Baltic Dry Index. 2100 +17 Brent Crude 68.26
Spot Gold 4896 Spot Silver 73.25
US 2 Year Yield 3.40 Friday
US Federal Debt. 38.696 trillion US GDP 31.161 trillion.
Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.
John Locke
For more on hands, how we measure horses, and furlongs, how we measure horse races, scroll down to the technology section.
In our holiday affected trading week, will it be boom or bust? Will Comex crash silver?
Asia markets make cautious start, oil rises on
U.S.-Iran talks
Published Mon, Feb 16 2026 8:24 PM EST
Asian financial markets were treading
carefully on Tuesday in holiday-thinned trading, but oil pushed higher with U.S
and Iran nuclear negotiations in Geneva due to begin later in the day.
Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Taiwan and South Korea markets were closed on Tuesday for Lunar New Year
holidays. U.S markets were shut on Monday for Presidents’ Day.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.5% and
the broader Topix slid 0.2% to 3,779.29.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX200 was
trading almost 0.5% higher.
Ten-year Treasury yields slipped 1 basis
point to 4.044% on Tuesday, hitting the lowest since early December. Japan’s
five-year yield fell 2 basis points to 1.65%, its lowest since February 2.
In early Asian trading hours, Nasdaq
futures were down 0.1% and S&P 500 futures up 0.2%.
The dollar index, a measure of the U.S.
currency against major rivals, was last flat at 97.07, after a small gain of
0.2% overnight.
Japan’s weakening economy remained in
focus on Tuesday, one day after much softer than expected GDP numbers.
The country on Monday reported its economy
grew an annualised 0.2% in the fourth quarter, far below the 1.6% gain forecast
as government spending dragged on activity. On Tuesday, The Japanese yen
strengthened 0.15% against the greenback to 153.28 per dollar.
The weak figures highlight the challenges
ahead for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and should support her push for more
aggressive fiscal stimulus, economists said.
The BOJ next meets on rates in March, with
traders forecasting only a slim chance for a hike. Economists polled by Reuters
last month expected the central bank to wait until July before tightening
policy again
“The market has likely assumed that softer
GDP data in the fourth quarter will encourage PM Takaichi’s plans to offer
additional fiscal support and reduce the sales tax on food,” NAB analysts wrote
in a research note.
“Pricing for BoJ rate hikes nudged a
little lower post the GDP data, with only 4 basis points priced for the March
meeting and 16 basis points priced for April.”
Australia’s central bank said on Tuesday
it had concluded inflation would stay stubbornly high if it had not hiked
interest rates as it did this month, and was not yet sure if further tightening
would be necessary.
Oil prices were higher ahead of U.S.-Iran
talks aimed at de-escalating tensions against a backdrop of expected OPEC+
supply increases.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was up
1.29%. Brent crude futures rose 1.33% overnight.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy held a
drill in the Hormuz Strait on Monday, the semi-official Tasnim news agency
reported, a day prior to renewed Iran-U.S. nuclear negotiations. The passage
accounts for about 20% of global oil shipments.
“The market remains unsettled by
geopolitical uncertainties, with investors cautious due to the pending US-Iran
and Ukraine negotiations this week,” ANZ analysts said.
“Speculative positions have been
increasing in recent weeks. If tension in the Middle East eases or meaningful
progress is made on the Ukraine war, the risk premium currently built into oil
prices could swiftly unwind.”
Gold was down 0.85% at $4949.5 per ounce
as a higher dollar on Monday made greenback-priced bullion more expensive for
holders of other currencies. Spot silver was 2% lower.
Asia
markets make cautious start, oil rises on U.S.-Iran talks
Stock market doom loop is hitting everything that
touches AI
Investors are growing impatient that vast
spending on the technology has yet to produce a windfall in revenues.
February 16, 2026 at 9:58 AM PST |
UPDATED: February 16, 2026 at 10:16 AM PST
The stock market turmoil unleashed by the
artificial-intelligence industry reflects two fears that are increasingly at
odds.
One is that AI is poised to disrupt entire
segments of the economy so dramatically that investors are dumping the stocks
of any company seen at the slightest risk of being displaced by the technology.
The other is a deep skepticism that the
hundreds of billions of dollars that tech giants like Amazon.com Inc., Meta
Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. are pouring into AI every
year will deliver big payoffs anytime soon.
The dueling anxieties have been brewing
for months. But they’ve shifted to the center of the stock market over the past
two weeks. The result has been a series of punishing selloffs that have
hammered dozens of companies across a number of industries — from real estate
services and wealth management, to insurance brokers and logistics firms — and
wiped more than $1 trillion from the market values of the big tech companies
investing the most in AI.
“There is a contradiction when it comes to
what investors are worried about when it comes to AI,” Julia Wang, the north
Asia chief investment officer at Nomura International Wealth Management, told
Bloomberg Television. “Those two things can’t be true at the same time.”
