EXCHANGE: COMEX
EXCHANGE: COMEX
CONTRACT: MAY 2026 COMEX 100 GOLD FUTURES
SETTLEMENT: 4,718.700000000 USD
INTENT DATE: 05/11/2026 DELIVERY DATE: 05/13/2026
FIRM ORG FIRM NAME ISSUED STOPPED
099 H DEUTSCHE BANK AG 5
118 C MACQUARIE FUTURES US 1
523 C INTERACTIVE BROKERS 1
555 C BNP PARIBAS SEC CORP 17
657 H MORGAN STANLEY 20
661 C JP MORGAN SECURITIES 13
709 C BARCLAYS 15
TOTAL: 36 36
MONTH TO DATE: 3,790
GOLD: NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR MAY/2026: 36 CONTRACTs NOTICES FOR 3600 OZ or 0.1119 TONNES
total notices so far: 3790 contracts FOR 379,000 OZ OR 11.788 TONNES
SILVER NOTICES: 260 NOTICE(S) FILED FOR 1.300 MILLION OZ /
total number of notices filed so far this month : 5373 CONTRACTS (NOTICES) for 26.365 million oz
SILVER//OUTLINE
INITIAL STANDING FOR JANUARY: 22.915 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 1.185 MILLION OZ QUEUE JUMP//NEW NORMAL STANDING ADVANCES TO 49.445 MILLION OZ// TO WHICH WE ADD OUR FIRST EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR .100 MILLION OZ//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 49.545 MILLION OZ!!
INTIAL STANDING FOR FEBRUARY/SILVER: 13.505 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S HUGE 0.005 MILLION OZ QUEUE JUMP / : NEW STANDING FOR SILVER AT THE COMEX ADVANCES TO 25.180 MILLION OZ. BUT WE MUST ADD OUR FIRST EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 25 CONTRACTS FOR .125 MILLION OZ AND THEN OUR SECOND EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF .0600 MILLION OZ TO OUR THIRD HUGE 2.825 MILLION OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK!!
INITIAL STANDING FOR MARCH: A SURPRISINGLY LOW 31.076 MILLION OZ/ FOLLOWED BY A TINY QUEUE JUMP OF 1 CONTRACTS OR 0.005 MILLION OZ/NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 46.060 MILLION OZ
INITIAL STANDING FOR APRIL: 7.120 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 1 CONTRACT QUEUE JUMP WHERE 5,000 OZ WILL TAKE DELIVERY OVER ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND. NEW STANDING FOR SILVER AT THE COMEX THUS ADVANCES SLIGHTLY TO 16.565 MILLION OZ PLUS WE MUST ADD OUR 4TH EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE OF 17 CONTRACTS OR 0.085 MILLION OZ. THESE WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OTHER 3 ISSUANCES //NEW TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK//1.165 MILLION OZ// NEW TOTAL SILVER STANDING 17.730 MILLION OZ//
INITIAL STANDING FOR MAY: 31.495 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY OUR HUGE QUEUE JUMP OF 265 CONTRACTS FOR 1.325 MILLION OZ/NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 31.180 MILLION OZ/.//
SUMMARY OF OUR MAY 2026 COMEX CONTRACT MONTH:
JULY: 50.925 MILLION OZ (QUITE SMALL)
AUGUST: 59.455 MILLION OZ (QUITE SMALL)
SEPT. 50.510 MILLION OZ.(QUITE SMALL)
OCT; 82.020 MILLION OZ (WILL BE STRONG THIS MONTH)/ OCC WANTS TO REIN IN THESE ISSUANCES!
NOVEMBER: 36.425 MILLION OZ
DEC: 45.765 MILLION OZ
JANUARY 2026: 134.270 MILLION OZ (WILL BE A VERY STRONG MONTH FOR EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL!)
FEB : 82.130 MILLION OZ
MARCH: 56.075 MILLION OZ
APRIL; 44.44 MILLION OZ//FINAL.. SMALL THIS MONTH.
MAY 26.055 MILLION OZ
AND JULY: 46.720 MILLION OZ//
AUGUST: 4.70 MILLION OZ INITIAL STANDING PLUS TODAY;S 5,000 OZ QUEUE JUMP //NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 10.960 MILLION OZ
SEPTEMBER: 68.040 MILLION OZ NORMAL DELIVERY(INCLUDES ALL QUEUE JUMPING AND EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL TRANSFERS) PLUS 3.0 MILLION OZ EX FOR RISK = 71.040 MILLION OZ. (THIS IS THE FIRST AND ONLY ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR SILVER SINCE MAY.)
OCTOBER: 39.565 MILLION OZ OF NORMAL DELIVERY INCLUDES ALL QUEUE JUMPING
PLUS
2.110 MILLION OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK//TOTAL OZ STANDING IN OCT ADVAN
NOVEMBER: INITIAL STANDING AT 11.575 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 195,000 OZ QUEUE JUMP WHICH FOLLOWS ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPS OF 9.155 MILLION OZ//STANDING ADVANCES TO 19.670 MILLION OZ/
DECEMBER: INITIAL AMOUNT STANDING FOR DELIVERY: 49.33 MILLION OZ// FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER STRONG 835,000OZ QUEUE JUMP+ DEC. FIRST EXCHANGE FOR RISK 0F .850 MILLION OZ + LAST WEEK.S 495,000 OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK AND THEN A 3RD ISSUANCE IF 1.00MILLION OZ THEN FINALLY DEC 249ISSUANCE OF 1.35 MILLION OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK//NEW TOTAL EX FOR RIS IS 3.685 MILLION OZ // STANDING ADVANCES TO 68.415 MILLION OZ//
JANUARY: INITIAL STANDING 22.915 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 1.185 MILLION OZ QUEUE JUMP//NORMAL STANDING ADVANCES TO 49.445 MILLION OZ// TO WHICH WE ADD OUR FIRST EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 0.100 MILLLION OZ//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 49.545 MILLION OZ
FEB: 13.399 MILLION OZ IS OUR INITIAL STANDING FOR SILVER! TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP FOR 5,000 OZ AND THEN ADD OUR 3 EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR 3.010 MILLION OZ STANDING ADVANCES TO 28.190 MILLION OZ!!
MARCH: INITIAL AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING IS 31.076 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY A FINAL 0.210 MILLION OZ QUEUE JUMP //NEW TOTAL STANDING ADVANCES TO 46.060 MILLION OZ
APRIL 2026: INITITAL AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING 7.120 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 5,000 OZ QUUE JUMP //NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 16.565MILLION OZ PLUS 1.165 MILLION OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK.NEW TOTALS 17.730 MILLION OZ
MAY: INITIAL AMOUNT OF SILVER WILLING TO STAND; 31.495 MILLION OZ/ TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP OF 265 CONTRACTS/1.325 OZ//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 31.180 MILLION OZ//(FOLLOWING MANY EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL TRANSFERS TO LONDON DURING THE MAY DELIVERY MONTH)
1.MAY SUMMARY FOR MAY TONNES WHICH STOOD FOR DELIVERY:
4. AUGUST: 60.547 TONNES OF INITIAL GOLD FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY THE NET MONTH’S QUEUE JUMP OF 47.2312 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD THE FOLLOWING EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE RECEIVED FOR THE MONTH: 5.4432 TONNES EX FOR RISK/AUG 7 , AUG 11: 2.413 TONNES EX FOR RISK AND AUG. 12 OF 2.
5.SEPT: INITIAL 8.093 TONNES OF GOLD PLUS TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP OF 0.4883 TONNES PLUS 2.2827 TONNES OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK TODAY//NEW TOTAL EX. FOR RISK/MONTH = 22.923//NEW TOTAL STANDING FOR GOLD SEPT ADVANCES TO = 48.801 TONNES!!
6.OCTOBER: 90.012 TONNES OF INITIAL GOLD STANDING WITH TODAY’S TINY 0.00311 TONNES QUEUE JUMP WHICH FOLLOWS ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPS DURING OCT OF 76.1656 TONNES
THEN WE MUST ADD OUR 14.553 TONNES OF OUR ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK/6 OCCASIONS//NEW TOTAL OF GOLD STANDING ADVANCES TO 197.5141 TONNES OF GOLD.
7.NOVEMBER BEGINS WITH 15.651 TONNES INITIALLY STANDING FOR DELIVERY FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP OF 2.323 TONNES FOLLOWED BY ALL PREVIOUS QUEUE JUMPS IN OF OF 21.3775 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR TWO EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE OF 4.5596 TONNES//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 43.9716 TONNES OF GOLD.
8. DECEMBER BEGINS WITH INITIAL STANDING OF 83.813 TONNES OF GOLD FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 0.0TONNE QUEUE JUMP WHICH FOLLOWS ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPS OF: 37.163 TONNES//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 115.390 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR 4 EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR DECEMBER OF 6.587 TONNES/NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 121.977 TONNES
9. JANUARY: INITITAL STANDING: 13.785 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR FIRST EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL TRANSFER OF 0.08709 TONNES WHICH FOLLOWS ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPS OF 30.7117TONNES //NEW TOTAL QUEUE JUMPS 30.7117//NORMAL DELIVERY OF GOLD ADVANCES TO 36.8958 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR SIX EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 22.315 TONNES//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 59.2108 TONNES.
FEB; INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR DELIVERY: 93.567 TONNES OF GOLD TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT 0.0248 TONNES 0.1555 TONNES QUEUE JUMP TO 41.2082 TONNES/ NEW NET QUEUE JUMP INCREASES TO 41.233 TONNES// AND THEN WE ADD OUR SIX EXCHANGE FOR RISK: 10,080 CONTRACTS OR 31.251 TONNES//NEW STANDING REDUCES TO 157.878 TONNES
MARCH:: INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR DELIVERY: 8.099 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD TODAY’S FAIR 4600 OZ QUEUE JUMP (0.2320 TONNES) AND THEN WE ADD OUR THREE EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 22.3818 TONNES //NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 67.6648 TONNES/
APRIL: INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR DELIVERY: 52.600 TONNES FOLLOWED BY OUR 278 CONTRACT QUEUE JUMP FOR 27800 OZ/ (0.8646 TONNES)/NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 70.286 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR 2ND EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 1498 CONTRACTS FOR 149800 OZ OR 4.659 TONNES. THE NEW TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL IS 2239 CONTRACTS OR 223900 OZ OR 6.964 TONNES AND THIS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELIVERY TOTALS (70.762 TONNES) TO GIVE US WHAT WILL STAND IN APRIL (77.726 TONNES)
MAY: INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD WILLING TO STAND: 12.24 TONNES OF GOLD TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP OF 35 CONTRACTS OR 3500 OZ (.1088 TONNES) TO WHICH WE ADD OUR TWO EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCES FOR .4353 TONNES/STANDING NOW ADVANCES TO 14.4073 TONNES OF GOLD.
STANDING FOR THE LAST 5 MONTHS JANUARY TO MAY:
FINAL STANDING FOR GOLD, JANUARY CONTRACT AT 59.2108 TONNES OF GOLD
FEBRUARY: INITIAL STANDING FOR GOLD: 157.878 TONNES!! WHICH INCLUDES ALL QUEUE JUMPING, THREE EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL TRANSFERS TO LONDON AND OUR SIX ISSUANCES EXCHANGE FOR RISK!!
MARCH: INITIAL STANDING AT 8.099 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR FINAL DAY: 0.2320 TONNES QUEUE JUMP AND THEN ADD +22.3818 TONNES EXCHANGE FOR RISK//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 67.6648 TONNES
APRIL: INITIAL STANDING 52.600 TONNES PLUS 27,800 OZ QUEUE JUMP (0.8648TONNES): NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 70.286 TONNES PLUS OUR TWO EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR 223,900 OZ OR 6.964 TONNES/NEW STANDING: 77.726 TONNES
MAY: INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD WILLING TO STAND; 12.24 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP OF 35 CONTRACTS/3500 OZ// 0.0963 TONNES/ TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK: 004353 TONNES///NEW STANDING IS NOW ADVANCES TO 14.4073 TONNES
JAN. 2025: 257.919 TONNES (ISSUANCE WILL BE PRETTY GOOD THIS MONTH BUT MUCH LOWER THAN LAST MONTH)
FEB: 207.21 TONNES//EX FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE (WILL BE A FAIR SIZED ISSUANCE THIS MONTH)
MARCH 130.84 TONNES//QUITE SMALL THIS MONTH.
APRIL; 208.57 TONNES. STRONG THIS MONTH
MAY: 113.499 TONNES OF GOLD EFP ISSUANCE//QUITE SMALL THIS MONTH
JUNE: 97.79 TONNES OF GOLD EFP ISSUANCE/EXTREMELY SMALL
JULY : 150.877 TONNES// QUITE SMALL
AUGUST: 175.86 TONNES A LOT LARGER THIS MONTH.
SEPT. 116.13 TONNES VERY SMALL
OCT. 252.72 TONNES//CERTAINLY MUCH LARGER THIS MONTH/VERY STRONG
NOV: 124.74 TONNES
DEC: 190.04 TONNES//GOOD SIZED THIS MONTH FINAL.
TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUED FOR YEAR 2025: 2,026.20 TONNES (LOWER THAN LAST YR 2,569.00 TONNES
JANUARY: 209.08 TONNES ( (WILL BE A STRONG MONTH FOR EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL)
FEB. 176.35 TONNES (WHICH IS A FAIR ISSUANCE)
MARCH: 214.67 TONNES//WILL BE STRONG ISSUANCE THIS MONTH
APRIL; 88.00 TONNES// WILL BE VERY SMALL THIS MONTH
MAY 34.215 TONNES
HERE IS A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF HOW THE CROOKS FLEECE UNSUSPECTING LONGS
YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE THAT THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST STARTS TO RISE BUT SO IS THE OPEN INTEREST OF SPREADERS. THE OPEN INTEREST IN WILL CONTINUE TO RISE UNTIL ONE WEEK BEFORE FIRST DAY NOTICE OF AN UPCOMING ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH (OCT), AND THAT IS WHEN THE CROOKS SELL THEIR SPREAD POSITIONS BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME OF THE DAY. THEY WILL USE THE SELL SIDE OF THE EQUATION TO CREATE THE CASCADE (ALONG WITH THEIR COLLUSIVE FRIENDS) AND THEN COVER ON THE BUY SIDE OF THE SPREAD SITUATION AT THE END OF THE DAY. THEY DO THIS TO AVOID POSIT
WHAT IS ALARMING TO ME, ACCORDING TO OUR LONDON EXPERT ANDREW MAGUIRE IS THAT THESE EFP’S ARE BEING TRANSFERRED TO WHAT ARE CALLED SERIAL FORWARD CONTRACT OBLIGATIONS AND THESE CONTRACTS ARE LESS THAN 14 DAYS. ANYTHING GREATER THAN 14 DAYS, THESE MUST BE RECORDED AND SENT TO THE COMPTROLLER, GREAT BRITAIN TO MONITOR RISK TO THE BANKING SYSTEM. IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE, THEN THIS IS A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AS WE NOW WITNESS A MONSTROUS TOTAL EFP’S ISSUANCE AS IT HEADS INTO THE STRATOSPHERE.
The crooks also use the spread in the TAS account (trade at settlement). They buy the spot TAS (e.g. June) and sell the future TAS two months out (e.g. August). Then they unload the front month (i.e. unload the buy side first so the price of gold/silver falls. This occurs in the middle of the front delivery month cycle. They unload the sell side of the equation, two months down the road. The crooks violate position limits as the OCC refuse to hear our complaints.
First, here is an outline of what will be discussed tonight:
SILVER:
1.TODAY WE HAD THE OPEN INTEREST AT THE COMEX IN SILVER ROSE BY A MEGA MEGA STRONG 4461 CONTRACTS TO AN OI OF 104,418 ADVANCING A FROM ITS ALL TIME LOW SET MAY 1.
EFP ISSUANCE 2195 CONTRACTS
OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:
JULY 2195 CONTRACTS and 0 ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 0 CONTRACTS. EFP’S GIVE OUR COMEX LONGS A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON. IF WE TAKE THE COMEX OI GAIN OF 4461 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 2195 E.FP. ISSUED
WE OBTAIN A HUGE SIZED GAIN OF 6656 OI OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES WITH OUR GAIN OF $5.10
THUS IN OUNCES, THE GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES TOTALS 33.28 MILLION PAPER OZ
OCCURRED WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE.OF $5.10
2.ASIAN AFFAIRS MAY 12 /2025
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 10.73 PTS OR 0.25%
HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 58.93 PTS OR 0.22%
Nikkei CLOSED UP 274.12 PTS OR 0.44%
//Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.79%
//Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) CLOSED UP TO 6.7948
/ OFFSHORE CLOSED UP AT 6.7947 Oil UP TO 101.60 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT UP TO 107.15 Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED
ONSHORE USA/ YUAN TRADING UP (6.7948) OFFSHORE YUAN TRADING UP TO 6.7947 ONSHORE YUAN TRADING BELOW OFF SHORE AND UP ON THE DOLLAR// / AND THUS STRONGER/OFF SHORE YUAN TRADING UP AGAINST US DOLLAR/ AND THUS STRONGER
1. COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS
LET US BEGIN:
THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST ROSE BY A FAIR 2998 CONTRACTS UP TO AN OI OF 374,344 CONTRACTS (OI) , HAVING ADVANCED FROM OUR NEW LOW OI SET LATE LAST MONTH AND SURPASSING THE PREVIOUS ALL TIME LOW IN OI OF 354,581 SET APRIL6/2026. PREVIOUS TO THAT THE ALL TIME LOW IN OI WAS 390,000 SET IN THE YEAR 2001 WHEN GOLD WAS TRADING $260.00. THE CME SHOULD BE PROUD OF THEMSELVES AS MANY HAVE ABANDONED THIS CROOKED ARENA!!THUS OUR NEW ALL TIME LOW OF COMEX OI HAS NOW BEEN SET AT 354,581 WITH GOLD AT AN EXTREMELY HIGH $4,700.00 WHICH MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!!!
WE HAD ZERO T.A.S. LIQUIDATION DURING MONDAY’S TRADING. IT SEEMS THAT SOME OF THE SPECULATORS CONTINUED AGAIN TO GO MASSIVELY ON THE LONG SIDE BUT ALSO SOME SPECULATORS STILL GOING TO THE SHORT SIDE WITH THE BANKERS NOW TAKING THE LONG SIDE,AND CENTRAL BANKS SUPPLYING THE NECESSARY PAPER, AS WELL AS COVERING THEIR SHORTFALL. THERE ARE ALSO SOME SPECULATORS WHO CONTINUALLY GO TO THE SHORT SIDE AND AND OF COURSE THEY WILL BE ANNHILATED ON CENTRAL BANK COMMAND!!
CENTRAL BANKS ALSO TENDERED THEIR NEW LONG CONTRACTS AT THE END OF THE DAY FOR PHYSICAL GOLD. YOU CAN VISUALIZE THIS WITH THE STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING AT THE COMEX FOR THIS MAY CONTRACT MONTH!!
THE STRONG SIZED GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES OCCURRED DESPITE OUR SMALL LOSS IN PRICE IN GOLD (DOWN $2.80).
WE THUS HAD A STRONG SIZED GAIN IN OI ON BOTH OF OUR EXCHANGES, THE COMEX AND LONDON’S EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL EQUATING TO 5,023 CONTRACTS (OR 15.632 TONNES) DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE, AS WE WERE INFORMED OF A FAIR CONTRACT EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE.EQUATING TO 2028 CONTRACTS.
THEN WE WERE NOTIFIED TODAY OF A SMALL CONTRACT FOR RISK ISSUANCE IN GOLD TOTALLING 13 CONTRACTS FOR 1300 OZ OR 0.0963 TONNES OF GOLD. WE HAD OUR FIRST ISSUANCE FOR EXCHANGE FOR RISK ON MAY 7, SO THIS IS OUR 2ND ISSUANCE FOR OUR MAY GOLD MONTH. THIS GOLD WILL BE ADDED TO OUR NORMAL MAY DELIVERIES TO GIVE US OUR FINAL AMOUNT OF GOLD WILLING TO STAND AT THE COMEX..
