CPI Day. The Golden Age Of America. You Never Had It So Good.

Baltic Dry Index. 2095 +137    Brent Crude 67.37

Spot Gold  4991                        Spot Silver 76.48

US 2 Year Yield 3.47 -0.05

US Federal Debt. 38.680 trillion US GDP 31.149 trillion.

“Just in: GREAT JOBS NUMBERS, FAR GREATER THAN EXPECTED! The United States of America should be paying MUCH LESS on its Borrowings (BONDS!). We are again the strongest Country in the World, and should therefore be paying the LOWEST INTEREST RATE, by far. This would be an INTEREST COST SAVINGS OF AT LEAST ONE TRILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR - BALANCED BUDGET, PLUS. WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” 

President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post.

As President Trump boasts of the great US job numbers that came out on Wednesday, (he obviously missed the massive downward revisions,) I see a US economy heading into a great AI Trump Slump.

If we manage to avoid a new Iran war this weekend and next week, a great AI disruption lies directly ahead.

Dow slides 600 points, S&P 500 falls for a third day as AI disruption fears rattle markets: Live updates

Updated Fri, Feb 13 2026 7:32 PM EST

Stocks dropped on Thursday as investors began to worry about the negative side of the artificial intelligence buildout, which threatens to disrupt the business models of whole industries and raise unemployment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 669.42 points, or 1.34%, to end at 49,451.98. The index was led lower by Cisco Systems, which slid 12% after the maker of networking hardware such as switches and routers issued disappointing guidance for the current quarter. The S&P 500 dropped 1.57% and closed at 6,832.76, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 2.03% and settled at 22,597.15.

Certain pockets of the stock market have been hit this year on the release of AI tools that could replicate their businesses — or at least eat away at their profit margins.

Financial stocks such as Morgan Stanley came under pressure on fears that AI would disrupt wealth management businesses, while shares of trucking and logistics companies such as C.H. Robinson plummeted 14% on fears that AI would streamline freight operations, thereby weighing on certain revenue lines.

AI disruption fears even spread to the real estate sector, hurting stocks like CBRE and SL Green Realty, on the notion higher unemployment will hit demand for office space.

Software stocks — a group that has been plagued by disruption worries in recent weeks — extended their year-to-date losses during the trading day. Palantir Technologies shares pulled back almost 5%, putting its retreat this year at more than 27%. Shares of Autodesk dropped nearly 4%, and the stock’s year-to-date slide is now about 24%. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) fell nearly 3%. The fund now stands about 31% below its recent high after first entering a bear market last month.

“AI, which was the one thing that was driving these stocks to parabolic heights and to multiples that were getting extreme — not overwhelmingly extreme — now is the one thing that’s holding them back,” said Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets.

----Traders now brace for a key inflation report Friday. Economists polled by Dow Jones are expecting January CPI to show a 0.3% increase for both headline and core, which excludes food and energy prices.

“CPI is a little bit less important now that we got the good jobs number, because it already allows the Fed to kind of pause for a substantial amount of time,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird. “If CPI came in hot, you’d have a couple of months of data to kind of get a sense of the trend before the Fed actually has to make a hard call.”

On the flip side, if the data were to come in light, the strategist anticipates that Friday could be a risk-on kind of day, though “it would have to be a pretty, pretty brutal number to the upside to really impact equity markets and fed fund futures,” he added.

Stock market news for Feb.12, 2026

Stock futures are little changed as traders await big consumer inflation report: Live updates

Updated Fri, Feb 13 2026 7:31 PM EST

Stock futures were roughly flat Thursday night after a downbeat day for the U.S. stock market. Traders also looked ahead to a key consumer inflation report due Friday morning.

S&P 500 futures advanced 0.02%, while Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.04%. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were little changed.

In after-hours trading, semiconductor giant Applied Materials jumped 13% on the back of strong earnings results and encouraging outlook. Airbnb shares rose about 4% as investors cheered the rental company’s upbeat guidance. Pinterest slipped 17% on fourth-quarter results that missed expectations, as well as a weak forecast.

Major U.S. averages dropped on Thursday as fears around artificial intelligence disruption spread across the market, most notably into real estate, trucking and software sectors. The S&P 500 dropped nearly 1.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost about 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed almost 670 points, or 1.3%.

Each of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants closed in the red. A 12% slide in Cisco Systems, driven by the company’s disappointing guidance, weighed on the broader market. Apple lost 5% during the regular session, notching its worst single-day loss since April 2025.

