so many other inchoate changes that are hard to quantify. You see it in the social interactions of the lockdown generation, its lack of focus and attention, its awkwardness on basic functioning and decorum, its surreptitious and routine duplicity, and its outlook toward the future. 

The lockdowns and all that followed were a cruel attack on civilized life. They instigated a collapse of public trust in everything: academia, medicine, public health, government, media, tech, and all the legacy leaders of society. The fallout will continue far into the future. 

Isn’t it about time that the elites who constructed these policies at least own up to what they did?

Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) efforts to compel honesty from Anthony Fauci, and Senator Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) indefatigable efforts to chronicle shot harm (they knew the risks), are both deeply honorable.

But they are only the beginning of necessary efforts and they only cover two of the million questions that remain.

There must be truth, there must be accountability, and there must be justice. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 22:10

Trump Triggers Massive Leftist Hypocrisy On 'Transgenderism'

Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThink.com,

When Trump cracked a Dylan Mulvaney joke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he must have known what would ensue.

Dylan Mulvaney burst onto the national scene in 2022 with his "Journey to Girlhood" video series, which culminated in his becoming a full-fledged "trans woman." Democrats assured us Mulvaney was the real thing: a beautiful woman. That's why it's so funny to see them react hysterically to a joke Trump cracked at the White House Correspondents' Dinner comparing CNN's Kaitlan Collins to Dylan Mulvaney.

Mulvaney's public "trans" journey started with his video diary showing his "transition" to being a girl. Speaking as a girl, they were grotesque parodies of what girls do, but they certainly got him attention. Here are just some examples:

Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Biden, and radical left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity normal. pic.twitter.com/44oJMBh1Cn

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 25, 2022

DYLAN MULVANEY mocks and dehumanises women.

She is trying to provoke women and to sideline them by saying that she needs Tampons and wants to have a Period and menstruate. A biological male does not need tampons.

Dylan has no idea what women have to go through. pic.twitter.com/Zx7je4aaZV

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) October 28, 2022

The Forbes Women's Summit invited this person to speak. This is what @Forbes thinks of women.

pic.twitter.com/nahiQq40MU

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 21, 2022

Dylan's self-promotion worked, and soon he was getting major ad campaigns, including the one that broke Budweiser:

Kate Spade hired Dylan Mulvaney to promote clothing for women pic.twitter.com/mM7P3d7goj

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 29, 2023

If you're detail-oriented, you probably noticed that the petite, emaciated Dylan, never the most manly of men (and you have to feel sorry for him about that, because it must have made his childhood very hard and probably explains his gender dysphoria), is looking increasingly feminine as time goes by.

That's thanks to the miracles of modern medicine. Mulvaney used his ad revenue to get:

• Hairline advancement

• Brow bone shave

• Rhinoplasty

• Minor cheek enhancement

• Lip lift

• Jaw shave

• Chin reduction

• Tracheal shave (Adam's apple reduction)

• A boob job

Mulvaney does not seem to have castrated himself, although maybe he's keeping that surgery private...or maybe he's still attached to his privates.

Be that as it may, when you add good makeup and lighting to his naturally effeminate bone structure, augmented by lots of surgery, Mulvaney's face allows him to pass for a very attractive woman:

Dylan Mulvaney: "I'm so hot I could steal your husband!"

Yeah...about that... pic.twitter.com/Niws0oJNRX

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) February 13, 2023

Leftists certainly thought so, for they told us that anyone who mocked Mulvaney's obvious femininity was a revolting transphobe.

• Buzzfeed reported approvingly on Mulvaney's identifying himself as a beautiful woman, and rammed the message home with multiple glamour shots of Mulvaney's heavily made-up, flat-chested, hipless womanliness.

• Teen Vogue assured its malleable young readers that anyone mocking Mulvaney's feminine charms was "transphobic."

• Ulta Beauty featured Mulvaney in its "The Beauty of..." official podcast, and Them derided as a transphobe anyone who dared question Mulvaney's femininity. (Ulta has hidden the video.)

• Entertainment Weekly approvingly quoted Lady Gaga, who said that anyone who dared deny Mulvaney's status as a woman after viewing a glamour shot of the two of them was engaged in "transphobic 'degradation'."

You get the point: The entire Democrat establishment spoke with a single voice to say that so-called "trans women" are women and that Dylan Mulvaney was among the more beautiful of this unicornly unique species.

And then there's CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who has never denied her biological womanhood:

CaseyJNewell photograph. CC BY-SA 4.0.

She's a nice-looking woman on the outside - and a stone-cold leftist on the inside, with all that flows from that description.

The third player in this three-act comedy is President Trump, who must surely have known exactly what would follow when he cracked this little joke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He told the joke very badly, but it still landed in the way I am sure he intended.

Trump: "I want to personally congratulate CNN's Kaitlan Collins... I thought she had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn't her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney." pic.twitter.com/7UEw7WYaCW

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 25, 2026

What's so darn funny is that the Democrats weren't angry at Trump for claiming that Collins didn't deserve an award. Instead, what outraged them was the insult Trump offered her by comparing her to Dylan Mulvaney - the same man they once insisted was the avatar of American Womanhood:

Trump Attacks CNN's Kaitlan Collins with Transphobic Remark in Front of All Her Colleagues https://t.co/w31uosbwfW

— People (@people) July 25, 2026

Did they just say that it's an insult to liken a woman to a so-called trans woman? Were they implying that Mulvaney isn't beautiful and glamorous and that it demeaned Collins to contend that Mulvaney is her doppelganger? Alternatively, if I read The Advocate tweet correctly, it was a huge insult to Mulvaney to compare the two! Apparently, he outwomans Kaitlan in style and beauty.

And did they just get called out on their hypocrisy in a big way? Why yes, and at least on X, people were delighted to point that out:

Democrats: Dylan Mulvaney is a beautiful woman.

Trump: Kaitlan Collins looks like Dylan Mulvaney.

Democrats: How dare Trump compare Kaitlan Collins to an ugly man!

— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) July 25, 2026

One of the important things to remember about Democrats is that they know they're lying. And one of the brilliant things about Trump is that, in true Alinsky fashion, he goads them into revealing that fact.

Image created using AI.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 21:00