HISTORY OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE THIS YEAR: FEBRUARY THROUGH MAY
FEBRUARY:
DURING THE MIDDLE OF THE FEBRUARY CONTRACT MONTH, WE HAD TWO IDENTICAL MONSTER 3,000 CONTRACT ISSUED FOR THE SAME 9.33 TONNES OF GOLD, AND THESE WERE THE HIGHEST EVER IN TONNAGE EVER ISSUED BY THE COMEX. ALTOGETHER THE TOTAL ISSUANCE FOR FEB TOTALLED SIX.(31.251 TONNES).
MARCH:
THURSDAY MARCH 17 WE RECEIVED ITS INITIAL 2000 CONTRACT EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE FOR 6.22 TONNES. LAST FRIDAY: 0 ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK. BUT ON MONDAY MARCH 23 WE RECEIVED NOTICE OF OUR SECOND EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE FOR 2,200 CONTRACTS (220,000 OZ OR 6.843 TONNES) AND NOW FRIDAY WITH A MONSTER 2996 CONTRACTS FOR 9.3138 TONNES. THESE THREE ISSUANCES WILL NOW BE ADDED TO THE REGULAR AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING, I.E. 22.3818 TONNES TO OUR NORMAL GOLD STANDING TO GIVE US WHAT WILL STAND FOR PHYSICAL GOLD FOR MARCH!
APRIL;: 2 EXCHANGE FOR RISK SO FAR, I.E. 2239 CONTRACTS FOR 223,900 OZ OR 6.964 TONNES AND THIS TOTAL TONNES WILL BE ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELIVERY TO GIVE US WHAT WILL STAND IN APRIL
MAY: TWO ISSUANCES SO FAR FOR 140 CONTRACTS OR 14,000OZ OR 0.4353 TONNES.
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A LITTLE HISTORY OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK DECEMBER THROUGH TO MAY:
IN DECEMBER WE HAVE RECORDED 5 ISSUANCES OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK/4 FOR DEC AND THE LAST ONE ON DEC 31 FOR JANUARY. WE NOW HAVE 3 CHOICES FOR THE RECIPIENT OF THIS ISSUANCE AND IT MUST BE A CENTRAL BANK. YOU WILL RECALL THAT THE BUYER ASSUMES THE RISK OF THAT DELIVERY. (THUS TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER IS 6.56 TONNES/4 OCCASIONS.
MONTH OF JANUARY/EXCHANGE FOR RISK
IN JANUARY THEY HAVE 6 TOTAL ISSUANCE : 3.446 TONNES EARLY, THEN JAN 9 ISSUANCE OF 9,331 TONNES AND THEN JAN 16: 0.1996 TONNES JAN 26: 1.499 TONNES, JAN 27: 3.160 AND FINALLY JAN 29: 4.659 TONNES TONNES//TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK JANUARY 22.315 TONNES WHICH WAS ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELVERIES.
AND FEBRUARY:
FEB EXCHANGE FOR RISK: NOW 6 ISSUANCES: 10,080 CONTRACTS FOR 1,008,000 OZ OR 31.251 TONNES!
HERE ARE THE CHOICES FOR THE RECIPIENT OF THOSE ISSUANCES:
1 THE CENTRAL BANK OF ENGLAND. BUT THEY RECEIVED CLEARANCE THAT THEIR GOLD IS BACK SO IT IS NOT LIKELY THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO ADD TO THEIR RESERVES.
2. THE CENTRAL BANK OF THE USA: THE FED. LOGICAL CHOICE AS THEY CLAMOUR TRYING TO REDUCE THEIR 106+ TONNES OF SHORTAGE. HOWEVER THEY SEEM NOT TO BE IN A HURRY TO COVER THEIR HUGE SHORTFALL
3. THE CENTRAL BANK OF CHINA AS THEY BATTLE WITS WITH THE USA.
TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR DECEMBER IS 6.56 TONNES AND THIS WAS ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELIVERY TOTALS..
THE JANUARY ISSUANCE OF 17.656 TONNES WAS ADDED TO OUR DAILY DELIVERY TOTALS!!
FEBRUARY ISSUANCES 6 FOR; 31.251 TONNES !! AND THIS WAS ADDED TO OUR DELIVERY TOTALS FOR THIS MONTH.
MARCH: CME ANNOUNCES ITS FIRST EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR 2000 CONTRACTS FOR 200,000 OZ OR 6.22 TONNES OF GOLD DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH, AND THEN MONDAY, MARCH 22, WE RECEIVED ITS SECOND NOTICE ISSUANCE OF 2200 CONTRACTS OR 220000 OZ (6.843 TONNES). THEN FINALLY WE RECEIVED NOTICE OF OUR THIRD EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 2996 CONTRACTS OR 9.3188 TONNES. TOGETHER ALL 3 ISSUANCES TOTAL 22.3818 TONNES WHICH WILL BE ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELIVERY SCHEDULE.
APRIL: 2 EXCHANGE FOR RISK SO FAR FOR 223,900 OZ OR 6.964 TONNES. AND THIS TOTAL WILL BE ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELIVERY TO GIVE US WHAT WILL STAND FOR APRIL!!
MAY: TWO ISSUANCES SO FAR FOR 140 CONTRACTS, 14,000 OZ OR 0.4353 TONNES OF GOLD. THIS TOTAL WILL BE ADDED TO OUR NORMAL DELIVERIES IN MAY TO GIVE US WHAT WILL STAND IN MAY.
DETAILS ON OUR NEW MAY COMEX CONTRACT MONTH//
IN TOTAL WE HAD A STRONG SIZED GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF 5,023 CONTRACTS DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE ($2.80). HOWEVER, OUR FRIENDLY PHYSICAL LONDON BOYS HAD ANOTHER FIELD DAY AGAIN THROUGHOUT THIS WEEK AS THEY WERE READY FOR THE FRBNY.S CONTINUED ORCHESTRATED ATTACKS VERY EARLY IN THE COMEX SESSIONS AS THEY TRIED TO ABSORB EVERYTHING IN SIGHT FROM THEIR DAILY ATTACKS. LONDONERS EXERCISED THEIR BOUGHT CONTRACTS FOR PHYSICAL GOLD VIA THE EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ROUTE AND THANKED THE FRBNY AND OUR SHORT SPECULATORS FOR THEIR THOUGHTFULNESS.
LONDON ANNOUNCED EARLY IN THE YEAR (AND SCARCITY CONTINUES TO THIS DAY) THAT THEY WERE OUT OF GOLD. WRONGLY IT WAS ATTRIBUTED TO THEIR SHIPPING PHYSICAL GOLD TO COMEX FOR STORAGE DUE TO TRUMP’S INITIATION OF TARIFFS. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS THAT THIS GOLD LEFT LONDON TO OTHER CENTRAL BANKS, AND COMEX BANKS HAVE BEEN PAPERING THEIR LOSSES (DERIVATIVE) WITH KILOBAR ENTRIES. BOTH COMEX AND LBMA ARE WITNESSING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF GOLD LEAVING THEIR VAULTS.
THE LIQUIDATION OF T.A.S. CONTRACTS THROUGHOUT THE MONTHS OF JUNE THROUGH MAY/ CONTINUES TO DISTORT OPEN INTEREST NUMBERS GREATLY ALTHOUGH THE T.A.S. ISSUANCES IN GOLD HAVE GENERALLY BEEN ON THE LOW SIDE COMPARED TO SILVER WHICH HAVE BEEN HUGE. TODAY’S NUMBER HOWEVER IS A HUGE SIZED T.A.S ISSUANCE CONTRACTS .THE CME NOTIFIES US THAT THEY HAVE ISSUED 14,367 T.A.S CONTRACTS. THESE ARE GENERALLY USED FOR RAID PURPOSES TO STOP GOLD’S RISE AND TO TEMPER HUGE LOSSES IN OTC DERIVATIVE BETS AND IT IS NOW IN FULL FORCE WITH TODAY’S RAID ON OUR PRECIOUS METALS.
IT SURE LOOKS LIKE THE BIS HAS SOMEHOW LOOKED THE OTHER WAY WITH ITS GOLD SWAPS WITH THE FRBNY AS THIS ENTITY FOR THE FED REFUSES THE BIS MARCHING ORDERS TO COVER AND THAT MAY EXPLAIN THE STRONG NUMBER OF T.A.S. ISSUANCES IN DECEMBER , JANUARY AND THROUGHOUT FEBRUARY TO GO ALONG WITH OUR HUGE NUMBER OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUED DURING THESE MONTHS INCLUDING FEBRUARY’S 6 EXCHANGE FOR RISK WHICH ALSO INCLUDED TWO MONSTER 9.3312 TONNE ISSUANCE (FEB 10 AND FEB 12). TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK/FEB EQUALS 31.251 TONNES!! AND MARCH’S THREE ISSUANCES FOR 22.3818 TONNES! OTHER CENTRAL BANKS ARE PAYING ATTENTION AS THEY TAKE DELIVERY OF HUGE AMOUNTS OF PHYSICAL GOLD. APRIL HAD 2 EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCES FOR 6.694 TONNES. AND NOW MAY WITH ITS 2ND ISSUANCE FOR 0.0963 TONNES///TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK FOR MAY: 0.4353 TONNES ISSUED MAY 6 AND MAY 12.
HERE IS A SUMMARY OF GOLD STANDING FOR DELIVERY ON OUR LAST 12 MONTHS:
1.APRIL AT 209 TONNES
2. AND THIS CONTINUED INTO MAY WITH FINAL STANDING AT 90.23 TONNES.
3. JUNE WHICH IS A HUGE DELIVERY MONTH , FINAL STANDING WAS RECORDED AT A STRONG 93.085 TONNES. //(TOTAL NET QUEUE JUMPING FOR THE JUNE MONTH: 31.027 TONNES.)
4. IN JULY WE HAD HUGE DELIVERY NOTICES ESPECIALLY FOR A NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH WITH INITIAL STANDING AT 17.947 TONNES PLUS MANY QUEUE JUMPS + 3.75 TONNES EX FOR RISK = 41.106 TONNES OF GOLD // FINAL TOTAL TONNES STANDING JULY: 41.106 TONNES
5. FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST:
INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR AUGUST: 60.547 TONNES PLUS THE MONTHS HUGE QUEUE JUMPS OF 47.2312 TONNES +44.696 TONNES EX FOR RISK (7 ISSUANCES) //NEW STANDING 152.208 TONNES WHICH IS MONSTROUS!!!
6. FINAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR SEPT; INITIAL STANDING; 2,602 CONTRACTS OR 260,200 OZ FOR 8.093 TONNES OF GOLD FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 0.4883 TONNES QUEUE JUMP TO GO ALONG WITH TODAY’S 1.244 TONNES OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE TODAY AND // TOTAL EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE SEPT: 22.923 TONNES//NEW TOTALS STANDING ADVANCES TO 48.801 TONNES OF GOLD!!!
7. OCTOBER:
OCTOBER: INITIAL STANDING FOR GOLD: 90.164 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR LATEST OCT 30 QUEUE JUMP OF 0.00311 TONNES WHICH FOLLOWS OCT 29 QUEUE JUMP OF .4096 WHICH FOLLOWS; OCT 28 QUEUE JUMP OF .5069 TONNES WHICH FOLLOWS OCT 27 OF 0.3048 TONNES WHICH FOLLOWS: OCT 24 OF 0.8615 TONNES, FOLLOWING OCT 23 QUEUE JUMP OF 1.695 TONNES OCT 22 JUMP OF 8.622 TONNES WHICH FOLLOWS OCT 21: 3.8600 TONNES TO OCT 20 QUEUE JUMP OF 7.695 TONNE
SUMMARY FOR OCTOBER STANDING:
NOVEMBER WHERE INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING IS REGISTERED AT 15.651 TONNES OF GOLD FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP OF 2 TONNES AND FOLLOWED BY ALL OTHER NOV QUEUE JUMPS OF 21.3775 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR TWO EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE FOR 4.5596 TONNES.
/STANDING ADVANCES TO 43.9716 TONNES OF GOLD.
DECEMBER: INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR DELIVERY IN THIS ACTIVE MONTH IS 83.813 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 0.05 TONNES QUEUE JUMP. THIS FOLLOWS ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPING: 37.163 TONNES//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 115.390 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR FOUR EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE OF 6.559 TONNES//NEW STANDING THUS INCREASES TO 121.977 TONNES
JANUARY: INITITAL STANDING: 13.785 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR QUEUE JUMP OF 0.000 TONNES WHICH FOLLOWS ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPS OF 30.7117TONNES //NEW TOTAL QUEUE JUMPS 30.7117//NORMAL DELIVERY OF GOLD ADVANCES TO 36.8958 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR SIX EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 22.315 TONNES//NEW STANDING ADVANCES TO 59.2108 TONNES.
FEBRUARY: . FEBRUARY: INITIAL STANDING: 93.566 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP OF 0.0248 TONNES WHICH MUST BE ADDED ALL OTHER QUEUE JUMPS OF 41.2087 TONNES QUEUE JUMP//TOTAL QUEUE JUMP FOR FEB::ADVANCES TO 41.233 TONNES///STANDING ADVANCES TO 126.628 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR SIX EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 31.251 TONNES/NEW STANDING RISES TO 157.879 TONNES
MARCH: INITIAL STANDING FOR GOLD: 8.099 TONNES TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP OF 0.2320 TONNES AND THEN WE ADD OUR THREE EXCHANGE FOR RISK OF 22.3818 TONNES////NEW STANDING FOR GOLD ADVANCES TO: 67.6648TONNES WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY HUGE FOR A NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH!!
APRIL 2026: INITIAL STANDING FOR GOLD: 52.20 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S SMALL 500 OZ QUEUE JUMP/ TO WHICH WE ADD OUR TWO EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCES TOTALLING 223,900 OZ OR 6.964 TONNES//STANDING ADVANCES TO 77.726 TONNES WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY HUGE
MAY: INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD WILLING TO STAND: 12.24 TONNES OF GOLD TO WHICH WE ADD OUR NEXT QUEUE JUMP OF 6300 OZ (.1959 TONNES) TO WHICH WE ADD OUR TWO EXCHANGE FOR RISK ISSUANCE FOR 14,000 OZ OR 0.4353 TONNES////NEW TOTALS STANDING FOR GOLD ADVANCES TO 14.4073 TONNESS
HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 48 MONTHS 2021-2024
DEC 2021: 112.217 TONNES
NOV. 8.074 TONNES
OCT. 57.707 TONNES
SEPT: 11.9160 TONNES
AUGUST: 80.489 TONNES
JULY 7.2814 TONNES
JUNE: 72.289 TONNES
MAY 5.77 TONNES
APRIL 95.331 TONNES
MARCH 30.205 TONNES
FEB ’21. 113.424 TONNES
JAN ’21: 6.500 TONNES.
TOTAL YEAR 2021 (JAN- DEC): 601.213 TONNES
YEAR 2022: STANDING FOR GOLD/COMEX
JANUARY 2022 17.79 TONNES
FEB 2022: 59.023 TONNES
MARCH: 36.678 TONNES
APRIL: 85.340 TONNES FINAL.
MAY: 20.11 TONNES FINAL
JUNE: 74.933 TONNES FINAL
JULY 29.987 TONNES FINAL
AUGUST:104.979 TONNES//FINAL
SEPT. 38.1158 TONNES
OCT: 77.390 TONNES/ FINAL
NOV 27.110 TONNES/FINAL
Dec. 64.000 tonnes
(TOTAL YEAR 656.076 TONNES)
JAN/2023: 20.559 tonnes
FEB 2023: 47.744 tonnes
MAR: 19.0637 TONNES
APRIL: 75.676 tonnes
MAY: 19.094 TONNES + 1.244 tonnes of exchange for risk = 20.338
JUNE: 64.354 TONNES
JULY: 10.2861 TONNES
AUGUST: 38.855 TONNES(INCLUDING .6842 EXCHANGE FOR RISK)
SEPT: 15.281 TONNES FINAL
OCT. 35.869 TONNES + 1.665 EXCHANGE FOR RISK =37.0355 tonnes
NOV: 18.7122 TONNES + 16.2505 EX. FOR RISK = 34.9627 TONNES
DEC. 47.073 + 4.634 TONNES OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK = 51.707 TONNES
TOTAL 2023 YEAR : 436.546 TONNES
2024/STANDING FOR GOLD/COMEX
JAN ’24. 22.706 TONNES
FEB. ’24: 66.276 TONNES (INCLUDES 1.723 TONNES EX. FOR RISK)
MARCH: 18.8398 TONNES + 1.1695 EX FOR RISK = 20.093 TONNES
APRIL: 2024: 53.673TONNES FINAL
MAY/ 2024 8.5536 TONNES + 3.3716 TONNES EX FOR RISK/= 11.9325
JUNE; 95.578 TONNES. + 1.045 TONNES EXCHANGE FOR RISK =96.623 THIS IS THE HIGHEST RECORDED GOLD STANDING SINCE AUGUST 2022
JULY: 11.692 TONNES
AUGUST 69.602 TONNES//FINAL STANDING
SEPT. 13.164 TONNES.
OCT 39.474 TONNES + + 20.917 TONNES EXCHANGE FOR RISK =60.391 TONNES
NOV . 11.265 TONNES +4.665 TONNES EXCHANGE FOR RISK/TUESDAY + 3.11 TONNES OF EX. FOR RISK/PRIOR = 19.0425 TONNES
DEC: 80.4230 TONNES PLUS DEC MONTH EXCHANGE FOR RISK TOTAL 14.6836 TONNES EQUALS 95.1066 TONNES
total year 2024: 540.30 tonnes
COMEX GOLD TRADING BEGINNING MAY,. CONTRACT;
THE SPECS/HFT WERE SUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE( IT FELL BY $2.80)
WE HAD ZERO T.A.S. SPREADER LIQUIDATION MONDAY // COMEX SESSION// DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE , OUR LONG SPECULATORS REMAIN RELENTLESS POURING INTO THE COMEX STARTING TO BUILD ON ITS OI //
OTHER EASTERN CENTRAL BANKS TENDERED FOR PHYSICAL EVERY NIGHT WHICH ALSO EXPLAINS THE HUGE NUMBER OF TONNES OF GOLD THAT STOOD FOR GOLD DURING THESE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS
MONDAY NIGHT//TUESDAY MORNING
THE CROOKS COULD NOT STOP OTHER CENTRAL BANK LONGS, SEIZING THE MOMENT, THEY EXERCISED AGAIN FOR PHYSICAL IN A BIG WAY TENDERING FOR PHYSICAL MONDAY EVENING/TUESDAY MORNING AND THUS OUR HUGE NUMBER OF GOLD CONTRACTS STANDING FOR DELIVERY AT THE COMEX. CENTRAL BANKERS WAIT PATIENTLY FOR THE GOLD
ALL OF THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE TO THE TUNE OF $2.80
WE HAD 2339 CONTRACTS REMOVED FROM THE COMEX TRADES TO OPEN INTEREST (CROOKS)//PRELIMINARY TO FINAL.
