Have You Seen The Surge In US Rough Rice Futures America’s rice harvest is forecast to fall to its lowest level in 33 years. CBOT rough rice futures, the benchmark for US long-grain rice before milling, are surging higher at the end of summer after rising 69% so far this year. USDA forecasts total production at 158.2 million hundredweight, roughly 23% below last year’s 206.7 million. Harvested acreage is projected at just 2.057 […]

Mullin: DHS Investigating 1,620 Non-Citizen Voter Fraud Cases Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness, The Department of Homeland Security is investigating 1,620 cases of alleged voter fraud involving noncitizens and reviewing hundreds of thousands of additional cases, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said. Mullin told Fox News that DHS has made 151 arrests and is examining another 300,000 cases based on information […]

Copper Nears Record High As Shanghai Inventories Tumble, Fueling Scarcity Fears Copper has almost retraced the selloff sparked earlier this month, following Reuters’ report that the White House’s “copper tariff plan stalls amid affordability concerns.” Prices are back near record highs in London as Bloomberg reports tightening supplies in China’s physical market, reinforcing scarcity concerns. Three-month futures on the London […]

Trump Calls For Diesel Export Ban After 3-Hour ‘Very Productive’ Iran Talks Summary US-Iran talks: Unnamed US admin representatives held 3-hour talks with Iranian officials on sidelines of UN General Assembly. Trump’s UN address ultimatum: Touts possible deal ‘after’ US midterm elections, but also says: “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival?” Diesel export ban: Trump said he had discussed a potential […]

MAHA Leaders Warn Trump, RFK Jr. Over Inaction On mRNA Vaccines Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, Some leaders in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement on Sept. 21 warned President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over their inaction regarding messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines, including vaccines against COVID-19. “While the centerpiece of the MAHA and health freedom agenda […]

Goldman Warns Nightmare Refining Crisis Could Prolong Diesel, Gas Price Pain Through 2027 Goldman energy analyst Nikhil Bhandari warned in a note on Monday that the global refining system is too stretched to support a full recovery in fuel demand while inventories rebuild. This suggests that fuel prices will remain elevated into next year. Bhandari told clients that refining margins must remain elevated to restrain consumption and […]

‘Pausing’ Intensifies: OpenAI Unleashes Latest Model Minutes After Dario Dumps Magnum Opus Update (1417ET): Well, well, well… Anthropic’s new Opus launch went up around lunchtime in New York, and by early afternoon OpenAI had rolled out GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, halving prices yet again. GPT-6 Sol now costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, half the $4/$20 promo rate Anthropic matched earlier today. GPT-6 […]

Libya’s Largest Oilfield Hit By New Armed Group Blockade By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com Crude oil production at Libya’s largest oilfield, Sharara, has slumped over the past day after an armed military group closed a valve on the pipeline that carries crude oil from the field to the Zawiya port for exports, in yet another global supply scare amid ongoing disruptions in the Middle East. An armed group has closed Valve n.7 […]

2Y Auction Tails As Foreign Demand Slides Despite Highest Yield In Over 3 Years Ahead of today’s auction, with yields sliding early in the day tracking the drop in oil tick-for-tick, some speculated that participants in today’s sale of $69BN in 2 year notes would need a modest concession to show enthusiasm for the auction. And even though yields did push wider until the 1pm stop, it appears it was not enough and the auction was […]

Turkish Airlines, Pegasus & AJet Cancel Iran Flights As US Sanctions Bite Via Middle East Eye Turkey’s national carrier, Turkish Airlines, and budget airlines AJet and Pegasus have cancelled flights to and from Iran from September 21 as US sanctions take effect, a review by Middle East Eye indicates. The Turkish Airlines and AJet websites have no flights to Iran until March, while Pegasus appears to have removed all flights to […]

Bank Stocks Slide On Resurgent Agentic Fears It used to be software that was the first casualty of fears of AI disruption. Today, it’s the banks. In a generally flat (and higher for tech stocks) market landscape, banks are conspicuously underperforming today, prompting questions what’s the reason for the underperformance.   According to some traders, the reason is the market’s newfound obsession with the latest shiny agentic […]

Texas Governor Orders Halt To New Data Centers Weeks After Issuing Moratorium One month after Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered a pause on Texas data center approvals pending an audit, overnight the governor doubled down and ordered the state’s environmental watchdog to withhold permits for new data centers until an audit of risks to the power grid is complete. No authorizations can be given until the Electric Reliability […]

Ed Dowd: The Fed Hiked Interest Rates Into A Supply Shock Authored by Ed Dowd: Beyond the Narrative via Substack, September FOMC Meeting: First Rate Hike Since July 2023 The FOMC did what the front end of the Treasury market (3-month T-bill) had been telegraphing for two weeks prior. On September 16 they voted unanimously to raise the fed funds rate 25 basis points to 3.75-4.00 percent. Kevin Warsh’s press conference was short, […]

