A 'War Of The Oil Refineries' Opens As Israel Bombs Key Tehran Sites, After Which Haifa Refinery Targeted

Despite Crazy Revisions, Consumer Confidence Rebounds From January's Doom After Boomers and Gen X dragged The Conference Board Confidence measure down to eight month lows to end 2025, expectations were for a rebound to start 2026. Instead, January was a bloodbath with all the cohorts tumbling. Today sees February's data released with expectations for a rebound, particularly in expectations... and the consensus was right. The headline Consumer Confidence print rose from 84.5 (revised dramatically up to 89.0) to 91.2 (better than the 87.1 expected) Under the hood it was kind of crazy with the...

Iran Already Scrambling For Oil Storage After Two Weeks Of US Blockade Trump's blockade is having a predictable effect on Iran's economy and oil industry, with reports that the regime is scrambling to repurpose old and rusty tankers as floating storage.  Kharg Island is hitting capacity and the results could lead to disaster for Iran's oil wells.  The regime is reportedly moving to expand crude storage at the island, where around 90% of their energy exports are processed, by reactivating a 30-year-old crude carrier called M/T Nasha.  It's a bad sign...

Trump Sets Xi Meeting Date As Clock Ticks On Iran War Offramp The long-anticipated Trump-Xi meeting will take place in Beijing on May 14 and 15, the White House said Wednesday, after the bilateral summit was previously pushed back due to the Iran war. This marks a roughly six week postponement compared to when it was earlier supposed to happen. President Trump indicated in a fresh social media post that US representatives are "finalizing preparations for these Historic Visits." He added that "I look very much forward to spending time with President Xi in...