NET GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES : 5023 CONTRACTS OR 502,300 OZ OR 15.682 TONNES
INITIAL GOLD COMEX
MAY DELIVERY MONTH
MAY 12 2026
| Gold | Ounces |
| Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory in oz | nil |
| Withdrawals from Customer Inventory in oz | ENTRIES; 1 i) Brinks: 64,302.000 oz (2000 kilobars) 2.0 tonnes |
| Deposit to the Dealer Inventory in oz | 0 ENTRY |
| Deposits to the Customer Inventory, in oz | DEPOSITS/CUSTOMER 0 ENTRY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
| No of oz served (contracts) today | 36 CONTRACTS OR 3600 OZ 0.1119 TONNES OF GOLD |
| No of oz to be served (notices) | 702 Contracts 70200 OZ 2.1835 TONNES |
| Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month | 3790 notices 379,000 oz 11.788 TONNES |
| Total accumulative withdrawals of gold from the Dealers inventory this month | NIL oz |
| Total accumulative withdrawal of gold from the Customer inventory this month |
dealer deposits: 0
0 ENTRY
DEPOSITS/CUSTOMER
0 ENTRY
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
comex withdrawals:
ENTRIES; 1
ENTRIES; 1
i) Brinks: 64,302.000 oz
(2000 kilobars)
2.0 tonnes
xxxx
adjustments: 1
Brinks: 1929.06 oz customer to dealer
COMEX IS DRAINING GOLD
chaos inside the comex
THE FRONT MONTH OF MAY OI STANDS AT 738 CONTRACTS HAVING A LOSS OF 37 CONTRACTS.
WE HAD 72 CONTRACTS SERVED ON MONDAY SO WE GAINED ANOTHER STRONG 35 CONTRACTS OR 3500 OZ (0.1088 TONNES) UNDERWENT A QUEUE JUMP TO TAKE DELIVERY OVER ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND.
.
JUNE IS A HUGE DELIVERY MONTH AND HERE THE OI LOST BY 3946 CONTRACTS DOWN TO AN OI OF 228,067
JULY GAINED 21 CONTRACTS UP TO AN OI OF 1124.
We had 36 contracts filed for today representing 3600oz
Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer and 0 notices issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equate to 36 contract(s) of which 0 notices were stopped (received) by j.P. Morgan dealer and 13 notice(s) was (were) stopped (received) by J.P.Morgan//customer account
To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for MAY. /2026. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (3,790) to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MAY (738 CONTRACTS) minus the number of notices served upon today 36 x 100 oz per contract) equals 449,200 OZ OR (13.972 Tonnes of gold) to which we add our TWO exchange for risk issuance for 14,000 oz or 0.4353 tonnes//new standing for gold/May again advances to 14.4073 tonnes.
THUS: INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for MAY. /2026. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (3,790) to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MAY( XXX CONTRACTS) minus the number of notices served upon today 36 x 100 oz per contract) equals 449.200 OZ OR (13.972 Tonnes of gold) plus we must add our TWO exchange for risk issuances of 14,000 oz or 0.4353 tonnes/new standing advances to 14.4073 tonness
new total of gold standing in MAY ADVANCES TO 14.4073 TONNES//
TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING FOR MAY 14.4073 TONNES TONNES WHICH IS NOW STRONG FOR THIS NORMALLY NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY.
confirmed volume MONDAY confirmed 183,673// poor// many have left the arena
COMEX GOLD INVENTORIES/CLASSIFICATION
NEW PLEDGED GOLD:
241,794.285 oz NOW PLEDGED /HSBC 5.94 TONNES
204,937.290 OZ PLEDGED MANFRA 3.08 TONNES
83,657.582 PLEDGED JPMorgan no 1 1.690 tonnes
265,999.054, oz JPM No 2
1,152,376.639 oz pledged Brinks/
Manfra: 33,758.550 oz
Delaware: 193.721 oz
International Delaware:: 11,188.542 oz
the number provided do not match from yesterday!!!
total pledged gold: 1,885,243.095 oz 58.63 tonnes pledged gold lowers
total inventories in gold declining rapidly
total pledged gold: 1,885,243.095 tonnes oz 58.63 tonnes
TOTAL OF ALL GOLD ELIGIBLE AND REGISTERED GOLD 29,014,384.041oz
TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD 15,829,828.615OZ 492.355 tonnes
TOTAL OF ALL ELIGIBLE GOLD 13,184,555.426 oz//eligible gold leaving hand over fist
REGISTERED GOLD THAT CAN BE SERVED UPON 13,944,585 oz ((REG GOLD- PLEDGED GOLD)=
433.74 Tonnes //
total inventories in gold declining rapidly
SILVER COMEX
MAY DELIVERY MONTH
MAY 12
| Silver | Ounces |
| Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory | NIL oz |
| Withdrawals from Customer Inventory | 1 entries i) CNT : 51,734.220 oz total withdrawal: 51,734.220 oz |
| Deposits to the Dealer Inventory | 0 entries |
| Deposits to the Customer Inventory | DEPOSIT ENTRIES/CUSTOMER ACCOUNT 1 ENTRIES i) Into Asahi: 1,132,194.900 oz total deposit 1,132,194.900 oz |
| No of oz served today (contracts) | 260 CONTRACT(S) (1.3000 MILLION OZ |
| No of oz to be served (notices) | 963 Contracts (4.815 MILLION oz) |
| Total monthly oz silver served (contracts) | 5273 contracts 26.365 MILLION oz |
| Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Dealers inventory this month | NIL oz |
| Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Customer inventory this month |
DEPOSITS INTO DEALER ACCOUNTS
0 entries
DEPOSIT ENTRIES/CUSTOMER ACCOUNT
1 ENTRIES
i) Into Asahi: 1,132,194.900 oz
total deposit 1,132,194.900 oz
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
withdrawals: customer side/eligible
one entry:
i) CNT : 51,734.220 oz
total withdrawal: 51,734.220 oz
adjustments:3 customer to dealer
a) Brinks 73,888.100 oz
b) Delaware: 4,759.700oz
c) Manfra: 5,887.980 oz
MONDAY volume: 79,193 oz// good
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
TOTAL REGISTERED SILVER: 79.968 MILLION OZ//.TOTAL REG + ELIGIBLE. 313.197 Million oz
registered silver dropping in numbers
CALCULATIONS FOR THE NEW STANDING FOR SILVER FOR MAY
silver open interest data:
FRONT MONTH OF MAY /2026 OI: 1223 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FOR A GAIN OF 259 CONTRACTS. WE HAD 6 CONTRACTS SERVED UPON ON MONDAY SO WE GAINED A HUGE 265 CONTRACTS OR 1.325 MILLION OZ AS THESE BOYS ENTERTAINED A MASSIVE QUEUE JUMP WHERE THEY WILL TRY THEIR LUCK AND TAKE DELIVERY ON THIS SIDE OF THE POND.
JUNE SAW A GAIN OF 71 CONTRACTS UP TO 2702 OI CONTRACTS
JULY SAW A GAIN OF 3163 CONTRACTS UP TO 78,171 CONTRACTS
TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR TODAY: 260 or 1.3000 MILLION oz
CONFIRMED volume MONDAY; 79,193 good
AND NOW MAY. DELIVERIES:
To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in MAY. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 5273 X5,000 oz = 26.365 MILLION oz
to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MAY (1223) AND the number of notices served upon today (260 )x (5000 oz)
Thus the standings for silver for the MAY 2026 contract month: (5273 )Notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for the front month of MAY (1223) minus number of notices served upon today (260)x 5000 oz equals silver standing for the MAY..contract month equating to 31.180 MILLION OZ.+
NEW STANDING ADVANCES T0: 31.180 MILLION OZ WHICH IS STILL PRETTY GOOD FOR THIS ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY.
We must also keep in mind that there is considerable silver standing in London coming from our longs
There are ONLY 79.968 million oz of registered silver
JPMorgan as a percentage of total silver: 140.287/313.197 million: 44.72
The record level of silver open interest is 234,787 contracts set on April 21./2017 with the price on that day at $18.42. The previous record was 224,540 contracts with the price at that time of $20.44.
BOTH GLD AND SLV ARE MASSIVE FRAUD
MAY 12 /2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $38.20 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 2.285 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1036.280 TONNES
MAY 11 /2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.80 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 0.515 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1033.995 TONNES
MAY 8 /2026/WITH GOLD UP $22.00 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 0.283 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1033.480TONNES
MAY 7 /2026/WITH GOLD UP $15.50 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.853 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1033.197TONNES
MAY 6 /2026/WITH GOLD UP $124.70 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.718 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1034.05TONNES
MAY 5 /2026/WITH GOLD UP $33.75 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1035.768 TONNES
MAY 4 /2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $106.65 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1035.768 TONNES
MAY 1 /2026/WITH GOLD UP $13.45 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.427 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1035.768 TONNES
APRIL 30/2026/WITH GOLD UP $19.80 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 5.142 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1039.195 TONNES
APRIL 29/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $45.70 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.285 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1044.337 TONNES
APRIL 28/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $85.85 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.285 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1044.337 TONNES
APRIL 27/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $41.10 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD: // //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1046.62 TONNES
APRIL 24/2026/WITH GOLD UP $13.95 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 4.29 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1046.62 TONNES
APRIL 23/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN 28.35 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.000 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1050.91 TONNES
APRIL 22/2026/WITH GOLD UP 26.40 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.91 TONNES
APRIL 21/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN 11.90TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD //:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.91 TONNES
APRIL 17/2026/WITH GOLD UP $71.30 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT 1.15 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.91 TONNES
APRIL 16/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $15.00 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT 2.285 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1051.783 TONNES
APRIL 15/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $24.15 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT 2.289 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1049.478 TONNES
APRIL 14/2026/WITH GOLD UP $83.55 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.714 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1047.192 TONNES
APRIL 13/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $50.60 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.514 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1048.906 TONNES
APRIL 13/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $50.60 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.514 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1048.906 TONNES
APRIL 10/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $11.90 TODAY/SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.724 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.42 TONNES
APRIL 9/2026/WITH GOLD UP $42.50 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.429 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.990 TONNES
APRIL 8/2026/WITH GOLD UP $88.95 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1054.419 TONNES
APRIL 7/2026/WITH GOLD UP $5.25 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF 3.429 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1054.419 TONNES
APRIL 6/2026/WITH GOLD UP $5.30 TODAY/NO CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1050.99 TONNES
APRIL 2/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $132.75 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 3.714 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1050.99 TONNES
APRIL 1/2026/WITH GOLD UP $134.70 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 1.143 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1047.276 TONNES
MAR 31/2026/WITH GOLD UP $119.65 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 3.429 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1046.133 TONNES
MAR 30/2026/WITH GOLD UP $33.45 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.143 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1049.562
MAR 27/2026/WITH GOLD UP $103.55 TODAY/SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 0.285 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.705
MAR 26/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $213.05 TODAY/SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.580 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.42
MAR 25/2026/WITH GOLD UP $155.30 TODAY/SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT OF 0.300 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1053.000
MAR 24/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $7.25 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.286 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1052.705
MAR 23/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $165.65 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 5.149 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1056.991
MAR 20/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $39,55 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.855 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1062.135
MAR 19/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $XXX TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 2.57 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 1066.99
MAR 18/2026/WITH GOLD DOWN $111.80 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 1.144 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD// /// ///INVENTORY RESTS AT 1069.564 TONNES
MAR 17/2026/WITH GOLD UP $6.80 TODAY/HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD AT THE GLD:A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 0.857 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD// /// ///INVENTORY RESTS AT 1070.708 TONNES
GLD INVENTORY: 1033.995 TONNES, TONIGHTS TOTAL GOLD INVENTORY
SILVER
MAY 12 WITH SILVER DOWN $0.48: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 1.176 MILLION OZ OF SILVER OZ INTO OF THE SLV// / // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 484.990 MILLION OZ
MAY 11 WITH SILVER UP $5.10: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.995 MILLION OZ OF SILVER PUT OF THE SLV// / // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 483.814 MILLION OZ
MAY 8 WITH SILVER UP $1.25: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 0.689 MILLION OZ OF SILVER INTO THE SLV// / // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 484.809 MILLION OZ
MAY 7 WITH SILVER UP $2.26: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: / // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 484.130 MILLION OZ
MAY 6 WITH SILVER UP $3.75: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 0.724 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 484.130 MILLION OZ
MAY 5 WITH SILVER UP $0.21: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.734 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 483.604 MILLION OZ
MAY 4 WITH SILVER DOWN $3.05: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.734 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 483.604 MILLION OZ
MAY 1 WITH SILVER UP $2.38: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.905 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 484.338 MILLION OZ
APRIL 30 WITH SILVER UP $2.03: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.991 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 485.243MILLION OZ
APRIL 29 WITH SILVER DOWN $1.95: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 487.234MILLION OZ
APRIL 28 WITH SILVER DOWN $2.05: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 487.234MILLION OZ
APRIL 27 WITH SILVER DOWN $1.39: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:/ // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 487.234MILLION OZ
APRIL 24 WITH SILVER UP 0.92: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.54 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 487,23MILLION OZ
APRIL 23WITH SILVER DOWN $2.35: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.489 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 488,773MILLION OZ
APRIL 22 WITH SILVER UP 1.43: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 0.352 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 491.262MILLION OZ
aPRIL 21 WITH SILVER DOWN 3.71: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 0.352 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 491.262 MILLION OZ
APRIL 17 WITH SILVER UP $3.09: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 0.453 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.900 MILLION OZ
APRIL 16 WITH SILVER DOWN $1.00: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.132 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.477 MILLION OZ
APRIL 15 WITH SILVER UP $0.01: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 0.588 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 491.579 MILLION OZ
APRIL 14 WITH SILVER UP $3.99: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.633 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.991 MILLION OZ
APRIL 13 WITH SILVER DOWN 0.79: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.589 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 491.624 MILLION OZ
APRIL 10 WITH SILVER DOWN 0.16: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.724 MILLION OZ OUT THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 492.213 MILLION OZ
APRIL 9 WITH SILVER UP $0.91: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 2.173 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV// // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 492.937 MILLION OZ
APRIL 8 WITH SILVER UP $3.50: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.764 MILLION OZ
APRIL 7 WITH SILVER DOWN $0.89: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.764 MILLION OZ
APRIL 6 WITH SILVER UP $0.41: TINY CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:A SMALL WITHDRAWAL OF 0.224 MILLION OZ OUT OF THE SLV // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.764 MILLION OZ
APRIL 2 WITH SILVER DOWN $3.57: TINY CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.091 MILLION OZ OUT OF THE SLV // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.988 MILLION OZ
APRIL 1 WITH SILVER UP $1.38: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:A MASSIVE AND WITHDRAWAL OF 0.453 MILLION OZ OUT OF THE SLV // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 491.079 MILLION OZ
MAR 31 WITH SILVER UP $4.22: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV:A MASSIVE AND FRAUDULENT WITHDRAWAL OF 3.893 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 491.532 MILLION OZ
MAR 30 WITH SILVER UP $0.74: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // :INVENTORY RESTS AT 495.425 MILLION OZ
MAR 27 WITH SILVER UP $1.91: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 3.351 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV// :INVENTORY RESTS AT 495.425 MILLION OZ
MAR 26 WITH SILVER DOWN $4.75: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// :INVENTORY RESTS AT 498.776 MILLION OZ
MAR 25 WITH SILVER UP $3.25: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// :INVENTORY RESTS AT 498.776 MILLION OZ
MAR 24 WITH SILVER DOWN $0.15: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A MASSIVE AND FRAUDULENT DEPOSIT OF 10.505 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV :INVENTORY RESTS AT 498.776 MILLION OZ
MAR 23 WITH SILVER UP $0.06: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// NO CHANGE IN INVENTORY/.. ./ :INVENTORY RESTS AT 488.271 MILLION OZ
MAR 20 WITH SILVER DOWN $1.92: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.490 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/.. ./ :INVENTORY RESTS AT 488.271 MILLION OZ
MAR 19 WITH SILVER DOWN $6.22: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.9444 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/.. ./ :INVENTORY RESTS AT 490.761 MILLION OZ
MAR 18 WITH SILVER DOWN $2.36: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A DEPOSIT OF 1.087 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/.. ./ :INVENTORY RESTS AT 494.792 MILLION OZ.
MAR 17 WITH SILVER DOWN $0.89: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.351 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV/.. ./ :INVENTORY RESTS AT 493.705 MILLION OZ.
CLOSING INVENTORY 484.990 MILLION OZ OF SILVER
GOLD COMMENTARIES:
1.PETER SCHIFF
2. MATHEW PIEPENBERG/EGON VON GREYERZ
ALASDAIR MACLEOD
JESSE COLUMBO\
This is a post from Jesse Colombo’s The Bubble Bubble Report—a bestselling newsletter focusing on precious metals investing and global economic risks. We specialize in detailed reports and analyses.
Gold Is Ready for Liftoff
Gold is on the cusp of breaking out of its recent channel pattern while investor sentiment is overly pessimistic, a combination that sets the stage for a sharp upward move.
| Jesse ColomboMay 11∙Paid |
In my updates over the past week, I’ve been showing how silver was on the verge of a major breakout following its sharp correction since late January, and that scenario is now playing out, with silver up 7.39% in Monday trading and COMEX futures closing at $86.80. In today’s update, I want to turn to gold, which appears poised to follow in silver’s footsteps and move higher, though several key hurdles still need to be cleared, which I’ll outline in this analysis.
I want to start by showing the chart of silver and its clean breakout from the triangle pattern that formed over the past few months:
Interestingly, gold’s chart shows a setup similar to silver’s, though instead of a triangle, a channel pattern formed during the correction of the past several months. In Monday’s trading, gold began breaking out of this channel, which is an encouraging sign, though I would like to see a stronger follow-through for full confirmation, which is likely to play out over the next few trading sessions.
Once gold has fully broken out of its channel, I’m watching two additional major hurdles: the $4,800 to $5,000 resistance zone and $5,400 to $5,600. Breakouts above horizontal resistance levels and zones tend to be more reliable than those above diagonal trendlines like the top of the channel, so I would like to see these zones cleared for added confirmation.
To learn more about support and resistance zones, I recommend reading my two-part tutorial on the topic (Part 1 and Part 2).
I would like to see gold close decisively above each resistance zone, and with each successive breakout, the odds of the next powerful leg higher will increase significantly. The final breakout above the $5,400 to $5,600, which formed at the late-January peak, is the most important, as it would signal that gold has once again entered blue-sky territory and that the correction of the past few months is fully behind it.
A look at gold’s weekly log-scale chart puts the channel pattern of the past few months into clearer perspective. Channel like this typically act as continuation patterns within a bull market, so breakouts from them usually lead to much further gains.
As a reminder, I believe gold is only about two years into a secular bull market that should last at least a full decade, ultimately driving prices to at least $15,000 to $20,000 per ounce (learn more).
As I’ve explained in my updates, gold’s correction over the past few months was necessary to flush out excessive bullish speculative sentiment and overbought conditions, and now that it is no longer overbought, it is in a much healthier position for the bull market to resume.
The indicator used in the chart below to assess whether gold is overbought is the Relative Strength Index (RSI), which is the one I rely on when analyzing longer-term charts, such as those on the weekly timeframe.
In addition to analyzing price charts, I place strong emphasis on monitoring investor sentiment and its proxies, interpreting them from a contrarian perspective. When the crowd or “dumb money” becomes overly pessimistic, it is typically a bullish signal, and when it becomes overly optimistic, it is usually a bearish one.
One such proxy for investor sentiment is the physical gold holdings of the world’s most popular gold exchange-traded fund (ETF), the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD). As the chart below shows, during gold’s correction in recent months, GLD experienced heavy outflows totaling 2.16 million troy ounces, or 67.18 metric tonnes of gold.
In case you are unfamiliar with the mechanics, when investors sell shares of the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), the fund must reduce its physical gold holdings by a commensurate amount. I view these recent outflows as irrational and foolish behavior because nothing has changed fundamentally for gold and it remains in a powerful secular bull market, but there are many Nervous Nellies and fair-weather friends out there who threw in the towel, thinking the bull market is dead—they will deeply regret that rash decision.
As I mentioned, I’m a big believer in sentiment indicators, and as someone with a large online presence focused on precious metals, I’m in a unique position to gauge investor sentiment through traffic, views, engagement, and even newsletter revenue.
