UK Announces Sanctions on Israeli West Bank Settlements, Says ‘Settler Terrorists’ Are Committing Ethnic Cleansing

Third Round of US Strikes Hits 140 Targets After Hormuz Ship Attack; Iran Retaliates On Kuwait, Jordan Bases Update 1210ET.  The escalation cycle intensified overnight and into early Sunday as the US conducted its third round of strikes this week, while Iran enforced its declared closure of the Strait of Hormuz and launched retaliatory attacks across multiple Gulf states. CENTCOM confirmed strikes began around 7:15 p.m. ET Saturday night, hitting approximately 140 Iranian military targets. These focused on degrading IRGC capabilities to threaten commercial shipping, including radars, missile/drone sites, launch systems, and...

Futures Rise Despite Oil Bounce, As Nvidia Keeps AI Euphoria Going Futures are positive and at session highs even as the a lack of a US / Iran deal pushes oil prices, bond yields, and volatility higher. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are up 0.3% to a new all time high of 7620; Nasdaq futures rise 0.2%: the Computex AI Conference kicked off; biggest news is NVDA to enter PC space with a new chip challenging AMD / INTC, helping send its stock up 2.3%. Microsoft shares gain 3.1% after...

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...