The shift marks a major break from the
sentiment of the last few years, when speculation that AI would set off a
transformative productivity boom kept pushing stock prices higher. While big
tech stocks kept rising — sending Meta surging nearly 450% from the end of 2022
until the start of this year, and Alphabet up more than 250% — the
hand-wringing over whether it was a bubble about to burst did little to derail
the rally.
That began to change late last month as
earnings reports from some of the biggest tech companies started to spook
investors, who are growing impatient that the spending has yet to produce a
commensurate windfall in revenues.
Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet
alone are expected to spend more than $600 billion on capital expenditures in
2026. That’s hoovering up free cash flows and loading the companies with
depreciating assets, radically altering many of the characteristics that have
helped fuel the firms’ rise over the past decade.
“This is a real no-win situation,” said
Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Amerprise Advisor Services.
“Investors were comfortable saying, ‘so long as it happens in the future, I’m
comfortable with Microsoft or Amazon or Alphabet spending the money.’ Now they
want to know more immediately when the payback will come — and we don’t have a
clear picture.”
Since Microsoft and Meta kicked off the
fourth-quarter earnings season on Jan. 28, Microsoft and Amazon shares have
each dropped more than 16%, with Amazon mired in its longest losing streak in
about 20 years.
Even Alphabet, which is widely regarded as
the biggest AI winner in the group, is down 11% off a recent peak. Meta, whose
strong revenue growth overshadowed higher-than-expected capital spending, has
fallen 13% since an earnings-fueled rally. In total, nearly $1.5 trillion in
combined market value has been wiped out from the group, pushing the tech-heavy
Nasdaq 100 Index into negative territory for the year.
At the same time, investors are growing
increasingly worried about the businesses that will potentially be swept aside
— or at least significantly upended — by the new applications that are being
steadily rolled out.
That has caused a series of stock market
selloffs that have flared repeatedly and hit private-credit firms, video-game
makers and software companies, among others.
The latest bout began after Anthropic PBC
released productivity tools for lawyers and financial researchers, hammering
the stock price of companies across those industries. Insurance brokers tumbled
on another program tied to OpenAI. One from a little-known startup, Altruist
Corp., battered wealth-managers like Charles Schwab Corp. and Raymond James
Financial Inc. Even a press release from a former karaoke company with less
than $2 million in quarterly revenue sent the stocks of logistics companies
tumbling.
More
Stock market doom
loop is hitting everything that touches AI – Orange County Register
Finance Chiefs Push to Expand Euro’s Global Role
February 16, 2026 at 5:18 PM GMT
As the US dollar weakens amid geopolitical
upheaval, Euro-area finance ministers are pushing
to expand the role of the single currency. They met in Brussels today
and on their agenda was promotion of the currency’s issuance and use in
transactions.
Given the
global context, it’s become “existential for us to safeguard the
international role of the euro as it is quite pertinent for the EU’s monetary
sovereignty,” said Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis, who
chaired the meeting.
Over the weekend, the European Central
Bank announced that it is prepared to offer
euro liquidity to its peers from around the world in times of crisis
-- its strongest move yet to promote the currency.
That’s also one proposal included in
a paper by the European Commission seen by us. The document calls for
reinforcing euro diplomacy by reassuring partner countries about access to the
currency.
The French government has called for an
assessment of the economic risks. While it backs the push to strengthen the
euro’s international role, Paris wants better understanding of the
costs to exporters if it drives up exchange rates against
the dollar. — Jennifer
Duggan
Finance
Chiefs Push to Expand Euro’s Global Role - Bloomberg
In other news, Poland wants nukes.
Poland considers building nuclear weapons
Kieran Kelly Mon, 16 February 2026 at 9:39 am GMT
Poland should begin
developing nuclear weapons to guard against Russia, the country’s president has
said.
Karol Nawrocki, who
was elected last year,
said he was a “great supporter of Poland joining the nuclear project”, which he
said could underpin the country’s security strategy.
“This path, with respect for all
international regulations, is the path we should take,” he said in an interview
with Polsat television on Sunday.
“We must work towards this goal so that we
can begin the work. We are a country right on the border of an armed conflict. The aggressive,
imperial attitude of
Russia towards Poland is
well known.”
European nations have debated
developing their
own nuclear strategy amid
growing threats from Moscow and a deteriorating relationship with the United
States, which is Europe’s main nuclear guarantor.
Evika Silina, Latvia’s prime minister,
said at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend that “nuclear
deterrence can give us new opportunities”.
Germany and France have begun talks
on developing
a European nuclear deterrent that could protect the continent
without Washington’s help.
Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor,
confirmed in an address to the conference that high-level discussions had
begun. He said on Friday: “I have started the first talks with Emmanuel Macron,
the French president, about European nuclear deterrence.
“This will be fully embedded in our
nuclear sharing within Nato, and we will not have zones of different security
levels in Europe. We’re not doing this by writing Nato off.”
Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on
European free speech and threats
to take over Greenland have eroded transatlantic relations since the US
president returned to the White House last year.
Mr Macron and Mr Merz acknowledged a
deepening rift between Europe and the US. “There has been a tendency these days
in this place and beyond to overlook Europe and sometimes to criticise it
outright. Caricatures have been made,” the French president said at the
conference.