Since the precious metals correction began a few months ago, this newsletter’s annual revenue has declined from a peak of roughly $656,000 to about $530,000, a drop of around 19%. What’s fascinating is that the revenue chart almost perfectly mirrors GLD’s gold holdings, which is no coincidence, as both serve as proxies for sentiment.
Together, they show that many investors foolishly threw in the towel on precious metals in recent months, believing the bull market was over. The good news is that, from a contrarian perspective, this is bullish, as it indicates that excessive optimism has largely been flushed out.
I share this for informational and encouragement purposes, not to seek sympathy—revenue is still up a remarkable sevenfold from a year ago, and it was zero when I started in September 2024. I believe the next leg higher in precious metals should also lead to the next leg higher in revenue. Thanks again for your continued support!
While American retail investors (the “dumb money”) have quickly soured on gold, the “smart money,” such as China’s central bank, has continued buying. Gold holdings at the People’s Bank of China rose by 260,000 troy ounces, or 8.1 tonnes, in April, the largest increase since December 2024.
Another bullish scenario I’m watching is the U.S. Dollar Index, which is very close to breaking down from its two-decade-old rising channel pattern. Assuming that occurs, a secular bear market in the dollar will begin, kicking the precious metals and commodities bull market into overdrive.
There are many reasons a secular bear market in the dollar is likely, including its overvaluation, U.S. federal debt recently surpassing 100% of GDP, and the renewed expansion of the money supply.
Next, let’s take a look at the gold mining sector using the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) as a proxy. A successful bullish breakout in gold would also be very bullish for gold miners. In addition to the key levels I’m watching in gold mentioned earlier, I am closely monitoring the $100 to $104 and $112 to $116 resistance zones in GDX to determine whether the next leg of the bull market in gold mining stocks has begun.
As a reminder, I am very bullish on gold and silver miners, in addition to the metals themselves, as I explained in this report.
I’m also monitoring the $130 to $135 and $150 to $155 resistance zones in the VanEck Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ), which I use as a proxy for the junior gold mining sector:
As with gold itself, investor sentiment toward gold miners is extremely depressed, which is exactly what contrarians like myself want to see, as it typically precedes bullish moves. The chart below shows the Gold Miners Bullish Percent Index, which measures overbought and oversold conditions in the gold mining sector.
The last time this index reached such low levels was in late 2023 and early 2024, just before the major bull market in gold and gold mining stocks began, making this a particularly compelling and encouraging setup to watch.
To conclude, gold is on the cusp of breaking out from the channel pattern that formed over the past several months, and I’m looking for strong follow-through in the coming trading sessions. The correction has flushed out virtually all excessive bullish sentiment, and pessimism now pervades the sector, conditions that often precede powerful advances. I view this as an excellent opportunity to accumulate more gold and gold miners before the long-term bull market resumes its upward trajectory.
If you enjoyed today’s update, I recommend checking out my other related reports:
- Here’s When I’ll Sell My Gold & Silver
- Gold & Silver Volatility Has Plunged
- Encouraging Signs in Silver
- Past Oil Bull Markets Have Been Bullish for Precious Metals
- Goldman & Wells Fargo Maintain Bullish Outlook on Gold
- The Bullish Case For Gold & Silver Miners
- U.S. Debt Exceeds 100% of GDP
- The Money Supply is Surging
- Gold Isn’t Going Up, Your Money Is Just Losing Value
- The Dollar Is Not Out of the Woods
Disclaimer: the information provided in The Bubble Bubble Report and related content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, financial, or trading advice. Nothing in this publication constitutes a recommendation, solicitation, or offer to buy or sell any securities, commodities, or financial instruments.
All investments carry risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. The author and publisher disclaim any liability for financial losses or damages incurred as a result of reliance on the information provided.
JOHN RUBINO
3.CHRIS POWELL AND HIS GATA DISPATCHES:
Brien Lundin: Silver rings the bell
Submitted by admin on Mon, 2026-05-11 14:10 Section: Daily Dispatches
By Brien Lundin
Gold Newsletter / Golden Opportunities, Metairie, Louisiana
Monday, May 11, 2026
Something very interesting is happening in the metals and mining market.
As you know, the winds of war have been driving every asset market. Stocks, bonds and commodities (including gold and silver) have risen along with hopes for peace, while oil and the dollar have fallen when those hopes emerge.
…
.And of course the opposite has occurred whenever those hopes have been dashed.
But something important changed last week. …
… For the remainder of the commentary:
https://goldnewsletter.com/go051126/
END
India’s leader urges people to stop buying gold as Asia scrambles for energy
Submitted by admin on Sun, 2026-05-10 22:25 Section: Daily Dispatches
From the Australian Broadcasting Corp., Sydney
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to the country’s 1.4 billion people to work from home, avoid travel, and stop buying gold, as the Iran war continues to send energy costs soaring.
Modi today called for a return to work-from-home arrangements and online meetings, measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also urged people to use public transport and carpool wherever possible.
Last month he said there was no proposal to raise pump prices for diesel and gasoline, leaving it among the countries yet to raise prices despite the global surge.
Mr Modi asked citizens to cut non-essential travel, calling for collective restraint to help protect India’s economy during the deepening energy crisis.
He urged people to avoid buying gold, which India spends heavily on for weddings.
He has pushed for the adoption of electric vehicles and asked farmers to halve their use of chemical fertilisers and for families to reduce cooking oil consumption, describing that move as both healthy and patriotic. …
… For the remainder of the report:
END
Trump muses vacantly again about whether gold remains in Fort Knox
Submitted by admin on Sun, 2026-05-10 15:04 Section: Daily Dispatches
No mention of leases, swaps, and other market interventions … and no follow-up questions.
* * *
Trump Still Wants to Visit Fort Knox to Confirm Gold Has Not Been Stolen
By Ryan King
New York Post
Sunday, May 10, 2026
President Trump believes this is his golden opportunity.
The president revealed that he’s still eager to crack open Fort Knox and personally ensure that the nation’s gold reserve — valued at nearly $700 billion — is still in the highly secure bullion depository following an uproar about it last yea
“We wanted to go and knock on the door of Fort Knox — a very thick door — and to see whether or not we have any gold in there,” Trump told “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” in an interview that dropped today.
Last year former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk reacted to a social media user’s suggestion that he should inspect the country’s gold reserves. …
… For the remainder of the report:
4.ANDREW MAGUIRE LIVE FROM THE VAULT 271 and 270
MUST VIEW…
LONDON PAUL//MUST VIEW
5. COMMODITY REPORT/URANIUM CAMECO
Uranium – Cameco Guidance Hanging by a Thread, Implications for Market Purchases
by Asymmetric Research
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 13:05
Cameco’s flagship McArthur River mine and Key Lake mill are cut off. The Smoothstone River Bridge — their primary supply route — has collapsed. The firm has so far not changed guidance, but has noted possible risks. We think guidance is holding by the thread, and the spot market implications could be significant. We evaluate them here.
The bridge suffered extensive damage from recent flooding.
Bridge collapse shows extensive damage
Source: CBC
Traffic from the other flagship operation, Cigar Lake, remains unaffected for now. While McArthur River and Cigar Lake are only c50km apart by air, they use completely different road routes. But they are both in the same flood prone region. We would not overlook the risk of knock-on effects at Cigar Lake if poor weather conditions persisted. There are other bridges on that route too, and their condition is uncertain.
Path to Recovery
There are two avenues in our view that Cameco could take to resume traffic from McArthur / Key Lake, but the first looks the most realistic to us:
- Most Likely: Pre-engineered bridge can be deployed rapidly and used while a new bridge is built. These can usually be installed within about two weeks once water levels stabilise. Allowing for ramp-up time at the mine and mill, we expect full resolution around 25 June as a Base case, 45 days from now. This temporary bridge should then hold until a permanent fix is completed (which could take 1-2 years).
- Alternative route: Cameco to obtain an emergency overweight permit. Cameco’s vehicles are too heavy legally for the existing alternate route under normal rules. The issue in our view is that route too would involve the use of other bridges, and the flooding may put them at risk too – they need to be structurally sound to withstand heavy vehicle traffic on them.
Implications for Guidance and Spot Purchases
Assuming this fully resolves at our Base case, on 25 June, then McArthur / Key Lake would likely end the year with production at 13.4Mlbs – a tad below Cameco’s low range of guidance (14–16.5Mlbs) – assuming the central case was at the mid-guidance target pre bridge collapse. Assuming zero impact at Cigar Lake, which is also our Base case, then group production guidance (at 100%) could equivalently land at 31Mlbs (vs implicit guidance at 31.5–34.5Mlbs and 33Mlbs at mid-range).
As discussed in our note last week, the issue is that Cameco’s inventory coverage is already very low at 4.4 months of production as at Q1. Taking this level back to what Cameco used to see as a reasonable inventory coverage of around six months of production would suggest a current inventory deficit of c2.7Mlbs.
Assuming Cameco could borrow 2Mlbs of incremental uranium now vs Q1, and that it must pay off the 0.75Mlbs uranium loan it took in Q1 maturing this year, then our 45-day Base case resolution would require 3.5Mlbs of spot market purchases this year vs guidance at 3.0Mlbs. So, guidance on our Base case is on a very thin edge.
We would be surprised to see Cameco able to borrow more than 2Mlbs incremental vs Q1. We would argue that a general tightening credit market could finally make product loans less accessible and flexible than they have previously been. A more limited access to product loans would mean filling the supply gap through more spot market buying.
Our Base Case Estimate of Cameco 2026E Spot Market Purchases (Assuming 45-day McArthur disruption + 2 Mlbs incremental borrowing), Mlbs
Source: Asymmetric Research estimates, Cameco
As an idea on sensitivity, if instead, 1) the McArthur disruption takes say 3 months to resolve, and 2) assuming McArthur pre-bridge collapse was to achieve the lower end of the guidance production range (14Mlbs), and 3) still have access to 2Mlbs of incremental borrow; then Cameco would need to resort to spot market buying for c6.5Mlbs this year. A big number.
[…]
This article was originally published on Asymmetric Research. Continue reading the full analysis — including our sensitivity tables, spot market purchase estimates and highest-conviction uranium positions — at asymmetricresearch.substack.com
Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
END
JET FUEL…
Jet Fuel Shortage Deepens Pressure On Global Airlines
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 07:20 AM
Via City AM,
- Heathrow’s April passenger numbers fell 5% to 6.7 million, with Middle East traffic down 50%.
- Transfer traffic rose 10% as travellers rerouted through Heathrow to Asia and Oceania.
- Airlines are facing mounting pressure from jet fuel shortages and higher oil prices.
Fewer passengers were heading to Heathrow Airport in April as the war in the Middle East keeps travellers grounded.
Passenger numbers at Europe’s biggest airport fell by five per cent in April to 6.7m with the blame being attributed to the “ongoing impact of the Middle East conflict”.
For those heading to that particular region, Heathrow saw a whopping 50 per cent drop in volumes.
Still, in the year-to-date (Jan–Apr) traffic maintained modest growth at 1.2 per cent.
Transfer demand grew ten per cent in April, as travellers rerouted through Heathrow to reach Asia and Oceania, helping offset losses in direct Middle Eastern travel.
Travel to Asia remained a major growth driver, with a 5.6 per cent increase in April and a 10.6 per cent increase year-to-date.
“We know passengers want certainty when planning their hard-earned summer holidays, so we are supporting Government and airlines as they work through their plans to get passengers on their journeys,” Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow’s top boss, said.
Jet fuel crisis ‘worse’ than Covid
Growing anxieties around the jet fuel shortage caused by the Iran war have rocked the travel industry.
Tony Fernandes, chief executive of Air Asia, said last week: “I thought I’d seen it all with Covid […] but having seen jet fuel go up almost three times — this is much worse.”
It comes after supplies for jet fuel have tumbled to their lowest level since records began, as the war blocks crucial shipping lanes for fuel.
Spirit Airlines – a US-based low-cost airline – last week collapsed under mounting pressure caused by surging oil prices. The firm had failed to secure a $500m lifeline from the Trump administration, leaving it to go out of business and cancel all flights.
Researchers at Allianz Trade warned the UK is among the most “structurally exposed” to jet fuel shortages.
Meanwhile, transport secretary Heidi Alexander has loosened “use it or lose it” rules in a bid to soften the pressures facing airlines.
Woldbye said: “While we have seen some short-term disruption linked to the Middle East conflict, demand for travel remains strong with current fuel supplies stable.”
END
YOUR EARLY CURRENCY VALUES/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGS TUESDAY MORNING.7:30 AM
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 10.73 PTS OR 0.25%
HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 58.93 PTS OR 0.22%
Nikkei CLOSED UP 274.12 PTS OR 0.44%
//Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.79%
//Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) CLOSED UP TO 6.7948
/ OFFSHORE CLOSED UP AT 6.7947 Oil UP TO 101.60 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT UP TO 107.15 Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED
ONSHORE USA/ YUAN TRADING UP (6.7948) OFFSHORE YUAN TRADING UP TO 6.7947 ONSHORE YUAN TRADING BELOW OFF SHORE AND UP ON THE DOLLAR// / AND THUS STRONGER/OFF SHORE YUAN TRADING UP AGAINST US DOLLAR/ AND THUS STRONGER
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
YOUR EARLY CURRENCY VALUES/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGS TUESDAY MORNING.7:30 AM
ONSHORE YUAN: CLOSED UP 6.7948
OFFSHORE YUAN: UP TO 6.7947
1.HANG SANG CLOSED DOWN 58.93 PTS OR 0.22%
2. Nikkei closed UP 274.12 PTS OR 0.44%
WEST TEXAS INTERMEDIATE OIL UP TO 101.60
BRENT; 107,15
3. Europe stocks SO FAR: ALL RED
USA dollar INDEX DOWN TO 98.15/// EURO FALLS TO 1.1747 DOWN 32 BASIS PTS
3b Japan 10 YR bond yield:RISES TO. +2.540 UP 2 FULL BASIS PTS/ VERY TROUBLESOME//Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese YEN vs USA cross now at 157.61… JAPANESE YEN NOW FALLING AS WE HAVE NOW REACHED THE ENDING OF THE YEN CARRY TRADE AGAIN AND THE REPATRIATION OF YEN DENOMINATED BONDS TRADING IN THE USA/EUROPE. JAPAN 30 YR BOND YIELD: 3.815 UP 4 FULL BASIS PTS
3c Nikkei now ABOVE 17,000
3d USA/Yen rate now well ABOVE the important 120 barrier this morning
3e Gold DOWN /JAPANESE Yen DOWN CHINESE ONSHORE YUAN: UP( 6.7948 AND OFFSHORE: UP AT 6.7947
3f Japan is to buy INFINITE TRILLION YEN worth of BONDS. Japan’s GDP equals 5 trillion USA
Japan to buy 100% of all new Japanese debt and NOW they will have OVER 50% of all Japanese debt.
3g Oil UP for WTI and BRENT UP this morning
3h European bond buying continues to push yields HIGHER on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund YIELD UP TO +3.0931// Italian 10 Yr bond yield UP to 3.868// SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD UP TO 3.519%
3i Greek 10 year bond yield UP TO 3.766%
3j Gold at $4701.30 //Silver at: 84.11 1 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $100.00
3k USA vs Russian rouble;// Russian rouble UP 0 AND 33/ 100 roubles/73.96
3m oil (WTI) into the 101 dollar handle for WTI and 107 handle for Brent/
3n Higher foreign deposits moving out of China// huge risk of outflows and a currency depreciation. This can spell financial disaster for the rest of the world/
JAPAN ON JAN 29.2016 CONTINUES NIRP. THIS MORNING RAISES AMOUNT OF BONDS THAT THEY WILL PURCHASE UP TO .5% ON THE 10 YR BOND///YEN TRADES TO 157.61 // 10 YEAR YIELD AFTER FIRST BREAKING .54% LAST YEAR NOW EXCEEDS THAT LEVEL TO 2.540% UP 2 BASIS PTS STILL ON CENTRAL BANK (JAPAN) INTERVENTION//YEN CARRY TRADE NOW UNWINDING//YEN BOND TRADING OVERSEAS REPATRIATED.//JAPAN 30 YR: 3.815 UP 4 PTS..: USA/SF this 0.7807 as the Swiss Franc . Euro vs SF: 0.9172
USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 4.432 UP 2 BASIS PTS…
USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 5.001 UP 2 BASIS PTS/
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 3.973 UP 3 BASIS PTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 45.40 UP 2 BASIS PTS/LIRA GETTING KILLED//IDIOTS FOR SELLING GOLD
10 YR UK BOND YIELD: 5.120 UP 12 PTS
30 YR UK BOND YIELD: 5.792 UP 12 BASIS PTS
10 YR CANADA BOND YIELD: 3.539 UP 7 BASIS PTS
5 YR CANADA BOND YIELD: 3.191 UP 7 BASIS PTS.
1a New York Opening report
Stocks Fall, Oil And Rates Rise As Inflation “Roars Back”
by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 09:21 AM
US equity futures and bonds were lower as oil climbed, with a key inflation report showing the impacts of higher energy and supply disruptions stemming from the war in Iran. Stocks are poised to fall from all-time highs after the core CPI rose more than expected in April. As of 9:15am S&P futures ewere down 0.2% and Nasdaq futures dropped 0.7% as a slide in chipmakers and big tech names dragged down the market in early US hours. In premarket trading, all Mag 7 stocks were lower. Treasury two-year yields hovered near the highest since March. Tech’s underperformance followers a weaker APAC session with KOSPI’s biggest loss since early April after the govt hintedf at a potential tax on AI profits dubbed a ‘Citizen Dividend’; the index finished off its lows pointing to the dip buying potential of Semis as the market takes advantage of any price discount. US crude rose to around $101. Gold weaker and sitting just below $4,700/oz. Economic data slate includes weekly ADP employment change (8:15am), April CPI (8:30am) and federal budget balance (2pm). Fed speaker slate includes Chicago Fed’s Goolsbee (9:10am, 1pm), and NY Fed releases quarterly report on household debt and credit at 11am
In premarket trading, Mag 7 names are all lower (Tesla -1.5%, Alphabet -0.9%, Amazon -0.8%, Nvidia -0.8%, Microsoft -0.6%, Meta -0.5%, Apple -0.4%)
- AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) falls 11% after the satellite internet company reported revenue for the first quarter that missed the average analyst estimate. The firm also had a wider loss than forecast.
- GameStop (GME) slips 3% after eBay Inc. rejected a $56 billion takeover offer from the company.
- GitLab (GTLB) is down 11% after the software company announced plans to cut jobs and make operational changes. Raymond James says efforts to retool the business while cutting staff may be challenging, while RBC says guidance for in-line 1Q results suggests no upside versus prior beats.
- Harmonic (HLIT) rises 15% after the communications equipment company reported first-quarter results that beat expectations and gave an outlook that is seen as strong, underlining positive momentum.
- Harrow (HROW) slumps 10% after the eyecare pharmaceutical firm posted an adjusted Ebitda loss for the quarter, disappointing analysts who’d forecasted a profit. The company also reported revenue for the first quarter that fell short of the average analyst estimate.
- Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) slides 15% after the telehealth firm projected 2Q Ebitda that missed consensus estimate, a result of higher costs as it transitions to branded products.
- IHeartMedia (IHRT) slips 4% after the media entertainment and radio broadcasting firm provided a disappointing forecast adjusted Ebitda for the second quarter.
- Microvast Holdings Inc. (MVST) sinks 40% after the battery firm reported first-quarter revenue that fell short of the average analyst estimate.
- PACS Group (PACS) soars 22% after the nursing home operator boosted its adjusted Ebitda guidance for the full year, following better-than-expected results for the first quarter. Truist views the quarter results as a strong start to the year.
- Plug Power (PLUG) is up 7% after the hydrogen producer’s first-quarter net revenue beat the average analyst estimate, with analysts attributing the growth to large customers such as Amazon and Walmart.
- Power Solutions International (PSIX) drops 31% after the engine and power systems manufacturer reported first-quarter revenue and income that fell short of analyst estimates and declined to give full-year guidance, citing variability in order timing and market conditions.
- Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT) jumps 24% after the application software developer reported revenue for the first quarter that beat the average analyst estimate.
- Venture Global (VG) rises 8% after the liquefied natural gas company reported first-quarter earnings per share that beat the average analyst estimate and announced new deals with TotalEnergies and Vitol.
- Webtoon (WBTN) slumps 10% after the storytelling technology platform gave a revenue forecast for the second quarter that missed the average analyst estimate.
- Wendy’s (WEN) shares jump 23% as the Financial Times reports that Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management is seeking investor backing for a bid to take the burger chain operator private.
- ZoomInfo Technologies (GTM) slides 36% after the software company reduced its full-year forecast for adjusted operating income. The company also announced a restructuring program that will cut about 600 jobs.
In other corporate news, JPMorgan has seen balances within its prime-brokerage business soar to a record as clients look to seize on recent market volatility. Amazon.com has begun the sale of its first Swiss franc bonds as it looks to raise a record six-part deal in the currency.
Wall Street traders left stocks and bonds lower as oil climbed, with today’s CPI report showing the impacts of higher energy and supply disruptions stemming from the war in Iran, resulting in hoter than expected core CPI prices: CPI rose 3.8% from a year earlier, marking the fastest pace since 2023. From a month earlier, prices were up 0.6%, while core prices rose 2.8%, higher than the 2.7% expected.
“Inflation is roaring back largely driven by stubbornly high oil prices,” said Skyler Weinand at Regan Capital. “As a result, we expect the Federal Reserve to be on hold through the summer on interest rates.”
Given that inflation is heading in the wrong direction and the labor market is holding up, it’s very unlikely that the Fed will be able to lower interest rates any time soon, according to Chris Zaccarelli at Northlight Asset Management.
“We don’t believe the market needs rate cuts to keep climbing, but earnings will need to keep doing a lot of the heavy lifting as multiple expansion isn’t in the cards right now,” he said. “The Fed has been clear that it is willing to look through any temporary inflation spike tied to the Iran conflict, and that remains the key consideration for investors in the near term,” according to Tim Urbanowicz at Innovator ETFs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
“Markets had already priced out rate cuts for 2026 heading into the report,” he said. “As long as the 10-year Treasury yield remains contained below 4.5%, we do not see these levels as a meaningful headwind for equities.”
The energy crisis’s impact on the global economy is showing up in gauges of supply-chain stress that soared during Covid. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve released another wave of emergency oil to help tame surging prices stemming from the Iran war. A federal gasoline tax holiday proposed by Trump would result in billions of dollars in lost tax revenue each month.
Inflation isn’t just in the broader market: AI also has an an inflation problem as highlighted by a Bloomberg article discussing how “chipflation” is crowding out supplies of more conventional semiconductors. Meanwhile, a top South Korean policymaker said the nation should pay citizens a “dividend” using taxes on AI profits, underscoring growing pressure to redistribute gains from a boom that’s enriched chipmakers like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Tech stocks are taking a breather under the weight of growing warnings that their unprecedented rally has run too far, while a suggestion to target AI profits in South Korea hasn’t helped sentiment either.
In politics, the Trump administration asked the US trade court to pause a ruling that declared the president’s latest 10% global tariffs unlawful while the government appeals. Japan’s Finance Minister confirmed that her team is coordinating closely with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on currency policy, signaling tacit US approval of Japan’s recent suspected market intervention.
Investors are still holding onto short S&P 500 futures positions despite accumulating losses, with the average short entry ~6680 on the index, which raises short-covering risks and in turn could fuel a further melt-up in equities, according to Citigroup strategists.
Options markets are pricing in limited expectations ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting, leaving room for an outsized reaction, according to JPMorgan equity-derivatives strategists.
Global corporate earnings surged in the first quarter, according to Deutsche Bank strategists, marking the strongest growth in more than four years as demand tied to AI fueled a broad-based expansion.
European bourses are entirely in the red, with UK Banks hit on political turmoil; US equity futures pull back from ATHs. Energy is among the few rising sectors while retail, banks and technology are the worst performers. Stoxx 600 falls 0.8% to 607.95 with 440 members down, 149 up and 11 unchanged. Here are some of the biggest movers on Tuesday:
- SES shares rallied as much as 9.7% to the highest since July 2022 after the satellite operator’s adjusted Ebitda for the first quarter came in well above expectations.
- Greggs shares rise as much as 7.2%, the most in six months, after the UK high street baker revealed like-for-like growth has accelerated in recent weeks, partly thanks to new additions to the menu including its chicken roll, according to analysts.
- SoftwareOne shares jump as much as 15% after the Swiss IT services firm posted a first-quarter earnings beat and raised its full-year revenue guidance.
- Jenoptik surges as much as 16%, to a record high, after the optoelectronics group delivers what MP Capital Markets describes as a “blow-out” quarter.
- Tecan shares rise as much as 6.2% after the maker of laboratory automation components reported growth in local currency sales during the first quarter and maintained its full year guidance.
- Siemens Energy shares fall as much as 4.3% after the German renewable energy firm reported second-quarter results. While expanded share buybacks were seen as a positive, Bernstein highlighted weakening margins at the company’s gas unit.
- Prosus shares slide as much as 7.6% after the tech investor released a trading update that Jefferies said shows the turnaround of Just Eat Takeaway.com is a longer-duration project than some will have expected.
- Vodafone shares fall as much as 5.8%, the most since February, after the British telecommunications group reported its latest earnings, with analysts flagging a miss on Ebitda after leases.
- KBC shares drop as much as 4.4% after the banking and insurance services provider reported profits that fell short of expectations after it raised provisions to their highest level since 2020.
- Munich Re shares declined as much as 5.1% as the reinsurer reported weak P&C Re revenues, similar to peers.
- Thyssenkrupp shares fall as much as 4.2%, before recouping most of those losses, after the German industrial technology firm flagged a potential hit to sales but maintained its key profit and cash flow targets.
Earlier in the session, Asian stocks fell, as South Korean equities lead a decline after a policymaker said the nation should pay citizens a “dividend” using tax on profits from artificial intelligence. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.4%, with Samsung and MediaTek among biggest drags. Korea’s benchmark slumped as much as 5.1% before paring loss to about 2% after a clarification. Stocks traded higher in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The fast growth in earnings for AI companies are starting to prompt calls for redistribution of some of those benefits. Korea’s knee-jerk reaction shows the extent in which some of Asia’s key technology-led markets are reliant on profits from AI buildout. Stocks also declined in India, mainland China and New Zealand.
In FX, the pound is one of the weakest major currencies against a broadly stronger dollar, with greenback and oil rising on doubts about US-Iran ceasefire.
In rates, treasuries hold losses in early US session amid bigger selloff in gilts and latest increase in oil prices after US President Donald Trump cast doubt on the Iran ceasefire. US yields are 1.5bp-2bp higher on the day — lifting 30-year back above 5% for first time since May 5 — with curve spreads little changed; UK 10-year rose as much as 14bp and remains 9bp higher vs Monday’s close Gilts slump as UK MPs pressure Prime Minister Keir Starmer to set out a timetable to stand down. UK 10-year yields advanced to the highest since 2008 and 30-year yields to the highest since 1998.Treasury refunding auctions continue with $42 billion 10-year new issue at 1pm New York time; demand was soft for 3-year notes Monday. Cycle concludes Wednesday with $25 billion 30-year new issue. WI 10-year yield near 4.44% is ~12bp cheaper than last month’s auction, which tailed by 0.2bp. IG dollar issuance slate includes a couple of items so far. Twelve borrowers raised a combined $18 billion Monday, with issuers paying about 3bps in new issue concessions on deals that were 4.5 times covered. Focal points of US session include April CPI data and 10-year note auction.
Yields rising across Europe as Brent hits $107/barrel, and as investors add to bets on ECB and BOE rate hikes in 2026. The pound is one of the weakest major currencies against a broadly stronger dollar, with greenback and oil rising on doubts about US-Iran ceasefire. Stoxx 600 down 0.6%, dragged down by banks and retail stocks. S&P 500 futures down by 0.3% with weakness in chipmakers and big tech names in premarket trading. Gold weaker and sitting around $4,700/oz.
In commodities, WTI crude oil futures are up more than 3% near $101 a barrel, while global benchmark Brent crude traded near $107. The precious metals complex opened higher in Asia but there’s been broad USD support through the London morning with a sharp correction back to lower in gold, moving from $4,774 down to $4,686. In Asia, the desk saw some light physical demand but gold was consistently offered. The white metals have followed lower with silver down around 3% after it led the sharp rally on Monday. Gold ETF holdings rose by 0.06moz, silver ETF holdings rose by 1.40moz. Oil is climbing as Brent is trading near $107.50 after hitting a daily high above £$108. Rising energy prices are in the spotlight ahead of today’s US CPI data
Economic data slate includes weekly ADP employment change (8:15am), April CPI (8:30am) and federal budget balance (2pm). Fed speaker slate includes Chicago Fed’s Goolsbee (9:10am, 1pm), and NY Fed releases quarterly report on household debt and credit at 11am
Market Snapshot
- S&P 500 mini -0.2%
- Nasdaq 100 mini -0.7%
- Russell 2000 mini -0.3%
- Stoxx Europe 600 -0.8%
- DAX -0.8%, CAC 40 -0.6%
- 10-year Treasury yield +2 basis points at 4.43%
- VIX +0.5 points at 18.87
- Bloomberg Dollar Index +0.3% at 1193.03
- euro -0.3% at $1.1747
- WTI crude +3.3% at $101.33/barrel
Top Overnight News
- Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with how the Iranians are handling negotiations to end the war, and some Trump aides say that he is now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations than he has in recent weeks. CNN
- US President Trump to confront Chinese President Xi at the upcoming summit over China’s backing of Iran and Russia. Officials said the leaders are also expected to discuss Taiwan, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and rare earth supply chains during the summit. Fox News reported
- The White House said Trump will meet Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg is expected to join the US delegation and has hinted at a major deal. BBG
- Some BoJ policymakers argued in April for raising rates soon, with one flagging the chance of a June move, highlighting a growing hawkish shift on the board as an oil shock from the Iran war sharpened pressure for near-term tightening. RTRS
- The Kospi swung after a top South Korean policymaker said the country should pay citizens a dividend using taxes on AI profits. The adviser later clarified it would be funded by excess profits. BBG
- Keir Starmer pushed back against calls for him to quit and vowed to his cabinet to stay on as PM. More than 80 Labor lawmakers have called on Starmer to step aside in the wake of last week’s local elections. UK bonds slumped and 30-year yields rose to the highest level since 1998. BBG
- Plastics prices are surging as a result of the Middle East war, creating significant margin pressure for a slew of companies. Many of these companies may push through price increases that will eventually be felt by consumers. Barron’s
- The US is delaying a plan to suspend beef import tariffs, according to the WSJ. Trump had been set to sign executive orders yesterday aimed at lowering prices. BBG
- Technology has never been more dominant in the stock market, and Nvidia now has a larger market value than the entire healthcare sector of the S&P500. Barron’s
- Musk’s AI model, Grok, lags far behind its fast-growing competitors—and an agreement by parent company SpaceX to rent massive computing power to Anthropic raises questions about whether it can still catch up. WSJ
Iran War
- IRGC Navy official Akbarzadeh said Iran has significantly expanded its definition of the Strait of Hormuz strategic zone to include the coasts of Jask and Siri beyond the main islands, Al Mayadeen reported.
- Iran Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf said “There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal. Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another.”
- Iranian Parliamentary spokesperson said “One of Iran’s options in the event of another attack could be 90 percent enrichment. We will review it in the parliament.”.
- Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs of Iran Gharibabadi said US draft plan about Strait of Hormuz shows an attempt to change the face of the issue. Considered this action to be an attempt to change the face of the issue, and said that while Iran is the target of threats, pressure and attacks, some are trying to turn the consequences of a military aggression and illegal blockade into a case against Iran.
- IRGC Navy deputy said in a recent case, Iranian forces fired warning shots after an American frigate showed “provocative behaviour” in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting it to change course, Fars reported.
- Iran’s ambassador to China said Tehran views its strategic partnership with China as key to countering US pressure and advancing demands for a lasting ceasefire, IRNA reported.
- CNN White House Correspondent Treene posted “Many in Trump’s orbit want Pakistani mediators to be far more direct in their communications with the Iranians”, adds “some Trump aides say that he is now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat”.
- Washington was on the verge of making a decision a week ago to resume attacks on Iran, Al Hadath reported. Those close to Trump convinced him last week at the last minute to freeze the decision to return to war. Israel assesses that Khamenei is still preventing any progress in the negotiations as the Supreme Leader.
- Pakistan’s ambassador to Russia is convinced that the US will not resort to a new military operation against Iran, according to TASS citing an interview.
- Israeli Navy shells Khan Yunis coast, according to Noor News, while Israel also conducts airstrikes on multiple towns in southern Lebanon, according to Al Jazeera.
- UAE has carried out military strikes on Iran, according to WSJ citing sources; UAE strikes have included attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island back in early April. The strikes, which the UAE hasn’t publicly acknowledged, have included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island which took place in early April around the time Trump was announcing a cease-fire.
- Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed six and fighting continues despite April 17th ceasefire, according to AFP.
- Hezbollah said it targeted a Merkava tank in the town of Bayada with a guided missile and it was seen burning.
- Secretary General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said “We are ready to cooperate with the authorities to achieve the sovereignty of Lebanon by stopping Israeli aggression by land, sea and air”, ISNA reported.
- Qatar orders ships at its LNG port to “go dark” under new safety measures.
UK Politics
- UK PM Starmer said he will not be setting out a timetable for departure. He reiterated that he takes full responsibility for the election results.
- Plenty of Cabinet Ministers spoke following the meeting with McFadden saying no one directly challenged PM Starmer during the cabinet meeting, Kendall stating Starmer has her “full support” and Kyle saying Starmer provides “steadfast leadership.”
- “[UK PM] Starmer did not give his critics any chance to speak against him in this morning’s meeting”, Telegraph’s Diver reported.
- UK PM Starmer is, according to a ‘very senior minister’, going to fight, ITV’s Peston reported. Further reporting by Mail on Sunday’s Hodges stated that UK PM Starmer “is reportedly is looking for a dignified way of ending all this. But he doesn’t want to be seen to be forced out.”
- Over 81 Labour MPs have now called for UK PM Starmer to resign, Politics UK reported; “This is officially enough to launch a leadership challenge if they unite behind a single candidate”.
- UK Junior Minister Fahnbulleh resigns (the first Ministeral level resignation) and called on PM Starmer to set a timetable for a transition.
- UK Chief Secretary to the PM, Jones, indicates that PM Starmer could be about to announce a timetable for his resignation, according to Times’ Swinford. Jones said “I’m not going to get ahead of the PM’s decision.”
- Four UK cabinet ministers, led by the Home Secretary, have gone into Number 10 to tell the prime minister to set out a timetable for him to resign, according to ITV News. UK Deputy PM Lammy urges PM Starmer to set out a timetable to quit.
- Four people with knowledge of conversations involving the UK Cabinet believe some ministers will move today, Politico Playbook reported. As many as six ministers could ask for the PM to outline his exit plans at the Cabinet meeting.
- “Senior Labour figures are very nervous about the market reaction this morning, hence some in the Cabinet pushing the PM to go in a way that doesn’t destabilise the party”, Eurasia journalist Rahman posted.
- UK Foreign Minister Cooper told UK PM Starmer he should see an orderly transition of power.
- UK Greater Manchester Mayor “Burnham’s allies say a seat has been lined up for him to stand – with an announcement aimed possibly today”, The Times’ Kendix reported.
- Allies of UK Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham state that a timetable of a new Labour leader/PM by end-September would provide Burnham with enough time to return to the House of Commons, Sky’s Rigby reported.
- UK Chancellor Reeves has pulled out of her speech at the Global Risks Summit, according to Daily Express’ Spyro.
A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk
APAC stocks traded mixed following the mild gains on Wall St, where the S&P 500 and NDX extended record highs, but with the upside capped by higher oil prices and geopolitical uncertainty after US President Trump said the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, but added that a diplomatic solution with Iran is still possible. Furthermore, Trump was said to be now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations than he has in recent weeks, although sources also stated that a major decision on how to proceed is unlikely to be made prior to the president’s departure to China. ASX 200 was dragged lower as weakness in the tech, healthcare, financials and consumer sectors offset the commodity-related gains, while sentiment was also not helped by a soft NAB Business Survey. Nikkei 225 ultimately gained, but with price action choppy amid a softer currency, disappointing Household Spending data and hawkish undertones from the BoJ Summary of Opinions, while participants also reflected on the record earnings from SoftBank.
Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed with the Hong Kong benchmark led higher by Kuaishou Technology after it was reported that the Co. plans to spin off its Kling AI video unit at a USD 20bln valuation, while the mainland lacks conviction as participants await the looming Trump-Xi summit in Beijing.
Top Asian News
- AUSTRALIAN BUDGET: Australia sees 2025/26 budget deficit at AUD 28.3bln (vs AUD 36.8bln projected); sees 2026/27 budget deficit at AUD 31.5bln, 2027/28 deficit AUD 31.0bln; Treasurer says budget helps, rather than harms, the fight against inflation.
- US Treasury Secretary Bessent said he made no request to PM Takaichi regarding monetary policy; in very close contact with Japan’s finance ministry and the relationship with it is working well; both believe FX volatility is undesirable. Japan’s economic fundamentals are strong and resilient, and that will be reflected in exchange rates. Expects inflation to be a short-term and transient blip. Has great confidence BoJ Governor Ueda will guide the Bank to a very successful monetary policy. PM Takaichi did not make requests about China.
- Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said had meeting with US Treasury Secretary Bessent and discussed financial market situation, including forex, while she reaffirmed close cooperation based on joint statement last year.
- Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said the Bessent-Takaichi talks were very positive, in which they discussed Mythos and critical minerals.
- Japan’s Finance Ministry declines to comment on market speculation about rate checks.
- South Korean policy chief Kim said AI citizen dividend will be from excess tax and that AI dividend does not mean a windfall tax.
European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.7%) trade with losses across the board, driven by multiple factors: 1) Iran-US war seemingly not having an end in sight, 2) UK political turmoil, and 3) mixed earnings. Overnight, US President Trump said that the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and reiterated that Iran’s proposal is unacceptable. Further reporting by Axios stated that Trump held a meeting with his national security team to discuss a way forward, which included the possible resumption of military action. This drove energy prices higher and, in turn, weighed on equities globally. European sectors are broadly in the red, with Energy outperforming as WTI and Brent regain the USD 100/bbl and USD 106/bbl respectively. Outside of Banks, Retail sits at the bottom of the pile.
Top European News
- EU ZEW Economic Sentiment Index (May) -9.1 vs. Exp. -20 (Prev. -20.4).
- German ZEW Economic Sentiment Index (May) -10.2 vs. Exp. -20.5 (Prev. -17.2, Low. -35.0, High. -10).
- German ZEW Current Conditions (May) -77.8 vs. Exp. -77.5 (Prev. -73.7, Low. -80.0, High. -68.0).
- German Inflation Rate MoM Final (Apr) M/M 0.6% vs. Exp. 0.6% (Prev. 1.1%, Low. 0.6%, High. 0.6%).
- German Inflation Rate YoY Final (Apr) Y/Y 2.9% vs. Exp. 2.9% (Prev. 2.7%, Low. 2.9%, High. 2.9%).
- Italian Industrial Production YoY (Mar) Y/Y 1.5% (Prev. 0.5%).
FX
- Snapshot: DXY is firmer this morning, benefiting from continued geopolitical uncertainty. The JPY is mildly lower, but performing a bit better vs peers after an aggressive bout of strength seen in early morning trade – potentially intervention. GBP is the clear underperformer this morning, as markets eye turmoil in the Labour Party. EUR was little moved to better-than-feared ZEW sentiment metrics.