All 10 ActBlue Witnesses Take The Fifth As GOP Says Probe Is “Far From Over” All ten ActBlue employees and board members deposed by House investigators have invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the Democratic Party’s dominant fundraising platform. Five of the ten are board members, all deposed in the past five weeks, and the three committees running the probe say they are not done. Their third report, […]

Iran’s Fars Calls Reuters’ Hormuz Reopening Story “Invalid” Ahead Of Trump’s UN Address Update: Iran’s Fars Rejects Hormuz Reopening Reports As Brent Slides <$100 On Diplomatic Hopes Brent Tumbles On US Media & Aligned Outlets Pushing Rumored Diplomatic Efforts  Iran’s Fars Rejects Reporting  Kyodo and Reuters published positive diplomatic headlines early Tuesday morning that sent Brent crude futures tumbling below $100 […]

Gamma Squeeze The World  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance A little over a week ago, I wrote about Leopold Aschenbrenner returning to markets, and the ensuing nausea the entire spectacle caused me. For those who missed it, Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund had grown to roughly $45 billion before getting absolutely smoked in July, falling toward $10 billion and forcing the liquidation of most of its public equity […]

Socialist Candidate Says Stealing From Taxpayers Makes Her “More Qualified” For Office It sounds crazy, but this kind of scenario is absolutely the norm for Democratic Socialist candidates:  Being convicted of blatant criminal embezzlement is a badge of honor, not a disqualifying mark on their record.  The complete inversion of moral standards is unsettling and it reinforces the need to prevent far-left activists from entering […]

Putin Urges Immediate Yemen Ceasefire In Call With Saudi Crown Prince Russian President Vladimir Putin held a Monday telephone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (who is also the prime minister) – wherein the two leaders focused on broad bilateral issues. Referring to the “Saudi National Day”, a TASS readout indicates “The Russian leader congratulated the Saudi Crown Prince on the upcoming national holiday – […]

“Repeated And Persistent Supply-Side Shocks” Are Here To Stay By Michael Every of Rabobank Chicago Fed President Goolsbee just warned the FOMC can’t ignore repeated and persistent supply-side shocks and must respond in a way that will cause economic hardship. However, repeated and persistent supply-side shocks are now the norm, not short-lived, aberrant events. Putin won the Russian election with a supermajority: fears are […]

Alibaba Unveils China’s Most Powerful AI Chip In $53 Billion Gambit Alibaba Group has unveiled the Zhenwu V900, an AI accelerator it calls China’s most powerful, marking a major escalation in its effort to challenge Nvidia and build a vertically integrated artificial-intelligence stack stretching from chips and networking to models and hyperscale data centers. Alibaba booth at the 3rd China International Supply Chain Expo at the […]

Lindsay Clancy’s Attorney Requests Investigation Into Holdout Juror Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times, Lindsay Clancy’s attorney has asked the judge to conduct a “limited inquiry” into the holdout juror who wanted Clancy convicted of murdering her three children. In a motion filed Sept. 18, lawyer Kevin Reddington asked Judge William Sullivan to review the juror’s truthfulness on a questionnaire and alleged use of a […]

Saudis Signal Red Sea Oil Loadings Could Soon Resume For Asian Buyers Bloomberg reports Saudi Aramco may restart crude loadings at Yanbu this week, raising hopes that the critical East-West pipeline route, which bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, could resume operations at half capacity after a drone attack disabled it. While no restart timeline has been confirmed, the overnight development adds to positive signs of progress toward […]

Friends Don’t Let Friends Wear Dow Hats  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance At some point, probably sooner than most people think, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to hit 100,000. And when it does, you can already picture the scene. It’ll be like every major milestone the Dow has ever hit so far combined. CNBC will run a countdown. There will be breathless retrospectives about how far the market has come. Somebody […]

Futures Flat As Oil, Yields Drop Ahead Of Trump UN Address Futures are flat, having recoverd  a modest drop after the European open, following yesterday’s strong, positive performance despite energy prices and yields being lower for a second consecutive day. As of 8:00am ET, S&P and Nasdaq futures are fractionally in the green after an advance in tech giants and chipmakers drove the index to a one-month high. In premarket […]

UK’s Burnham Approves Military Support To Saudis, Limited To Aerial Refueling  The UK has finally made a formal decision on the intense political and foreign policy question it has faced for the couple weeks since the Houthis started making rapid gains against the Saudi-backed coalition in Yemen. London has announced it will increase its military support to Saudi Arabia, albeit it has become clear that this will still be very […]