“In terms of an AI bubble, the reality is there’s some steam coming out of certain names as the market tries to determine winners and losers and is becoming more discriminate,” Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco, said Thursday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

“But the Dow Jones Industrial Average is close to 50,000. The S&P 500 is close to 6,900... There is, obviously, some carnage underneath, but in general, this is not an AI bubble. The markets are holding up very nicely,” he continued.

A new market catalyst awaits on Friday with the release of January’s consumer price index report. The inflation gauge is expected to show a 2.5% advance from a year earlier, according to economists polled by Dow Jones. On a month-over-month basis, economists call for a 0.3% increase.

The three major averages are on pace for weekly losses, with the S&P 500 and Dow off more than 1% through Thursday’s close. The Nasdaq is on track for a 1.9% decline in the period.

Stock market today: Live updates

Gold bounces back from near one-week low; U.S. inflation data in focus

Published Fri, Feb 13 2026 12:01 AM EST

Gold rebounded on Friday, recovering from a nearly one-week low in the previous session, as investors awaited key U.S. inflation figures for guidance on interest rate direction following robust jobs data that reduced expectations of rate cuts.

Spot gold was up 1.3% at $4,982.59 per ounce, as of 0311 GMT, and has gained 0.4% so far this week. U.S. gold futures for April delivery climbed 1.1% to $5,001.80 per ounce.

“The (precious) market will eventually continue to trend higher over time, but certainly with volatilities as heightened as they are and these big round levels offering, you know, sort of indicators of where positioning might be, big breaks certainly accelerate these moves,” Capital.com senior market analyst Kyle Rodda said.

Gold dropped about 3% to a near one-week low on Thursday, breaking below the $5,000-an-ounce key support as selling pressure intensified after an equities rout.

“Precious metals came down with equities last night. They didn’t really have much of a macro catalyst. Obviously, the overnight sell-offs was largely due to fresh fears about AI disruption,” Rodda added.

Asian shares retreated from record highs on Friday as worries about shrinking margins in the tech sector hit the likes of Apple.

The yellow metal also come under pressure after data released on Wednesday showed the U.S. job market began 2026 on firmer footing than expected, reinforcing the view that policymakers may keep rates elevated for longer.

Investors now await inflation data, due later in the day, for more cues on the Fed’s monetary policy path, with two 25-basis-point cuts currently priced in this year, with the first expected in June. Non-yielding bullion tends to do well in low-interest-rate environments.

Spot silver climbed 2.5% to $77.02 per ounce, rebounding from an 11% drop on Thursday, though it remained on track for a weekly loss of 1.2%.

Spot platinum added 1.7% to $2,034.41 per ounce, while palladium rose 2.2% to $1,653.0. Both metals were set to notch weekly losses.

Gold bounces back from near one-week low; U.S. inflation data in focus

AI Freakout Claims New Victim as Logistics Stocks Fall

February 12, 2026 at 10:55 PM GMT

Next up for the AI freakout are logistics stocks, which had the embarrassing distinction of being knocked about by a former karaoke company. They sank Thursday as investors rushed to dump shares amid ever-growing fears that artificial intelligence is going to take down more and more industries.

The Russell 3000 Trucking Index dropped 7.8%, with CH Robinson Worldwide at one point plunging by a record 24%, and Landstar System falling 18%. The index is on track for its worst day since President Donald Trump launched his global trade war last April. Drug distribution stocks were also caught up in the selloff, with McKesson and Cardinal Health both sliding more than 4%.

The rout was sparked by an update from tiny AI logistics firm Algorhythm Holdings, which previously traded as the Singing Machine Co.. It announced that its SemiCab platform in live customer deployments was helping its customers’ internal operations to scale freight volumes by 300% to 400% without a corresponding increase in operational headcount. Shares of the company soared 12%.

Investors had seen transportation as part of the “AI resistant” trade, particularly as volatility in technology names caused a push to diversify portfolios. However, Thursday’s selloff has proven that even the “old economy” isn’t immune to the AI concerns that have been wreaking havoc on the market. —David E. Rovella

The AI Freakout Claims Another Victim: Evening Briefing Americas - Bloomberg

Microsoft AI CEO Warns Most White Collar Jobs Fully Automated "Within Next 12-18 Months"; Anthropic Fears Potential For 'Heinous Crimes'

Friday, Feb 13, 2026 - 12:15 AM

The man leading Microsoft’s AI sprawling efforts is sounding the alarm over imminent mass labor disruptions, warning that the overwhelming majority of white-collar professional work could vanish to automation far sooner than most business and policy leaders are willing to admit - something we've been concerned about since early 2023.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman forecasted that within the next two years a vast swath of desk-bound tasks will be swallowed by AI.