More
Poland considers
building nuclear weapons - Yahoo News UK
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
UK consumer sentiment
falls as households worry about debt; Japan and Switzerland avoid recession –
business live
UK consumer sentiment continued to sink this month,
as households grow more worried about debt levels.
16 February 2026
A poll of consumer confidence from data firm S&P
Global has found that morale continued to drop in February, although
not as quickly as in January.
The report shows:
·
Consumers signal stronger rise in debt alongside a
quicker deterioration in loan availability
·
Appetite for major spending recedes to weakest in
ten months
·
Sentiment regarding labour market conditions at
lowest since last June
This left the S&P Global UK Consumer Sentiment
Index (CSI) at 44.8 in February, up from 44.6 in January, but still below the
50-point mark that shows no change compared with the prior month.
Maryam Baluch, economist
at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said:
“The mood among UK households matches the dismal
weather seen so far this year across the country. Although the overall degree
of gloom has lifted slightly since January, consumer confidence continues to
run at one of the lowest levels seen over the past two years.
A period of prolonged rain and a dearth of sunshine
have no doubt not helped to lift the low spirits seen among households, but
there’s more going on here than just bad weather. Households are growing
increasingly worried about debt in particular, especially as a rising need for
credit was met with the steepest decline in availability of loans since August
2024.
Households’ appetite for major purchases was
impacted by the lack of confidence and debt worries, with sentiment around big
ticket expenditure slipping to the lowest in ten months. The low appetite to
spend bodes ill for the broader impetus to purchase, hinting at a sustained
drag on economic growth from sluggish consumer spending in the first quarter.”
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section Updates as they get reported.
Off topic
but quaint and interesting. Rods, perches, chains, furlongs and acres.
Furlong
A furlong is a measure
of distance in imperial units and United States customary
units equal to one-eighth of a mile, equivalent to any of 660 feet, 220 yards, 40 rods or perches, 10 chains, or approximately 201 metres. It is now mostly confined to use in horse racing, where in many countries[which?] it
is the standard measurement of race lengths, and agriculture, where it is used
to measure rural field lengths and distances.
In the United States, some states use
older definitions for surveying purposes, leading to variations in the length
of the furlong of two parts per million, or about 0.4 millimetres (1⁄64 inch).
This variation is small enough to not have practical consequences in most
applications.
Using the international definition of
the yard as exactly 0.9144 metres, one
furlong is 201.168 metres, and five furlongs are about 1 kilometre (1.00584 km exactly).
History
The name furlong derives
from the Old English words furh (furrow) and lang (long).[1] Dating back at least to
early Anglo-Saxon times,
it originally referred to the length of the furrow in one acre of a ploughed open field (a medieval communal field which
was divided into strips). The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance
a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be
exactly 40 rods or 10 chains. The system of long furrows arose
because turning a team of oxen pulling a heavy plough was difficult. This
offset the drainage advantages of short furrows and meant furrows were made as
long as possible. An acre is an area that is one furlong long and one chain (66 feet or 22 yards)
wide. For this reason, the furlong was once also called an acre's
length,[2] though in modern usage an area of
one acre can be of any shape. The term furlong, or shot, was also used to
describe a grouping of adjacent strips within an open field.[3]
Among the early Anglo-Saxons, the rod
was the fundamental unit of land measurement. A furlong was 40 rods; an
acre 4 by 40 rods, or 4 rods by 1 furlong, and thus
160 square rods; there are 10 acres in a square furlong. At the time,
the Saxons used the North German foot, which was
about 10 percent longer than the foot of the international 1959 agreement. When England changed to a
shorter foot in the late 13th century,
rods and furlongs remained unchanged, since property boundaries were already
defined in rods and furlongs. The only thing that changed was the number of
feet and yards in a rod or a furlong, and the number of square feet and square
yards in an acre. The definition of the rod went from 15 old feet
to 16+1⁄2 new feet, or from 5 old yards
to 5+1⁄2 new yards. The furlong went from 600
old feet to 660 new feet, or from 200 old yards to 220 new yards. The
acre went from 36,000 old square feet to 43,560 new square feet, or
from 4,000 old square yards to 4,840 new square yards.[4]
The furlong was historically viewed as
being equivalent to the Roman stade (stadium),[5] which in turn derived from
the Greek system
In the Roman system, there were
625 feet to the stadium, eight stadia to the
mile, and 1½ miles to the league. A league was considered to be the
distance a man could walk in one hour, and the mile (from mille,
meaning "thousand") consisted of 1,000 passus (paces,
five feet, or double-step).
More
Lengths & Areas: How
many yards in a furlong? Roods in an acre?
The basic unit of English length is the yard, which is often taken as the
distance between Henry I's (1068-1135) nose and the tip of his outstretched
arm.
English weights and measures: Lengths and areas
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of
a legislative act. Even the sanction of political authority is not necessary
for its existence. Certain commodities came to be money quite naturally, as the
result of economic relationships that were independent of the power of the
state.
Carl Menger
