A short rebound in stocks fizzled after Monday's drop, as worries about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence continued to unsettle markets which digested yesterday’s AI scare, and await today’s Claude / Anthropic presentation, while preparing for tonight’s State of the Union address (“SOTU”). Some have suggested that Trump may attack power generation risks during SOTU as he deals with affordability.As of 8:00am ET, S&P 500 futures traded unchanged, erasing an earlier 0.3% gain. The benchmark fell 1% in the previous session following a sharp drop in dealer gamma and a report that rehashes well-known fears about AI. Nasdaq 100 contracts climbed 0.1%, as AMD soared 11% on a $100 billion deal with Meta for data-center gear and a minority investment in the chipmaker. Other Mag7 are all mostly higher while an ETF tracking software firms was flat. IBM remained little changed following a 13% tumble. Nvidia Corp. fell 1.2% ahead of its results on Wednesday. Sentiment was also dented after Jamie Dimon said he’s starting to see parallels with the pre-financial crisis era, when a rush to make loans ended disastrously. At midnight, the US's 10% blanket tariff went into effect with Trump threatening to raise to 15%. Bond yields aso reversed an earlier gain and were unchanged while the USD was bid driven by a spike in the USDJPY after Takaichi pushed back on rate hikes. Commodities are seeing a muted move today with Energy up, Metals down, and Ags mixed; oil has closed in a tight range the last 3 sessions and remains in those levels. Today’s macro data focus is weekly ADP, home price indices, regional Fed activity indicators, and Consumer Confidence. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The average tax refund for American taxpayers has increased on a year-over-year basis, the IRS said in a Feb. 20 update.

The average refund amount increased 14.2 percent in 2026 to $2,476 as of Feb. 13, according to the agency. Last year, the average refund for the same time period was $2,169.

For years - literally - we have been pounding the table and pointing out market rigging and manipulation irregularities in the crypto markets which, for reasons of our own, we attributed to one of the world's foremost HFT shops and most profitable "market makers" in the world (if not India), Jane Street. Below is an example from 2023, and here are hundreds of others...

There's been another killing by explosive device in the heart of Moscow - this time coming on the fourth anniversary of the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Russian Interior Ministry has confirmed that a culprit detonated powerful bomb beside a police patrol car in central Moscow early Tuesday, near a public transport hub, which killed one officer and wounded two more.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices surged the most in five months in premarket trading, after Meta disclosed a multi-year deal to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs to power its next-generation AI data centers.

Meta will begin deploying these AMD chips in the second half of 2026. The first phase will support the deployment of 1 gigawatt.

Mexico's most wanted cartel boss was killed Sunday in a Mexican military operation reportedly supported by U.S. intelligence; however, the emergence of potential successors indicates the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is not at the end of its road, only suggesting the decapitation strike is more likely to drive short-term fragmentation and retaliatory or spillover risks.

Big legacy U.S. and European automakers are frantically dialing back their electric vehicle bets, scaling back once-hyped roadmaps to full electrification as demand for these vehicles implodes.

The latest automaker to reverse course is not a mass-market sedan or SUV maker, but a luxury supercar brand: Lamborghini.

Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Board of Peace established by US President Donald Trump, which requires a $1 billion contribution for membership, is reportedly exploring a stablecoin for use in rebuilding Gaza's economy following two years of war triggered by a Hamas terror attack in October 2023.

Launched in 2004 as an experiment at Harvard, Facebook is often regarded as the defining social media platform of its era, the one that brought such platforms into the mainstream.

Facebook reached one million users just ten months after its launch; it took Mark Zuckerberg's social network around eight years to reach one billion users.

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

For more than a decade, China’s footprint across Africa has expanded at a phenomenal pace.

Railways in Kenya, ports in Tanzania, energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa, and militarized infrastructure in various places have meant billions in state-backed loans. For decades, Beijing has positioned itself as Africa’s largest trading partner and its most aggressive infrastructure financier.

Ukraine's long-range drone campaign has reportedly once again struck at the heart of Russia's energy artery, igniting a fire at a key Transneft oil pumping station in the republic of Tatarstan early Monday.

Regional officials confirmed the incident after local media and Telegram channels first reported explosions near the strategic facility, with authorities announcing: "as a result of falling drone debris, a local fire broke out in an industrial zone."

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The Metropolitan Police has so far not commented on the viral video of a female police officer defending freedom of speech surrounded by a crowd of angry Muslim men in Whitechapel but it has questions to answer.