“I think we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks - so white collar where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer, accountant, or project manager, or marketing person - most of the tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months,” Suleyman said when asked about the time table for Artificial general intelligence, commonly known as AGI.

The specter of mass job displacement now haunts governments around the world, even as the true body count remains murky amid broader economic headwinds.

A recent Challenger report showed that AI was blamed for 7,624 job cuts in January, 7% of the month’s total, and linked to 54,836 announced layoffs across 2025. Since tracking started in 2023, AI has been cited in 79,449 planned cuts, roughly 3% of the overall tally.

"It’s difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically. We know leaders are talking about AI, many companies want to implement it in operations, and the market appears to be rewarding companies that mention it," said Challenger.

A stark illustration is unfolding at Bay Area startup Mercor, which has quietly hired tens of thousands of white-collar contractors, often highly credentialed specialists in medicine, law, finance, engineering, writing, and the arts, to train the very AI systems destined to replace them. Paid $45 to $250 per hour for weeks or months of reviewing and refining model outputs for giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, these workers are, in effect, being paid to hand over the keys to their own obsolescence, the Wall Street Journal reports.

More

Microsoft AI CEO Warns Most White Collar Jobs Fully Automated "Within Next 12-18 Months"; Anthropic Fears Potential For 'Heinous Crimes' | ZeroHedge

In other news, China. Tariffs? What tariffs?

A year into Trump tariffs, Chinese factories and ports are buzzing with activity

Published Wed, Feb 11 2026 10:38 PM EST

A year after U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs spooked exporters and customers, Chinese factories and ports are buzzing with activity ahead of the Lunar New Year — even pushing freight rates higher.

Chinese factory activity typically surges at the start of the year with manufacturers racing to fulfil orders and ship out goods before the country enters an extended holiday for the Chinese New Year. This year’s pre-holiday rush appears as strong as ever despite Trump tariffs.

Renaud Anjoran, founder and CEO of Agilian Technology, a Guangdong-based electronics manufacturer, said his factory was operating at nearly full capacity after a year of stop-start tariff threats: “We are very busy.”

“It’s back to the situation where it’s like tariffs don’t exist. American customers are not thinking of [buying from] other places,” Anjoran said, adding that some clients had to pay additional costs to have goods made and shipped out before the holiday.

His plant in the city of Dongguan ships more than half its products to the U.S., maintaining exports at levels seen before Trump’s imposition of tariffs last year.

“Factories saw orders, production and earnings jump ahead of the Chinese New Year holidays,” according to China Beige Book that tracks economic data from the world’s second largest economy.

The research firm estimates that in January, industrial output jumped compared to a year ago, with both domestic and export orders “accelerating sharply on-year and on-month.” The official reading on output for January and February will be out in March.

Major ports in China handled 40% more containers during the week ended Feb. 1 from a year earlier, according to a team of transport and logistics analysts at HSBC Bank. That marks the fastest year-on-year growth in more than 12 months and well above the average weekly growth of about 10% in 2025.

Take the ports in Ningbo, one of China’s most critical maritime hubs: Terminals operated “beyond capacity, with individual vessels overbooked by more than 20%, and container gate-in has been suspended,” said Jay Guo, dean at Ningbo China Institute for Supply Chain Innovation.

Rising transportation costs

Severe traffic congestion has pushed trucking rates up by 80%, Guo said, noting that many factories and freight forwarders will halt operations from Friday and resume next Thursday.

“CNY-focused advisories for shippers in Europe, North America, and Asia report a clear pre-holiday pull-forward of bookings from China,” said Wolfgang Lehmacher, a global supply chain and logistics expert.

That said, the spike was also in part thanks to the low-base effects from the timing of the Lunar New Year, which is in mid-February this year, versus late January in 2025.

The surge in activity, driven by pre-holiday front-loading, has pushed up freight prices. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, a key benchmark for container freight rates from Shanghai to major global destinations, was floating in the range of 1,400 to 1,656, in early January compared with the average level over the past 15 years of 1,337 to 1,568, according to HSBC’s freight monitor report released Monday.