- DXY is firmer by around +0.4%, and currently at the upper end of a 97.95-98.28 range; holding just shy of its 21-DMA at 98.31. Strength today has been facilitated by ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, with President Trump suggesting the US-Iran ceasefire is “on life support”, and repeated that Iran’s proposal was unacceptable. (Detailed analysis piece on the Newsquawk feed). Domestically, focus will shift to the US CPI report this afternoon. Headline M/M is expected to rise 0.6% (prev. 0.9%); the core metrics are expected to rise modestly from the prior.
- GBP is underperforming this morning and trades at the bottom end of a 1.3502-1.3614 range. This morning has seen Cable slip below its 21-DMA (1.3542). Next level to the downside includes the round 1.3500 mark, and a dip below that level could see a test of its 100-DMA at 1.3482.
- As it stands, PM Starmer reportedly announced that he will remain as PM, adding that he will not be setting out a timetable for departure. A move which essentially invites a leadership challenge; as it stands, the only real imminent challenge would be via Wes Streeting, though Rayner is an outside possibility. This, however, could bring further division into the Labour party, as an early challenge might split Labour between Starmer, Streeting and Burnham supporters. In the near-term, we look for a formal challenge and/or more ministerial-level resignations in a bid to pressure Starmer into changing his mind.
- JPY is mildly lower, with focus on a) potential intervention and b) Bessent-Takaichi meeting. On the point of intervention, an aggressive move lower was seen in USD/JPY from around 157.71 to 156.72 (today’s range 156.72-157.75). A move which lacked a clear driver, raising speculation of further intervention. Overnight, Treasury Sec. Bessent and PM Takaichi met where the pair discussed the financial market situation, including forex, while she reaffirmed close cooperation based on the prior accord but refrained from any significant currency jawboning. Commentary post-meeting lacked any real surprises, with the USD/JPY ultimately little moved following the details of the discussions.
Central Banks
- Fed Chair nominee Warsh clears Senate procedural hurdle and a Senate confirmation vote is expected as early as Wednesday.
- BoJ Summary of Opinions from the April meeting noted a member said that given real interest rates are at a significantly low levels, it is appropriate for the BoJ to continue raising policy rates. Member said Japan’s real policy interest rate is by far at the lowest level globally, BoJ must to continue to adjust the negative real interest rate in preparation for the second-round effects of price rise.
- ECB’s Nagel said ECB mandate requires to act if inflation expectations de-anchor; “we’ll see in June”; baseline includes two rate hikes.
- ECB’s Patsalides said there are scenarios in which the ECB may avoid raising interest rates.
Fixed Income
- A bearish start for fixed income as energy benchmarks climb after overnight rhetoric (see the feed for more), and with the intensifying scrutiny around UK PM Starmer weighing on Gilts and dragging peers lower as well.
- Bunds and USTs began the morning with modest losses, of a handful and around 20 ticks, respectively. While USTs haven’t dipped much further, they are down to a 110-06+ low ahead of US supply and CPI. If the pressure continues, we look to 110-00+ from last week before the 109-24 contact low from March.
- Bunds saw a bout of pressure in the European morning, before the Gilt open, seemingly as the press reporting around UK PM Starmer intensified further early doors. Enough to send Bunds below the 125.00 mark.
- Gilts opened lower by 73 ticks and hit an 85.82 trough. Thereafter, UK paper trundled lower to make a contract low at 85.45 ahead of leaked comments from the PM, where Starmer reportedly announced his intention to remain as the PM. Gilts moved from 85.52 to 85.81 in the moments after his comments, as it potentially signals that Chancellor Reeves will remain at her post in the near-term. In brief, his comment essentially invites a leadership challenge; as it stands, the only real imminent challenge would be via Wes Streeting, though Rayner is an outside possibility. This, however, could bring further division into the Labour party, as an early challenge might split Labour between Starmer, Streeting and Burnham supporters. In the near-term, we look for a formal challenge and/or more ministerial-level resignations in a bid to pressure Starmer into changing his mind.
- Germany sells EUR 4.630bln vs exp. EUR 6bln 2.50% 2028 Schatz: b/c 1.4x (prev. 1.7x), average yield 2.70% (prev. 2.47%), retention 22.8%.
- UK sells GBP 4bln 4.125% 2031 Gilt: b/c 3.36x (prev. 3.33x), average yield 4.651% (prev. 4.228%), tail 0.2bps (prev. 0.3bps).
- The Netherlands sold EUR 2.745bln vs exp. EUR 2-3bln 2.75% 2036 DSL: average yield 3.209% (prev. 2.955%).
- Japan sold JPY 1.95tln 10yr JGBs, b/c 3.90x (prev. 2.57x), average yield 2.540% (prev. 2.350%).
Commodities
- In geopolitics, US President Trump said he has a plan on Iran and repeated that Tehran’s proposal is unacceptable. He added that the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and “on life support”, although a diplomatic solution is still possible. Meanwhile, Axios reported Trump met with his national security team to discuss options, including possible renewed military action against Iran. US officials said Trump still wants a deal, but Iran’s refusal to make major nuclear concessions has put the military option back on the table. Two US officials said Trump is leaning toward some form of military action to increase pressure on Iran. That being said, it was also reported that US officials said Trump is unlikely to authorise military action before returning from China later this week.
- From an Iranian perspective, Iran reiterated that enrichment is not negotiable and rejected transferring enriched uranium outside the country. An Iranian parliamentary spokesperson said one option in the event of another attack could be 90% uranium enrichment.
- In reaction, WTI and Brent futures are firmer by 3.1% and 2.6% respectively, with the former towards the upper end of USD 98-101.47/bbl range and the latter just shy of session highs (USD 104.23-107.29/bbl band). Dutch TTF is firmer by some 2.5% above EUR 47/MWh.
- Spot gold is softer amid the energy-induced rise in the USD, with the bullion hovering on either side of USD 4,700/oz (in a USD 4,686-4,773/oz band) as traders look ahead to US CPI later today, alongside further headlines risk on the US-Iran front, in which a macro update will likely ultimately dictate price action.
- Base metals are mixed/mostly lower given the cautious risk sentiment and firmer USD. Copper overnight edged higher in choppy trade amid the mixed overnight risk appetite. 3M LME copper currently resides between USD 13,831.70- 13,980.38/t.
- US released another 53.3mln barrels from Strategic Petroleum Reserve to companies including Trafigura, Marathon Petroleum (MPC), and Exxon Mobil (XOM) in an effort to ease soaring fuel prices caused by the Iran war and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
- US House could vote on a gas-tax holiday as early as next week, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning cited by Punchbowl.
Trade/Tariffs
- US President Trump said need more tariffs.
- White House said US President Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi on Thursday at 10:15 AM in Beijing (03:15BST/22:15EDT) and banquet will be held at 18:00 on Thursday (11:00BST/06:00EDT). Working lunch on Friday will take place at 12:15 (05:15BST/00:15EDT).
- France presses EU to crack down on platforms like Shein and Temu, according to FT.
- US Treasury Secretary Bessent posted that he held talks with Japanese Economy Minister Akazawa; “I highlighted the continued positive collaboration between the United States and Japan on issues pertaining to critical minerals and supply chains”.
US Event Calendar
- 6:00 am: United States Apr NFIB Small Business Optimism, est. 96.1, prior 95.8
- 8:30 am: United States Apr CPI MoM, est. 0.6%, prior 0.9%
- 8:30 am: United States Apr Core CPI MoM, est. 0.3%, prior 0.2%
- 8:30 am: United States Apr CPI YoY, est. 3.7%, prior 3.3%
- 8:30 am: United States Apr Core CPI YoY, est. 2.7%, prior 2.6%
- 2:00 pm: United States Apr Federal Budget Balance, est. 220b, prior -164.1b
- 9:10 am: United States Fed’s Goolsbee Radio Appearance on NPR
- 11:00 am: United States NY Fed Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit
- 1:00 pm: United States Fed’s Goolsbee Speaks at Greater Rockford Chamber of Commerce
DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
Speaking of the AI race, some big overnight market moves came with a sharp drop in the KOSPI as a senior official floated the idea of a “citizen dividend” on AI profits, which has also weighed on tech sentiment overnight. Before that, chips stocks had led the S&P 500 (+0.19%) to another record high even as a renewed uptick in oil prices amid the deadlock between the US and Iran pushed yields higher. Meanwhile, UK politics are set for more headlines today, with reports of a fracturing in support for Prime Minister Starmer ahead of a potentially crucial Cabinet meeting this morning.
Starting with Iran, President Trump sowed doubts over the US-Iran ceasefire, saying that it was on “massive life support” as he called Iran’s latest offer “a piece of garbage”. Those comments came as Iran’s response to last week’s US proposal reportedly demanded a lifting of the US blockade and sanctions relief, as well as Iran maintaining a degree of control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Ghalibaf posted that “there is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people” as laid out in Tehran’s proposal. Meanwhile, Trump also told Fox News yesterday that he was considering reviving Project Freedom, the short-lived operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, and said he was supportive of a gasoline tax holiday, something that would require Congressional action. With the sides appearing no closer to resolving their negotiation deadlock, Brent crude prices are +0.70% higher at $104.94/bbl this morning after a +2.88% gain yesterday. Markets are also pricing rising chances of lasting disruption, with 6-month Brent futures up +2.54% to $89.50/bbl yesterday.
As mentioned at the top, the major story out of Asia this morning were comments from South Korea’s presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom proposing a “national dividend” to share in excess AI industry profits. This sent the KOSPI as much as -5.1% lower this morning, though it partially pared back this loss to-2.90% as I type, with Kim clarifying that he was suggesting tapping into “excess tax revenue” rather than introducing a new windfall corporate tax. The index heavyweight Samsung is down -3.4%. The news has also led NASDAQ futures (-0.34%) to lag those on the S&P 500 (-0.14%), while STOXX 50 futures (-0.61%) are losing more ground in Europe. But the mood is less negative elsewhere in Asia, with S&P/ASX 200 (-0.24%) as well as the CSI (-0.31%) and Shanghai Composite (-0.40%) seeing moderate losses, while the Nikkei (+0.62%) and the Hang Seng (+0.30%) are advancing.
Before that, US equities continued to advance yesterday despite the Iran stalemate, with the S&P 500 (+0.19%) and the NASDAQ (+0.10%) posting new records. Chips stocks again led the way, with the Philly semiconductor index (+2.59%) extending its YTD gain to +70%, while energy companies also surged. That said, the broader market mood was a bit more cautious, with most S&P 500 constituents lower on the day and the Mag-7 (-0.26%) slipping. Across the Atlantic, European equities were also more mixed, with the Stoxx 600 (+0.11%), FTSE 100 (+0.36%) and Dax (+0.05%) posting modest gains, while France’s CAC 40 (-0.69%) underperformed amid a fall in luxury retail stocks.
It was a more negative story in the rates space, as yields moved higher amid the rise in oil prices. The 2yr Treasury yield (+6.9bps) rose to 6-week high of 3.96%, as Fed funds futures are now pricing 15bps of hikes by next April. 10yr Treasury yields rose +5.9bps to 4.41%, whilst in Europe yields on 10yr bunds (+3.5bps) as well as OATs (+3.9bps) and BTPs (+5.2bps) all moved higher as well.
JGBs are also losing ground this morning, with the 10yr yield up +1.6bps to a new post-1997 high of 2.54%. A summary of opinions from last month’s BoJ board meeting showed policymakers considering a rate hike at the next meeting, with the central bank having grown increasingly concerned about a potential rise in underlying inflation stemming from Iran-driven disruptions. A June BoJ hike is currently 75% priced. Separately, Japanese household spending declined by a larger-than-expected -2.9% yoy in March (-1.3% expected), highlighting the fragility of consumption even as wages continued to grow.
Looking ahead to today, UK politics are set to be in the headlines again with a Cabinet split over support for Prime Minister Keir Starmer emerging yesterday. The FT reported that three ministers had asked the PM to consider his position. Starmer had said on Monday that he would not resign after suffering major losses in the UK local elections last week. But with his speech yesterday delivering little of note, aside from plans to nationalise British Steel and introduce a new EU youth scheme, more Labour MPs called on the PM to step aside in its aftermath, with the total number rising above 70. With a Cabinet meeting expected this morning, today could be a big day in determining Starmer’s future. In response to the uncertainty, 10yr UK gilt yields rose +8.6bps to 5.00% yesterday, whilst the 30yr yield rose +9.3bps to 5.67%, given expectations that a new Labour leader may face pressure to ease the fiscal rules and raise gilt issuance.
Elsewhere the day ahead will see the release of the April US CPI print. Our economists expect headline inflation to rise by +0.58% m/m, moderating from March’s +0.9%, but still relatively firm. This would raise the annual rate to 3.8%, its highest since May 2023. And they project the core reading to accelerate to +0.39% m/m from +0.2%, suggesting underlying price pressures remain sticky even as the energy price jump moderates. You can read the US team’s CPI preview and register for their post-release webinar here.
Meanwhile, the US Senate is due to vote today to confirm Kevin Warsh to the Fed Board, after clearing a procedural vote by a 49-44 margin last night. A further Senate vote to confirm him for the Fed Chair position is expected later in the week before Chair Powell’s term ends on Friday. As a reminder, Warsh will be taking over Governor Miran’s place on the Board, as Powell plans to stay on as a Governor.
Otherwise on the docket today is US NFIB small business optimism, Germany May Zew survey, Eurozone May Zew survey. The Fed’s Goolbee and ECB’s Dolenc will also speak today.
1b) European opening report
Starmer vows to stay on and fight; USTs softer as US CPI awaits – Newsquawk Daily US Market Open
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 06:29 AM
- UK PM Starmer said he will not be setting out a timetable for departure. This came after over 81 Labour MPs calling for the PM to resign, enough to launch a leadership challenge.
- European bourses are entirely in the red, with UK Banks hit on political turmoil; US equity futures pull back from ATHs.
- DXY is firmer, buoyed by geopols; GBP underperforms amidst political unrest, while JPY remains on intervention watch.
- Gilts underperform, USTs lower ahead of US CPI.
- Crude rises as US-Iran woes mount, with no off-ramp in sight.
- Looking ahead, highlights include US CPI (Apr), ADP Employment Change Weekly, EIA STEO (May), and EU Informal Meeting of Energy Ministers (May 12-13). Speakers include ECB’s Elderson, Fed’s Goolsbee. Supply from the US. Earnings from Under Armour.
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EUROPEAN TRADE
EQUITIES
- European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.7%) trade with losses across the board, driven by multiple factors: 1) Iran-US war seemingly not having an end in sight, 2) UK political turmoil, and 3) mixed earnings. Overnight, US President Trump said that the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and reiterated that Iran’s proposal is unacceptable. Further reporting by Axios stated that Trump held a meeting with his national security team to discuss a way forward, which included the possible resumption of military action. This drove energy prices higher and, in turn, weighed on equities globally.
- European sectors are broadly in the red, with Energy outperforming as WTI and Brent regain the USD 100/bbl and USD 106/bbl respectively. Outside of Banks, Retail sits at the bottom of the pile.
- US equity futures (ES -0.3%, NQ -0.7%, RTY -0.3%) are under pressure, pulling back from the ATHs made in Monday’s session.
- Click for the sessions European pre-market equity newsflow
- Click for the additional news
FX
- Snapshot: DXY is firmer this morning, benefiting from continued geopolitical uncertainty. The JPY is mildly lower, but performing a bit better vs peers after an aggressive bout of strength seen in early morning trade – potentially intervention. GBP is the clear underperformer this morning, as markets eye turmoil in the Labour Party. EUR was little moved to better-than-feared ZEW sentiment metrics.
- DXY is firmer by around +0.4%, and currently at the upper end of a 97.95-98.28 range; holding just shy of its 21-DMA at 98.31. Strength today has been facilitated by ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, with President Trump suggesting the US-Iran ceasefire is “on life support”, and repeated that Iran’s proposal was unacceptable. (Detailed analysis piece on the Newsquawk feed). Domestically, focus will shift to the US CPI report this afternoon. Headline M/M is expected to rise 0.6% (prev. 0.9%); the core metrics are expected to rise modestly from the prior.
- GBP is underperforming this morning and trades at the bottom end of a 1.3502-1.3614 range. This morning has seen Cable slip below its 21-DMA (1.3542). Next level to the downside includes the round 1.3500 mark, and a dip below that level could see a test of its 100-DMA at 1.3482.
- As it stands, PM Starmer reportedly announced that he will remain as PM, adding that he will not be setting out a timetable for departure. A move which essentially invites a leadership challenge; as it stands, the only real imminent challenge would be via Wes Streeting, though Rayner is an outside possibility. This, however, could bring further division into the Labour party, as an early challenge might split Labour between Starmer, Streeting and Burnham supporters. In the near-term, we look for a formal challenge and/or more ministerial-level resignations in a bid to pressure Starmer into changing his mind.
- JPY is mildly lower, with focus on a) potential intervention and b) Bessent-Takaichi meeting. On the point of intervention, an aggressive move lower was seen in USD/JPY from around 157.71 to 156.72 (today’s range 156.72-157.75). A move which lacked a clear driver, raising speculation of further intervention. Overnight, Treasury Sec. Bessent and PM Takaichi met where the pair discussed the financial market situation, including forex, while she reaffirmed close cooperation based on the prior accord but refrained from any significant currency jawboning. Commentary post-meeting lacked any real surprises, with the USD/JPY ultimately little moved following the details of the discussions.
- Click for NY OpEx Details
FIXED INCOME
- A bearish start for fixed income as energy benchmarks climb after overnight rhetoric (see the feed for more), and with the intensifying scrutiny around UK PM Starmer weighing on Gilts and dragging peers lower as well.
- Bunds and USTs began the morning with modest losses, of a handful and around 20 ticks, respectively. While USTs haven’t dipped much further, they are down to a 110-06+ low ahead of US supply and CPI. If the pressure continues, we look to 110-00+ from last week before the 109-24 contact low from March.
- Bunds saw a bout of pressure in the European morning, before the Gilt open, seemingly as the press reporting around UK PM Starmer intensified further early doors. Enough to send Bunds below the 125.00 mark.
- Gilts opened lower by 73 ticks and hit an 85.82 trough. Thereafter, UK paper trundled lower to make a contract low at 85.45 ahead of leaked comments from the PM, where Starmer reportedly announced his intention to remain as the PM. Gilts moved from 85.52 to 85.81 in the moments after his comments, as it potentially signals that Chancellor Reeves will remain at her post in the near-term. In brief, his comment essentially invites a leadership challenge; as it stands, the only real imminent challenge would be via Wes Streeting, though Rayner is an outside possibility. This, however, could bring further division into the Labour party, as an early challenge might split Labour between Starmer, Streeting and Burnham supporters. In the near-term, we look for a formal challenge and/or more ministerial-level resignations in a bid to pressure Starmer into changing his mind.
- Germany sells EUR 4.630bln vs exp. EUR 6bln 2.50% 2028 Schatz: b/c 1.4x (prev. 1.7x), average yield 2.70% (prev. 2.47%), retention 22.8%.
- UK sells GBP 4bln 4.125% 2031 Gilt: b/c 3.36x (prev. 3.33x), average yield 4.651% (prev. 4.228%), tail 0.2bps (prev. 0.3bps).
- The Netherlands sold EUR 2.745bln vs exp. EUR 2-3bln 2.75% 2036 DSL: average yield 3.209% (prev. 2.955%).
- Japan sold JPY 1.95tln 10yr JGBs, b/c 3.90x (prev. 2.57x), average yield 2.540% (prev. 2.350%).
