Karnage: Korea Kospi Suffers Biggest Crash In History – Is It A Buying Opportunity? Yesterday we discussed the dramatic move in Korean stocks, which saw the Kospi tumble by 7.4%, its biggest drop since the August 2024 carry trade unwind, and which put a dramatic halt to the historic meltup in the country’s stock market driven almost entirely by memory (Samsung and SK Hynix) and semiconductor stocks. However, as we noted earlier […]

Western Official Claims Iran Has Just ‘Days Left’ For Depleting Missile Arsenal Among the most crucial open questions in the ongoing Operation Epic Fury – or perhaps the most pressing issue – is which warring side will outlast the other in terms of maintaining missile and interceptor numbers, and for the US side this means enough to achieve the (somewhat ambiguous) military objectives. Speculation and estimates are flying wildly […]

Iran Signals ‘Prolonged War’ As President Masoud Declares ‘No Choice’ But To Fight Here are some of the most critical developments unfolding in the US-Iran conflict:  Iranian intelligence sends word to US on potential talks to end war, but US officials say no active negotiations: CNN reports Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian says no choice but to fight: Dear esteemed leaders of our friendly and neighboring countries, we […]

Two States, Two Visions: California Wants To Add A Wealth Tax; Florida Wants To Remove One Authored by Siri Terjesen & Michael Ryall via The Epoch Times, While Sacramento legislators debate how to extract more money from residents who are already leaving, Tallahassee legislators are moving in the opposite direction. The fiscal philosophies now playing out in California and Florida represent the starkest tax policy divergence in […]

Costco Beats Out Walmart As Cheapest Grocery Store In The U.S. A new pricing analysis from Consumer Reports suggests shoppers may find better deals than expected—sometimes well below Walmart’s prices. The February study, carried out by the New York–based Strategic Resource Group, compared grocery baskets in six major metro areas across the U.S. Walmart, the nation’s largest and most widespread grocer, served as the pricing […]

QatarEnergy Declares Force Majeure As One-Fifth Of Global LNG Supply Goes Dark Qatar’s long-standing image as the world’s most reliable LNG supplier abruptly ended on Wednesday after QatarEnergy halted LNG production and declared force majeure to customers, a major shock to global gas markets given that Qatar accounts for 20% of global LNG exports, with 80% of those volumes to Asia.  “Further to the announcement by QatarEnergy […]

Watch: Bessent Teases ‘Series Of Announcements’ To Stabilize Oil; Says Trump’s 15% Tariff Will Kick In This Week Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), President Donald Trump’s 15 percent global tariff will take effect sometime this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. Following the Supreme Court’s rebuke of the president’s signature economic policy last month, Trump imposed a 10 percent global […]

Crude Stocks Rise 3.5 Million, Highest Since May 2025 With oil flows passing through the Straits of Hormuz blocked indefinitely, markets were paying especially close attention to today’s weekly DOE report on oil stocks, to see how much capacity the US has in case of a prolonged lockout. The result was satisfactory.  The DOE reported the following weekly changes: Crude +3.475MM, more than the expected +3.00MM, and the highest […]

Novo Nordisk Finally Catches Bid After FDA Warns Telehealth Companies Novo Nordisk shares in Copenhagen finally caught a bid after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued 30 warning letters to telehealth companies for making false and misleading claims regarding compounded GLP-1 products (otherwise known as copycat GLP-1s) offered on their websites. FDA has warned 30 telehealth companies about misleading drug ads. Consumers […]

Services ISM Smashes Estimates, Prints At 56.1 Highest Since 2022, As Prices Paid Tumble After the Manufacturing ISM print earlier this week came modestly stronger than expected (albeit with the Prices Paid component spiking and sending 10Y yields higher), some were expecting a similar improvement in today’s Services ISM print. What they got instead, was a blowout number, and one suggesting that whatever weakness the US economy was […]

Rising Energy Costs May Hit All Sectors Eventually By Bas van Geffen, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank Nowhere To Run There don’t appear to be many safe havens as the situation in Middle East continues to evolve. Not in markets, and not in the region either. At the time of writing, Israel has launched a new strike on Iran. And the US is considering arming Kurdish forces, trying to convince them to take part in a ground […]

Air Freight Rates To Spike As Iran War Escalates By Eric Kulisch of FreightWaves The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on Saturday is already disrupting air cargo traffic in the Middle East, a key freight corridor between Asia and Europe where two of the world’s largest cargo airlines are based, and raising the potential for a rise in air freight rates.  Airlines are suspending flights, rerouting traffic […]

