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IEA Slashes Oil Demand Growth Forecast For 2026 By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice, Global oil demand is expected to rise by 850,000 barrels per day this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday as it cut its growth estimate from 930,000 bpd expected last month.  

Homan Says Minnesota Immigration "Surge Operation" Is Over White House border czar Tom Homan said on Thursday that the Trump administration has made significant progress in Minnesota and will therefore end the immigration enforcement surge in the state.

Logistics Stocks Crater As "AI Scare Trade" Crushes Sector, Slams Broader Market FIrst it was SaaS (in particular, and Software in general), then Private Credit, then Insurance Brokers, then it was financials/brokers that were hammered on Tuesday, then 

"A Good Way To Destroy Your Country": Rogan Blasts Democrats' Open Border Insanity Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, Joe Rogan has zeroed in on the Democrats’ border fiasco, calling it a direct path to America’s downfall by inviting criminals and chaos across the line.

The Men And Women In The High Castle By Michael Every of Rabobank US payrolls stronger, US yields up, stocks flat as anything hit by AI was too, oil sideways, and USD/JPY at 153 vs 159 a few days ago. Fed-speak was all over the place. Schmid said restrictive rates are needed to cool inflation. Miran said there’s still a variety of reasons to cut rates. Hammack said the labor market is finding a healthy balance and rates should stay on hold. And as they all speak, 2026’s book of changes unfolds.

House-Passed Voter ID SAVE Act Set To Die In Senate; DHS Shutdown Looms On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the SAVE America Act by a margin of 218-213. The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as photo ID to vote in federal elections. One Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, joined Republicans in voting for it, while one R and one D did not vote. 

US Existing Home Sales Collapsed In January After managing a 1.4% YoY rise in 2025 (dramatically down from the 9.7% YoY rise in 2024, and 33% YoY collapse in 2023), US existing home sales were expected to drop 4.6% MoM in January (following December's outsized 5.1% MoM surge), despite a tumble in mortgage rates. The analysts were correct on the direction but wrong on the scale as existing home sales plunged 8.4% MoM in January from a downwardly revised +4.4% MoM in December. That is the biggest MoM drop since February 2022...

Ahead Of EU Competitiveness Summit: Macron Pushes Eurobonds Submitted By Thomas Kolbe  As the 27 EU heads of government convene with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday, the stakes are high from a fiscal perspective. A decisive item on the agenda at Belgium’s Alden Biesen Castle is the so-called Draghi Plan. The question hovering above it all is as simple as it is explosive: How can the obvious productivity and growth weakness of the Eurozone economy be overcome? For years, economic dynamism has lagged behind other major economies, with structural barriers stifling investment and innovation. Over-indebtednes

"Modern Money Only Works By Cheating": If You're Long Bitcoin (Or Not Long Bitcoin), Read This... Tl;dr: Bitcoin exists not to replace fiat money but as a provocative "hard object" in an elastic monetary world. Modern fiat succeeds by cheating - deferring pain, socializing losses, and bending rules to absorb crises (Weimar rigidity led to hyperinflation; 1929 rigidity was abandoned for elasticity in the 1930s; 2008 and COVID responses bent rules to survive). Fiat buys time during trauma but creates ratcheting inflation that disproportionately burdens the asset-poor, while rewarding mobile capital. Bitcoin recreates gold's key elusive trait: non-discretionary, issuer-risk-free scarcity in digital form. Unlike gold (which responds

CME Explores First-Ever Rare Earth Futures Contracts CME Group is drawing up plans for what could become the first-ever futures contract tied to rare earths, according to three people familiar with the matter, offering governments, companies and lenders a potential tool to manage exposure to a market long dominated by China, according to Reuters. The proposed contract would track neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), typically traded together and used to produce permanent magnets found in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, drones and fighter je