COMMODITIES
- In geopolitics, US President Trump said he has a plan on Iran and repeated that Tehran’s proposal is unacceptable. He added that the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and “on life support”, although a diplomatic solution is still possible. Meanwhile, Axios reported Trump met with his national security team to discuss options, including possible renewed military action against Iran. US officials said Trump still wants a deal, but Iran’s refusal to make major nuclear concessions has put the military option back on the table. Two US officials said Trump is leaning toward some form of military action to increase pressure on Iran. That being said, it was also reported that US officials said Trump is unlikely to authorise military action before returning from China later this week.
- From an Iranian perspective, Iran reiterated that enrichment is not negotiable and rejected transferring enriched uranium outside the country. An Iranian parliamentary spokesperson said one option in the event of another attack could be 90% uranium enrichment.
- In reaction, WTI and Brent futures are firmer by 3.1% and 2.6% respectively, with the former towards the upper end of USD 98-101.47/bbl range and the latter just shy of session highs (USD 104.23-107.29/bbl band). Dutch TTF is firmer by some 2.5% above EUR 47/MWh.
- Spot gold is softer amid the energy-induced rise in the USD, with the bullion hovering on either side of USD 4,700/oz (in a USD 4,686-4,773/oz band) as traders look ahead to US CPI later today, alongside further headlines risk on the US-Iran front, in which a macro update will likely ultimately dictate price action.
- Base metals are mixed/mostly lower given the cautious risk sentiment and firmer USD. Copper overnight edged higher in choppy trade amid the mixed overnight risk appetite. 3M LME copper currently resides between USD 13,831.70- 13,980.38/t.
- US released another 53.3mln barrels from Strategic Petroleum Reserve to companies including Trafigura, Marathon Petroleum (MPC), and Exxon Mobil (XOM) in an effort to ease soaring fuel prices caused by the Iran war and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
- US House could vote on a gas-tax holiday as early as next week, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning cited by Punchbowl.
- China has reportedly raised fuel surcharge for domestic flight from May 16th.
- Pemex reported control of the incident at the Salina Cruz refinery (330k BPD capacity).
- Indian Oil Minister said LPG production has increased.
- Indian banks resume gold and silver imports after paying a 3% tax, according to sources.
TRADE/TARIFFS
- US President Trump said need more tariffs.
- White House said US President Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi on Thursday at 10:15 AM in Beijing (03:15BST/22:15EDT) and banquet will be held at 18:00 on Thursday (11:00BST/06:00EDT). Working lunch on Friday will take place at 12:15 (05:15BST/00:15EDT).
- France presses EU to crack down on platforms like Shein and Temu, according to FT.
- US Treasury Secretary Bessent posted that he held talks with Japanese Economy Minister Akazawa; “I highlighted the continued positive collaboration between the United States and Japan on issues pertaining to critical minerals and supply chains”.
UK POLITICS
- UK PM Starmer said he will not be setting out a timetable for departure. He reiterated that he takes full responsibility for the election results.
- Plenty of Cabinet Ministers spoke following the meeting with McFadden saying no one directly challenged PM Starmer during the cabinet meeting, Kendall stating Starmer has her “full support” and Kyle saying Starmer provides “steadfast leadership.”
- “[UK PM] Starmer did not give his critics any chance to speak against him in this morning’s meeting”, Telegraph’s Diver reported.
- UK PM Starmer is, according to a ‘very senior minister’, going to fight, ITV’s Peston reported. Further reporting by Mail on Sunday’s Hodges stated that UK PM Starmer “is reportedly is looking for a dignified way of ending all this. But he doesn’t want to be seen to be forced out.”
- Over 81 Labour MPs have now called for UK PM Starmer to resign, Politics UK reported; “This is officially enough to launch a leadership challenge if they unite behind a single candidate”.
- UK Junior Minister Fahnbulleh resigns (the first Ministeral level resignation) and called on PM Starmer to set a timetable for a transition.
- UK Chief Secretary to the PM, Jones, indicates that PM Starmer could be about to announce a timetable for his resignation, according to Times’ Swinford. Jones said “I’m not going to get ahead of the PM’s decision.”
- Four UK cabinet ministers, led by the Home Secretary, have gone into Number 10 to tell the prime minister to set out a timetable for him to resign, according to ITV News. UK Deputy PM Lammy urges PM Starmer to set out a timetable to quit.
- Four people with knowledge of conversations involving the UK Cabinet believe some ministers will move today, Politico Playbook reported. As many as six ministers could ask for the PM to outline his exit plans at the Cabinet meeting.
- “Senior Labour figures are very nervous about the market reaction this morning, hence some in the Cabinet pushing the PM to go in a way that doesn’t destabilise the party”, Eurasia journalist Rahman posted.
- UK Foreign Minister Cooper told UK PM Starmer he should see an orderly transition of power.
- UK Greater Manchester Mayor “Burnham’s allies say a seat has been lined up for him to stand – with an announcement aimed possibly today”, The Times’ Kendix reported.
- Allies of UK Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham state that a timetable of a new Labour leader/PM by end-September would provide Burnham with enough time to return to the House of Commons, Sky’s Rigby reported.
- UK Chancellor Reeves has pulled out of her speech at the Global Risks Summit, according to Daily Express’ Spyro.
NOTABLE EUROPEAN DATA RECAP
- EU ZEW Economic Sentiment Index (May) -9.1 vs. Exp. -20 (Prev. -20.4).
- German ZEW Economic Sentiment Index (May) -10.2 vs. Exp. -20.5 (Prev. -17.2, Low. -35.0, High. -10).
- German ZEW Current Conditions (May) -77.8 vs. Exp. -77.5 (Prev. -73.7, Low. -80.0, High. -68.0).
- German Inflation Rate MoM Final (Apr) M/M 0.6% vs. Exp. 0.6% (Prev. 1.1%, Low. 0.6%, High. 0.6%).
- German Inflation Rate YoY Final (Apr) Y/Y 2.9% vs. Exp. 2.9% (Prev. 2.7%, Low. 2.9%, High. 2.9%).
- Italian Industrial Production YoY (Mar) Y/Y 1.5% (Prev. 0.5%).
- Italian Industrial Production MoM (Mar) M/M 0.7% vs. Exp. 0% (Prev. 0.1%).
- UK BRC Retail Sales Monitor YoY (Apr) Y/Y -3.4% vs. Exp. 0.8% (Prev. 3.1%).
CENTRAL BANKS
- Fed Chair nominee Warsh clears Senate procedural hurdle and a Senate confirmation vote is expected as early as Wednesday.
- BoJ Summary of Opinions from the April meeting noted a member said that given real interest rates are at a significantly low levels, it is appropriate for the BoJ to continue raising policy rates. Member said Japan’s real policy interest rate is by far at the lowest level globally, BoJ must to continue to adjust the negative real interest rate in preparation for the second-round effects of price rise.
- ECB’s Nagel said ECB mandate requires to act if inflation expectations de-anchor; “we’ll see in June”; baseline includes two rate hikes.
- ECB’s Patsalides said there are scenarios in which the ECB may avoid raising interest rates.
NOTABLE US HEADLINES
- US President Trump to confront Chinese President Xi at the upcoming summit over China’s backing of Iran and Russia, Fox News reported. Officials said the leaders are also expected to discuss Taiwan, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and rare earth supply chains during the summit.
GEOPOLITICS
MIDDLE EAST
- IRGC Navy official Akbarzadeh said Iran has significantly expanded its definition of the Strait of Hormuz strategic zone to include the coasts of Jask and Siri beyond the main islands, Al Mayadeen reported.
- Iran Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf said “There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal. Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another.”
- Iranian Parliamentary spokesperson said “One of Iran’s options in the event of another attack could be 90 percent enrichment. We will review it in the parliament.”.
- Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs of Iran Gharibabadi said US draft plan about Strait of Hormuz shows an attempt to change the face of the issue. Considered this action to be an attempt to change the face of the issue, and said that while Iran is the target of threats, pressure and attacks, some are trying to turn the consequences of a military aggression and illegal blockade into a case against Iran.
- IRGC Navy deputy said in a recent case, Iranian forces fired warning shots after an American frigate showed “provocative behaviour” in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting it to change course, Fars reported.
- Iran’s ambassador to China said Tehran views its strategic partnership with China as key to countering US pressure and advancing demands for a lasting ceasefire, IRNA reported.
- CNN White House Correspondent Treene posted “Many in Trump’s orbit want Pakistani mediators to be far more direct in their communications with the Iranians”, adds “some Trump aides say that he is now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat”.
- Washington was on the verge of making a decision a week ago to resume attacks on Iran, Al Hadath reported. Those close to Trump convinced him last week at the last minute to freeze the decision to return to war. Israel assesses that Khamenei is still preventing any progress in the negotiations as the Supreme Leader.
- Pakistan’s ambassador to Russia is convinced that the US will not resort to a new military operation against Iran, according to TASS citing an interview.
- Israeli Navy shells Khan Yunis coast, according to Noor News, while Israel also conducts airstrikes on multiple towns in southern Lebanon, according to Al Jazeera.
- UAE has carried out military strikes on Iran, according to WSJ citing sources; UAE strikes have included attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island back in early April. The strikes, which the UAE hasn’t publicly acknowledged, have included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island which took place in early April around the time Trump was announcing a cease-fire.
- Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed six and fighting continues despite April 17th ceasefire, according to AFP.
- Hezbollah said it targeted a Merkava tank in the town of Bayada with a guided missile and it was seen burning.
- Secretary General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said “We are ready to cooperate with the authorities to achieve the sovereignty of Lebanon by stopping Israeli aggression by land, sea and air”, ISNA reported.
- Qatar orders ships at its LNG port to “go dark” under new safety measures.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE
- Russian Defence Ministry said Russian forces continue the Special Military Operation as the ceasefire with Ukraine expired, RIA reported.
- Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv is under drone attack following expiration of the truce.
CRYPTO
- Bitcoin returned back below USD 81k, Ethereum slipped below USD 2.3k.
APAC TRADE
- APAC stocks traded mixed following the mild gains on Wall St, where the S&P 500 and NDX extended record highs, but with the upside capped by higher oil prices and geopolitical uncertainty after US President Trump said the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, but added that a diplomatic solution with Iran is still possible. Furthermore, Trump was said to be now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations than he has in recent weeks, although sources also stated that a major decision on how to proceed is unlikely to be made prior to the president’s departure to China.
- ASX 200 was dragged lower as weakness in the tech, healthcare, financials and consumer sectors offset the commodity-related gains, while sentiment was also not helped by a soft NAB Business Survey.
- Nikkei 225 ultimately gained, but with price action choppy amid a softer currency, disappointing Household Spending data and hawkish undertones from the BoJ Summary of Opinions, while participants also reflected on the record earnings from SoftBank.
- Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed with the Hong Kong benchmark led higher by Kuaishou Technology after it was reported that the Co. plans to spin off its Kling AI video unit at a USD 20bln valuation, while the mainland lacks conviction as participants await the looming Trump-Xi summit in Beijing.
NOTABLE ASIA-PAC HEADLINES
- AUSTRALIAN BUDGET: Australia sees 2025/26 budget deficit at AUD 28.3bln (vs AUD 36.8bln projected); sees 2026/27 budget deficit at AUD 31.5bln, 2027/28 deficit AUD 31.0bln; Treasurer says budget helps, rather than harms, the fight against inflation.
- US Treasury Secretary Bessent said he made no request to PM Takaichi regarding monetary policy; in very close contact with Japan’s finance ministry and the relationship with it is working well; both believe FX volatility is undesirable. Japan’s economic fundamentals are strong and resilient, and that will be reflected in exchange rates. Expects inflation to be a short-term and transient blip. Has great confidence BoJ Governor Ueda will guide the Bank to a very successful monetary policy. PM Takaichi did not make requests about China.
- Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said had meeting with US Treasury Secretary Bessent and discussed financial market situation, including forex, while she reaffirmed close cooperation based on joint statement last year.
- Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said the Bessent-Takaichi talks were very positive, in which they discussed Mythos and critical minerals.
- Japan’s Finance Ministry declines to comment on market speculation about rate checks.
- South Korean policy chief Kim said AI citizen dividend will be from excess tax and that AI dividend does not mean a windfall tax.
NOTABLE APAC DATA RECAP
- Australian NAB Business Conditions (Apr) 3 (Prev. 6).
- Australian NAB Business Confidence (Apr) -24 (Prev. -29).
- Japanese Coincident Index Prel (Mar) 116.5 (Prev. 116.3).
- Japanese Leading Economic Index Prel (Mar) 114.5 vs. Exp. 114.6 (Prev. 113.3).
- Japanese Foreign Exchange Reserves (Apr) 1383.0B (Prev. 1374.7B).
1 c Asian opening report
USD and crude continue to firm on geopolitical updates, GBP underperforms on leadership worries, US CPI ahead – Newsquawk EU Market Open
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 02:06 AM
- US President Trump said he has a plan on Iran and repeated that their proposal is unacceptable, while he added that the US blockade on Iran was part of military genius.
- US President Trump said the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, but added that a diplomatic solution with Iran is still possible.
- US President Trump was reported to have met with his national security team on Monday to discuss the way forward in the Iran war, including possibly resuming military action, Axios sources reported.
- The White House said US President Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi on Thursday at 10:15 AM in Beijing (03:15BST/22:15EDT), and a banquet will be held at 18:00 on Thursday (11:00BST/06:00EDT).
- APAC stocks traded mixed; European equity futures indicate a negative open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.7%.
- Looking ahead, highlights include German HICP Final (Apr), ZEW (May), US Inflation (Apr), ADP Employment Change Weekly, EIA STEO (May), and EU Informal Meeting of Energy Ministers (May 12-13), Australian federal budget. Speakers include RBNZ’s Bremen, BoC’s Macklem, ECB’s Elderson, Fed’s Williams & Goolsbee. Supply from the Netherlands, UK, Germany & US. Earnings from JD com, Under Armour, Siemens Energy, Munich Re, Bayer & Vodafone.
SNAPSHOT
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1. Subscribe to the free premarket movers reports
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3. Trial Newsquawk’s premium real-time audio news squawk box for 7 days
IRAN CONFLICT
- US President Trump said he has a plan on Iran and repeated that their proposal is unacceptable, while he added that the US blockade on Iran was part of military genius. Trump noted regarding nuclear dust that Iran said the US or China are able to take it out, and Iran doesn’t have the equipment to take out nuclear dust. Furthermore, he said the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, but added that a diplomatic solution with Iran is still possible.
- US President Trump was reported to have met with his national security team on Monday to discuss the way forward in the Iran war, including possibly resuming military action, after negotiations with the country deadlocked on Sunday, according to three US officials cited by Axios. US officials said Trump wants a deal to end the war, but Iran’s rejection of many of his demands and refusal to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program puts the military option back on the table. Furthermore, two US officials said that Trump is leaning toward taking some form of military action against Iran to increase pressure on the regime and force concessions on its nuclear program, while one official said “He will tune them up a bit”, and another said “I think we all know where this is going”. However, Trump is expected to leave for China on Wednesday and return Friday, while two officials said they don’t think Trump would order military action against Iran before he returns from China.
- Many close to US President Trump want Pakistani mediators to be far more direct in their communications with the Iranians, and some Trump aides said he is now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations than he has in recent weeks, according to CNN citing sources. It was also noted that there are different camps within the administration that are recommending alternating paths for how to proceed, as some have argued for a more aggressive approach to pressuring the Iranians to the table — including targeted strikes that further weaken Tehran’s position, while others are still pushing to give diplomacy a fair shot. Furthermore, Trump met with his national security team at the White House on Monday to discuss options moving forward, although sources familiar with the talks said a major decision on how to proceed is unlikely to be made prior to the president’s departure to China.
- White House Deputy Press Secretary Kelly said US President Trump is not in a rush with Iran and that Trump has all options on the table for Iran.
- US was on the verge of making a decision a week ago to resume attacks on Iran, but those close to President Trump convinced him last week at the last minute to freeze the decision to return to war, while Israel assesses that Khamenei is still preventing any progress in the negotiations as the Supreme Leader, according to Al Hadath.
- Israeli broadcaster reported discussions are underway with America regarding resuming the fight against Iran, according to Al Arabiya.
- US issued fresh Iran-related sanctions in which targets include entities in Hong Kong. US Treasury said it is imposing sanctions on 12 individuals and entities for aiding Iran’s oil shipments to China, while the companies hit with sanctions include 4 based in Hong Kong and 4 in the UAE.
- Iranian Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf said “There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal”, while he added that “Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another.” Ghalibaf also commented “Our armed forces are ready to respond in a lesson-based manner to any aggression… We are open to all options”.
- Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Gharibabadi said the US draft plan about Strait of Hormuz shows an attempt to change the face of the issue, while he emphasized that freedom of navigation is an important principle in international law, but it cannot be interpreted selectively and separately from the United Nations Charter, and any plan that is presented without referring to aggression, blockade, threat of force and Iran’s legitimate rights to defend its security and vital interests regarding the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will be incomplete, biased and doomed to failure.
- Iranian National Security Commission spokesperson quoted the head of the atomic energy organisation that the issue of nuclear tech is not on the agenda of the negotiations, and enrichment is not negotiable. It was also stated that Iran’s nuclear industry activities are peaceful and will remain peaceful, while the necessary preparations have been carried out to protect nuclear centres and assets.
- Iran is ready to dilute highly enriched uranium to levels of 3.7% and 20%, according to Al Jazeera citing a source. It was reported that Washington refused to transfer the highly enriched uranium to Russia and suggested a third country to receive it, while Iran refused to transfer uranium outside its territory and is ready to dilute it under the supervision of the IAEA. Furthermore, Washington demanded a halt to uranium enrichment for twenty years, but Iran refused, while Washington demanded in its proposal to obtain highly enriched uranium at 60%, and it rejected a proposal to pay Iran reparations for war losses.
- Enriched nuclear materials will not be transferred outside Iran, according to Tasnim. A source close to the negotiating team said contrary to claims by some Western media outlets, there is no such thing in Iran’s text as accepting the withdrawal of enriched nuclear material from the country, while a source also stated that Iran has set a specific deadline in its proposal for receiving its blocked funds.
- Pakistan’s ambassador to Russia is convinced that the US will not resort to a new military operation against Iran, according to TASS citing an interview.
- UAE has secretly carried out military strikes on Iran, according to WSJ citing sources, while the strikes, which the UAE hasn’t publicly acknowledged, included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island, which took place in early April around the time Trump was announcing a ceasefire.
- US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz announced that security cooperation between Israel and some Middle Eastern countries, especially the UAE, has expanded, while an Israeli newspaper quoted Waltz as saying that Israel provided the Iron Dome system to the UAE.
- As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields, potentially shielding them from American airstrikes, according to CBS citing sources.
- Israeli Navy shelled the Khan Yunis coast, while Israel also conducted airstrikes on multiple towns in southern Lebanon, according to Noor News and Al Jazeera.
- Hezbollah said it targeted a Merkava tank in the town of Bayada with a guided missile, and it was seen burning, according to Al Mayadeen.
US TRADE
EQUITIES
- US stocks eked mild gains with the S&P 500 and NDX printing fresh record highs amid further strength in semiconductor names, while energy outperformed alongside higher crude prices, and Materials benefited from strength in metal prices. Nonetheless, the upside for the broader market was limited, and oil prices rose after US President Trump rejected Iran’s response to the latest US proposal to end the war, calling it “totally unacceptable”. Furthermore, Trump said the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, while he was set to meet with his national security team to discuss next steps regarding Iran, including the potential resumption of military operations.
- SPX +0.18% at 7,412, NDX +0.29% at 29,321, DJI +0.19% at 49,704, RUT +0.39% at 2,872.
- Click here for a detailed summary.
TARIFFS/TRADE
- US President Trump commented that the US needs more tariffs.
- The White House said US President Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi on Thursday at 10:15 AM in Beijing (03:15BST/22:15EDT) and a banquet will be held at 18:00 on Thursday (11:00BST/06:00EDT).
- US President Trump said they are doing smart business with China and have a great relationship with Chinese President Xi. Trump said they will bring up prisoners in a meeting with Xi and that Taiwan will also come up in talks with China, while he said Xi is more likely to bring up Taiwan and that they will also talk about energy and Iran with Xi.