More

A year into Trump tariffs, Chinese factories and ports are buzzing with activity

Along with the sunshine came some rain. Annual revisions to the jobs count benchmarked against Census data showed that for the April 2024-March 2025 period, payrolls growth was 898,000 lower than initially stated. Moreover, November’s previous estimate fell by 15,000 and December was off 2,000. For the final six months of 2025, the economy lost a net 1,000 jobs.

Here are the five key takeaways from the January jobs report

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 economy ekes out 0.1% growth in the fourth quarter

Published Thu, Feb 12 2026 2:05 AM EST

The U.K. economy grew a meager 0.1% in the fourth quarter, according to preliminary figures from the Office for National Statistics on Thursday.

Economists polled by Reuters expected the economy to have grown 0.2% over the October-December period, following 0.1% growth in the third quarter.

Month-on-month, the economy expanded 0.1% in December, down from a 0.2% expansion, revised down from 0.3%, the previous month. Pound sterling was flat against the dollar following the data, at $1.3624.

The ONS’ Director of Economic Statistics Liz McKeown said the latest data showed a mixed economic picture.

“The often-dominant services sector showed no growth, with the main driver instead coming from manufacturing. Construction, meanwhile, registered its worst performance in more than four years,” she said on X Thursday.

The U.K. economy is estimated to have grown 1.3% in 2025, the ONS noted, following growth of 1.1% in 2024.

The growth figures come after the Bank of England voted narrowly at its early February meeting to keep interest rates on hold, at 3.75%, given persistent inflationary pressures.

Those pressures are expected to ease in the coming months, however, and economists predict that the central bank could next cut rates in April to stimulate the lackluster British economy.

More

UK Q4 GDP 2025

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 interesting.

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink

11 February 2026

Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world's largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals.

The Taklamakan Desert (also spelled Taklimakan or Takla Makan) is slightly larger than Montana, stretching across about 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers). It is encircled by high mountains, which block moist air from reaching the desert for most of the year, creating extremely arid conditions that are too harsh for most plants.

However, over the past few decades, China has sowed a forest around the Taklamakan's edges, and a new study suggests this approach is beginning to bear fruit.

"We found, for the first time, that human-led intervention can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid landscapes, demonstrating the potential to transform a desert into a carbon sink and halt desertification," study co-author Yuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at Caltech and a senior research scientist in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science in an email.

Over 95% of the Taklamakan Desert is covered in shifting sand, meaning it has long been considered a "biological void," according to the study. The desert has been growing since the 1950s, when China underwent massive urbanization and farmland expansion. This conversion of natural land created the conditions for more sandstorms, which, in general, blow away soil and deposit sand instead, causing land degradation and desertification.

In 1978, China implemented the Three-North Shelterbelt Program, a huge ecological engineering project intended to slow desertification. Also called the "Great Green Wall," the project aimed to plant billions of trees around the margins of the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts by 2050. More than 66 billion trees have been planted in northern China to date, but experts debate whether the Great Green Wall has significantly reduced the frequency of sandstorms.

China finished encircling the Taklamakan Desert with vegetation in 2024, and researchers say the effort has stabilized sand dunes and grown forest cover in the country from 10% of its area in 1949 to more than 25% today.

Now, scientists have found that sprawling vegetation in the Taklamakan Desert's periphery is absorbing more carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere than the desert is releasing, meaning the Taklamakan may be transforming into a stable carbon sink.

The researchers analyzed ground observations of different vegetation-cover types, as well as satellite data showing precipitation, vegetation cover, photosynthesis and CO₂ fluxes in the Taklamakan Desert over the past 25 years. They also used the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Carbon Tracker, which models CO₂ sources and sinks globally, to bolster their findings.

The results, published Jan. 19 in the journal PNAS, show a long-term trend of expanding vegetation and rising CO₂ uptake along the desert's edges that coincides both in time and space with the Great Green Wall.

More

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink

Next, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.

World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)

Another weekend and the last weekend before Peace President Trump attacks Iran? Have a great weekend everyone.

“The strong payrolls print in January may be somewhat exaggerated: construction payrolls jumped, sensitive to warmer January weather; healthcare payrolls were well above trend; and retail stabilized. The underlying pace for private payrolls is probably closer to 50k per month after accounting for the temporary strength in those areas, close to the recent pace.” 

Michael Gapen, Morgan Stanley chief economist.