Primary Losers: Crockett Cries ‘Disenfranchisement’, Crenshaw Crushed Rep. Jasmine Crockett has just lost her Democratic Senate primary in Texas to Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico, who will now try to become the first Democrat in nearly 40 years to win a Senate election in Texas. He will face the Republican winner between longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas AG Ken Paxton.  Crockett, a racist, who says that […]

“A Watershed Milestone”: Kraken Becomes First Crypto Firm To Gain Access To Fed’s Payment System Kraken has secured a Federal Reserve “master account,” giving its banking arm direct access to the Fed’s core payment systems and making it the first crypto firm to operate on the same rails as traditional financial institutions, Coindesk reported. The company said its unit, Kraken Financial, received approval for a Federal […]

Minnesota Sues Federal Government Over Medicaid Funding Freeze Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Minnesota filed a lawsuit on March 2 to block the federal government from withholding $243 million in Medicaid funds, saying the freeze could lead to potential cuts in medical services for low-income individuals. In a still from video, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison talks to The Epoch Times in […]

Futures Bounce, Oil Slides After Report Of Iran Backchannel Outreach It was shaping up as a catastrophic, margin-call driven Wednesday session after Japan’s Nikkei tumbled about 4% and Korea’s Kospi suffered its biggest drop ever, plunging by a record 12%. But after initially plunging overnight, S&P futures rose as much as 0.4% after the New York Times reported that operatives from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence used […]

Soleimani-Class Warship Sunk Near Strait Of Hormuz; Second Iranian Ship Hit Off Sri Lanka Update (0844ET): U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that “America is winning” as Operation Epic Fury continues to neutralize IRGC high-value assets across Iran. This is the second news conference at the Department of War since the operation began on Saturday morning. Hegseth also provided an update on the IRGC Navy’s IRIS Shahid […]

ADP Private Payrolls Jump To 63K, Stronger Than Expected And Highest Since November Amid the ongoing double whammy of geopolitical and private credit shocks, with a little AI disruption thrown in every other days courtesy of Anthropic’s human-displacing agents and smashing capex-lite sectors like a chatbot avalanche, the last thing the market needed is a negative job print signaling a recession has effectively arrived. It didn’t get […]

“Unknown Projectile” Strikes Container Ship In Strait Of Hormuz As Maritime Crisis Explodes This morning has been very active on the maritime security front. The latest incident involves a container ship that was struck by a projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reports that a container ship about two nautical miles off Oman, transiting eastbound through the critical and narrow […]

The Watches Of Operation Epic Fury Via Watches Of Espionage, From Washington to Tel Aviv to Tehran, the timepieces worn by the leaders directing a historic escalation. On the morning of 28 February 2026, the United States initiated Operation Epic Fury, a sustained air campaign targeting Iranian-linked assets and infrastructure, conducted amid escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran. According to the administration, the […]

Russia Says Ukrainian Drone Boat Blew Up Shadow LNG Tanker In Mediterranean Update (0644ET): At least ten tankers have reportedly been hit by IRGC forces in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News. At the same time, the battlefield appears to be widening beyond the Gulf region. A Russian-flagged LNG tanker, Arctic Metagaz, carrying fuel from Russia’s blacklisted Arctic LNG 2 project, was reportedly hit by […]

What Are The Prospects Of Putin Mediating An End To The Iran War? Authored by Andrew Korybko, Russia is the only country in the world that’s on decent terms with Iran, the US, Israel, and the Gulf Kingdoms, thus making Putin the only person who could potentially mediate an end to the war. Putin spoke with the leaders of the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia (de facto since he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman) on Monday, […]

CIA Moves To Arm Kurdish Forces To Foment Govt Collapse In Iran: Officials Here are the most critical developments unfolding in the US-Iran conflict:  CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say: CNN State Department securing military aircraft, charter flights to get Americans out of Middle East Iran International is claiming (unverified) Iran’s Assembly of Experts chose Mojtaba Khamenei as […]

US Chemical Companies “Net Beneficiaries” Of Middle East Energy Disruption Crisis Bloomberg News headlines indicate that Iraq has begun shutting down oil output at Rumaila, the world’s largest “supergiant” oil field, while other Gulf states have idled some of the world’s largest refineries and major energy hubs following Iranian drone strikes. This signals that a massive energy disruption is set to hit global energy markets as the […]

Edinburgh Leader Hails City Diversity After Migrant Stabbing Spree Hospitalizes Two Authored by Thomas Brooke va Remix News, In the wake of Monday’s stabbing spree by a suspect reported by one national newspaper to have been a Somali immigrant, the leader of City of Edinburgh Council has praised the capital’s diversity and said she wants the city to “stay that way.” Cllr. Jane Meagher spoke out after a man was arrested […]