- US President Trump posted “I am very much looking forward to my trip to China, an amazing Country, with a Leader, President Xi, respected by all. Great things will happen for both Countries!”
- Politico’s Mueller said it seems the list of CEOs a White House official shared could be those invited to China, rather than those travelling, and a Cisco spokesperson said their CEO will not be able to attend due to earnings.
- US President Trump was reportedly to sign executive orders on Monday to allow increased beef imports and support the renewal of US cattle herd, according to a White House official. However, it was later reported that Trump did not sign the planned suspension of tariff-rate quotas for beef, with no explanation given, but came after pushback from ranchers and Capitol Hill Republicans, while Trump’s team is now finalising potential executive actions on beef.
- US House lawmakers are introducing a bill to ban Chinese vehicles in the US.
- France is pressuring the EU to crack down on platforms like Shein and Temu, according to FT.
- US Treasury Secretary Bessent posts that he held talks with Japanese Economy Minister Akazawa; “I highlighted the continued positive collaboration between the United States and Japan on issues pertaining to critical minerals and supply chains”.
NOTABLE HEADLINES
- Fed Chair nominee Warsh cleared the Senate procedural hurdle and a Senate confirmation vote is expected as early as Wednesday.
APAC TRADE
EQUITIES
- APAC stocks traded mixed following the mild gains on Wall St, where the S&P 500 and NDX extended record highs, but with the upside capped by higher oil prices and geopolitical uncertainty after US President Trump said the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, but added that a diplomatic solution with Iran is still possible. Furthermore, Trump was said to be now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations than he has in recent weeks, although sources also stated that a major decision on how to proceed is unlikely to be made prior to the president’s departure to China.
- ASX 200 was dragged lower as weakness in the tech, healthcare, financials and consumer sectors offset the commodity-related gains, while sentiment was also not helped by a soft NAB Business Survey.
- Nikkei 225 ultimately gained, but with price action choppy amid a softer currency, disappointing Household Spending data and hawkish undertones from the BoJ Summary of Opinions, while participants also reflected on the record earnings from SoftBank.
- KOSPI swung between gains and losses after its recent surge, and with some cautiousness seen after South Korean policymakers proposed the establishment of an AI ‘citizen dividend’.
- Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed with the Hong Kong benchmark led higher by Kuaishou Technology after it was reported that the Co. plans to spin off its Kling AI video unit at a USD 20bln valuation, while the mainland lacks conviction as participants await the looming Trump-Xi summit in Beijing.
- US equity futures were subdued overnight amid the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.
- European equity futures indicate a negative open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.7% after the cash market closed with losses of 0.3% on Monday.
FX
- DXY mildly strengthened in tandem with higher oil prices and yields, as well as the mixed risk appetite amid geopolitical uncertainty due to the US-Iran impasse, while participants look ahead to the incoming US inflation data scheduled for today and the Trump-Xi summit later this week.
- EUR/USD gave up ground amid the firmer buck, but with price action kept to within a relatively tight range at the 1.17 handle amid a lack of major news catalysts from the bloc.
- GBP/USD lingered at sub-1.3600 territory after recent fluctuations and political headwinds for UK PM Starmer, who is fighting to hold on to his job after cabinet ministers held talks on his future and dozens of Labour MPs called for him to resign.
- USD/JPY gained a firmer footing above the 157.00 level with the Japanese currency pressured by higher oil prices and disappointing Household Spending data. Furthermore, Japan’s Finance Minister Katayama had a meeting with US Treasury Secretary Bessent and discussed the financial market situation, including forex, while she reaffirmed close cooperation based on the prior accord but refrained from any significant currency jawboning.
- Antipodeans were lacklustre alongside the flimsy risk sentiment and recent upside in commodities, while Australian NAB Business Surveys remained soft, and the federal budget announcement is due today.
- PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.8426 vs exp. 6.7945 (prev. 6.8467).
FIXED INCOME
- 10yr UST futures trickled lower after recent upside in oil prices, with demand not helped ahead of US inflation data and the latest 10yr auction stateside.
- Bund futures retreated amid energy-related headwinds, while participants also await ZEW data and incoming supply, including a EUR 6bln Schatz issuance later, followed by EUR 2.5bln of Bunds tomorrow.
- 10yr JGB futures continued the recent declines amid the oil pressure and after the BoJ Summary of Opinions noted some members saw the need to resume rate hikes soon, opening the door for a June hike, while there was ultimately a choppy reaction to the mixed results from the 10yr JGB auction.
COMMODITIES
- Crude futures extended on their gains amid geopolitical uncertainty after President Trump commented that the ceasefire is unbelievably weak and is on life support, but added that a diplomatic solution with Iran is still possible, while some Trump aides said he is now more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations than he has in recent weeks. Nonetheless, gains are capped as sources familiar with the talks noted a major decision on how to proceed is unlikely to be made prior to Trump’s departure for China, and it was also reported that the US released another 53.3mln barrels from the SPR.
- US released another 53.3mln barrels from Strategic Petroleum Reserve to companies including Trafigura, Marathon Petroleum (MPC), and Exxon Mobil (XOM) in an effort to ease soaring fuel prices caused by the Iran war and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
- US House could vote on a gas-tax holiday as early as next week, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning cited by Punchbowl.
- Spot gold saw two-way price action following the prior day’s advances across the metals complex and with participants mulling over the US-Iran impasse.
- Copper futures edged higher in choppy trade amid the mixed overnight risk appetite.
CRYPTO
- Bitcoin gradually retreated overnight and briefly retreated beneath the USD 81,000 level.
NOTABLE ASIA-PAC HEADLINES
- BoJ Summary of Opinions from the April meeting noted a member said that given real interest rates are at significantly low levels, it is appropriate for the BoJ to continue raising policy rates, while a member said Japan’s real policy interest rate is by far at the lowest level globally and the BoJ must continue to adjust the negative real interest rate in preparation for the second-round effects of price rise. It was also stated that the BoJ may need to address the risk of prices deviating upwards and a member said that in the case where upside risks to prices increase, the BoJ must accelerate the pace of rate hikes without hesitation. Furthermore, a member said if tension over the situation in the Middle East becomes prolonged, there will be a need to raise the policy interest rate to neutral at an earlier timing, while it is quite possible the BoJ will raise rates from the next meeting onward even if the future course of the Middle East situation remains unclear.
- Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said she had a meeting with US Treasury Secretary Bessent and discussed the financial market situation, including forex, while she reaffirmed close cooperation based on the joint statement last year and reaffirmed to continue to coordinate strongly.
- Japan and India signed a quantum technology cooperation pact, according to Nikkei.
- US Treasury Secretary Bessent said he is pleased to reaffirm US-Japan economic partnership, and added that communication on FX volatility remains constant and robust; he also held positive talks on US-Japan investment agreement.
DATA RECAP
- Japanese Household Spending MM (Mar) -1.3% vs Exp. 0.6% (Prev. 1.5%)
- Japanese Household Spending YY (Mar) -2.9% vs. Exp. -1.5% (Prev. -1.8%)
- Australian NAB Business Confidence (Apr) -24 (Prev. -29)
- Australian NAB Business Conditions (Apr) 3 (Prev. 6)
GEOPOLITICS
RUSSIA-UKRAINE
- Ukrainian President Zelensky said Russia has no intention of ending this war and they are preparing for new attacks. It was later reported that Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv came under a drone attack following expiration of the truce.
OTHER
- US Pentagon announced that a US Navy nuclear-armed submarine arrived in Gibraltar.
EU/UK
NOTABLE HEADLINES
- Four UK cabinet ministers, led by the Home Secretary, have gone into Number 10 to tell the PM to set out a timetable for him to resign, according to ITV News. Furthermore, it was reported that UK Deputy PM Lammy urged PM Starmer to set out a timetable to quit, and Foreign Minister Cooper also told UK PM Starmer he should see an orderly transition of power, while Sky News’s Rigby previously reported that cabinet members were gearing up to tell UK PM Starmer the “game is up”.
- UK MP Streeting appeared to have moved against UK PM Starmer, while the prime minister now looks in increasing peril, according to Bloomberg’s Wickham.
- Guardian’s Elgot said she understands from cabinet sources that for the moment, they are not planning to quit or force the PM into a corner, but want him to “look again” at the political reality.”
- UK Labour Party power brokers want new fiscal rules after Starmer, and MPs from the influential Tribune faction called for longer-term debt targets and bigger wealth taxes in an effective manifesto for the next leader, according to The Times.
DATA RECAP
- UK BRC Retail Sales Monitor YY (Apr) -3.4% vs. Exp. 0.8% (Prev. 3.1%)
2.a NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA/JAPAN
JAPAN
NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA
3. CHINA/
CHINA//
China’s Car Sales Slump As Gasoline Demand Craters
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 07:15 PM
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
Chinese car sales in China fell by 21.5% in April, driven by lower demand for gasoline-powered vehicles amid higher fuel prices. EV demand failed to offset the drop in internal combustion engine vehicle sales, as well.
According to Bloomberg data, total car sales in China last month hit 1.4 million. This was the lowest since 2022, when China was still in the grip of Covid lockdowns. Internal combustion engine car sales suffered a decline of over 30%, while EV and hybrid car sales fell by a more modest 6.8%. EV sales suffered as a result of a rollback of subsidies and the reintroduction of a tax on what China calls new energy vehicles.
As a result of the slump in gasoline car sales, new energy vehicles came to account for 60% of new car sales last month. This is the highest monthly portion of EVs and hybrids of total new car sales.
In addition to the fuel prices, subsidy removal, and the return of taxes on EVs, China’s car sales declined as a result of weaker purchasing power – another consequence of the war in the Middle East.
The energy crisis has slowed down China’s economic growth, prompting job cuts and lower wages, which have in turn affected consumers’ spending appetite, Bloomberg noted in its report.
China has the world’s largest crude oil stockpiles, estimated at between 1 billion barrels and up to 1.3 billion barrels. This provides the country with quite solid insulation against supply shocks – even though it has not prevented retail fuel prices from moving higher.
Thanks to this reserve cushion and its diversification policies, despite being the top crude importer in the world, China is less exposed to the Hormuz crisis than many other buyers in Asia, including India and the developed economies of Japan and South Korea. India relies on the Middle East for about 60% of its crude supply, while Japan’s dependence is a massive 90%.
4 EUROPEAN AND SCANDINAVIAN COMMENTARIES PLUS NATO
EUROPE/UKRAINE
Europe Fails To React To Ukrainian Drone Incidents
by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 02:00 AM
Authored by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida via Global Research,
Recent drone incidents in European countries, especially in the Baltic states, are generating controversy among those who support the war with Russia. Some argue that Ukraine is merely defending itself against “Russian aggression,” with these “accidental” occurrences being an inevitable side effect of hostilities. Others believe that Kiev should act more cautiously to avoid harming partner countries. Meanwhile, drones continue to crash in Europe without a definitive solution being presented for this issue.
Recently, a kamikaze drone launched by Ukraine struck a fuel storage tank in Latvia. At the time of the incident, the tank was empty, which prevented a major tragedy. Had the drone hit a full tank, the result would have been a large explosion, followed by a massive fire, generating serious economic and environmental damage – as has happened in several recent cases in Russian border regions, with drones hitting energy facilities and causing serious fires.
Obviously, the expected attitude of any country hit by a foreign drone – even from an allied country – is at least to condemn the action and demand financial compensation for the damage caused. But apparently, this is not the Latvian stance regarding Ukrainian drones falling in the country. Recently, Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds stated that Kiev should not be held responsible for these incidents. According to him, these are merely accidental collateral damages, with the real blame for the occurrence lying with Russia – which he believes “started the war”.
Spruds stated that “Ukraine has every right to defend itself,” admitting that even incidents affecting Latvian territory should be tolerated, since Kiev is only acting in “legitimate self-defense.”
In practice, he prioritized the supposed Ukrainian “right” to attack Russia over the national security of Latvian territory and people.
Not only that, the Latvian government also summoned Russian diplomats and demanded explanations about the case.
Even though the drones are known to be of Ukrainian origin, the Latvian government maintains a firm stance of holding Russia responsible for any event related to the conflict.
Furthermore, Moscow has also presented reports to the Latvian side showing that drones have crashed in the country due to failed Ukrainian attempts to attack the St. Petersburg region, but the Latvian government ignores these circumstances and simply blames Moscow.
Unfortunately, this attitude is not unique to the defense sector. Tolerance towards incidents involving Ukrainian drones is also widely endorsed by the country’s government and parliament, with most local politicians and bureaucrats being mere representatives of European elites interested in spreading Russophobia and pro-war sentiments. Commenting on the case, Latvian PM Evika Silina herself stated that, regardless of the origin of the drones that hit the country, it is always necessary to blame Russia – which she considers the “actual culprit”.
“It doesn’t matter whose drones hit the oil depot in Latvia, the main thing is to remember Russia’s responsibility for it. Russia is the aggressor,” she said.
It is important to remember that the incident at the fuel depot was just one in a recent wave of frustrated Ukrainian attacks resulting in drone crashes in Europe. Previously, on March 23, Ukrainian drones exploded near Lake Lavysas in Lithuania; two days later, in Latvia itself, drones crashed in the Kraslava region, and on the same day a similar incident occurred at the Auvere Power Plant in Estonia. On March 29, the city of Kouvola in Finland was hit by Ukrainian drones. Furthermore, several other related incidents have been reported in different countries in recent months.
In none of these cases was there an effective European response to the crimes committed by Ukraine. Justifying these occurrences with the unfounded narrative of “self-defense,” European countries are tolerating threats to their own territories and abdicating their right to demand reparations from the Ukrainian regime.
In practice, this only strengthens Ukraine’s position and gives even more freedom to the local military to act irresponsibly, launching swarms of drones indiscriminately, aware that some of them will likely fall on civilian areas of allied countries – but simply not caring, since these countries will ultimately blame Russia.
At some point, these Ukrainian drones will begin to cause more serious damage than merely destroying empty depots. If the incidents do not cease, there will inevitably be deaths in Europe in the near future. And then it will not be enough for local governments to say “it’s Russia’s fault,” because the victims’ relatives, knowing that the drones are Ukrainian, will demand more concrete answers and harsh measures against those responsible. As a result, the support given by these countries to Ukraine will become even more unpopular, generating an internal legitimacy crisis.
To prevent the worst-case scenario, the best thing Europeans can do now is to openly condemn Kiev and demand financial reparations for the damage caused.
END
SLOVAKIA/RUSSIA/GERMANY
Merz Promises Fico A Spanking For Slovak Leader’s Moscow V-Day Trip
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 02:45 AM
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was once again this year the only EU leader to visit Moscow for Russia’s Victory Day commemorative WW2 celebrations on Saturday, which has drawn a predictable and fierce rebuke from Germany and European officials.
This was the second time Fico attended V-Day celebrations, after a similar controversial visit last year. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in particular chastised Fico with scolding words, as if Fico was being called to the principal’s office. “We will talk with him about this day in Moscow today,” he said. “We are celebrating Europe Day here in Stockholm today. And this is something completely different.”
One apt and hilariously sarcastic headline said that “Merz promised Fico a spanking for a trip to Moscow on May 9.”
Merz also said he “deeply regretted” Fico’s trip while asserting it did not reflect the EU’s “common view”. Fico has not only been intensely skeptical of European aid to Ukraine, but Slovakia has also remained heavily dependent on Russian energy.
As for President Putin, he received Fico and said: “I know there were some difficulties with your trip to Moscow. But the important thing is that you’re here.” These ‘difficulties’ included several European states having refused to let let the Slovak leader’s plane use their airspace on his way to Moscow.
“We welcome the gradual resumption of bilateral cooperation, which had effectively been put on hold by the previous Slovak authorities,” said Putin. “We will do everything we can to meet the Slovak Republic’s energy needs.“
Still, Fico didn’t attend the full array of V-Day events. He met with Putin, but skipped the main military parade events at Red Square, and instead solemnly laid flowers on Friday at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is Russia’s central memorial to millions of Soviet soldiers who died fighting against Nazi Germany.
Fico deflected ongoing EU criticism, saying his visit was “a manifestation of respect for the victims of the Second World War” and that he and Putin must necessarily discuss “fundamental questions” of bilateral relations.
“I am opposed to creating any kind of new Iron Curtain between Europe, the European Union, and the Russian Federation,” Fico said. “I support normal, standard, friendly, and mutually beneficial relations.”
But one irony is that Slovakia has been a member of the NATO alliance since 2004, and in President Putin’s keynote V-Day speech, he again blasted NATO expansion and its role in Ukraine.
“The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers carrying out the goals of the special military operation today,” Putin had declared. “They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. And despite this, our heroes move forward,” he said. “I firmly believe that our cause is just,” he later emphasized.
END
UK
INSANITY!!!
Ideological Insanity Has Gotten Way Way Worse In The UK…
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 03:30 AM
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A major exam board has now signed off on gender-neutral language in GCSE French, Spanish and German exams – despite the terms being completely alien to how those languages are actually spoken in their home countries.
The move, buried in new specifications for 2026 exams, hands students the green light to ditch standard masculine and feminine forms in favour of made-up “inclusive” pronouns, nouns and adjectives.
Yes, you read that right. They’re letting students make up their own parts of foreign languages in exams.
Staff at Pearson Edexcel have explicitly permitted teens to use “inclusive” pronouns, nouns and adjectives in both written and oral GCSEs. Yet as the article linked above makes clear, “the French do not pander to the same bid for inclusivity, with all their grammatical concepts being strictly categorised into gendered variants.”
Adjectives must match the noun in masculine or feminine endings. Gender-neutral terms simply do not exist in grammatically correct French or Spanish.
Former French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer blasted the move as “absurd”. He stated: “French grammar has not changed in this regard. And the use of ‘iel’ does not correspond to any widespread usage among the French population.”
Some French universities and socialist councils have tried pushing “iel” and “iels” as neutral replacements for “il” and “elle”, but Blanquer made it clear this is not mainstream French. The exam board’s decision flies in the face of actual language as used by native speakers.
The new specs include a dedicated section on “gendered language”, backed by the usual LGBT activists at Stonewall. Pearson claims gendered language “can present specific challenges for trans and non-binary students”. As a result, they’ve added vocabulary for “trans” and “non-binary” to the list and vowed to “recognise students’ use of non-binary or gender-neutral pronouns when describing themselves or others” in exams.
Absolute insanity. When these people go out into the real world, only then will they discover that no one has a clue what it is they’re saying.
Students can even deploy new adjectival endings “according to their preferred way of identifying”, along with special spellings using full stops, “x’s”, asterisks and underscores. This isn’t teaching French – it’s turning language exams into an identity politics playground.
The move comes just weeks after the government’s new trans guidance for schools, a framework that openly allows primary school children – some as young as four – to socially transition at school, complete with different pronouns, as long as teachers show “caution” and consult parents.
UK’s INSANE New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can ‘Change Gender’
Government opens door to social transitioning in schools despite Cass Review warnings
What started with pronoun policies in the classroom has now leaked into the actual curriculum and assessment system.
Director of Advocacy at Sex Matters, Helen Joyce, nailed the bigger picture, noting “It may seem baffling how quickly schools have been captured by gender ideology in recent years.” Joyce pointed to Stonewall-linked external providers pushing a “pro-trans agenda” and warned: “The next challenge for the Department for Education will be to tackle the pernicious creep of gender ideology throughout the curriculum, and the role of external providers in driving this.”
Publicly Funded LGBT Group Asks Teachers Not To Inform Parents About ‘Transitioning’ Children
Radical trans lobbyist group pushing propaganda on schools
Pearson tried to walk it back in a statement, insisting: “Gender-neutral pronouns are not required as part of Pearson Edexcel GCSE French, German, or Spanish. The specifications require students to learn and be assessed only on the standard masculine and feminine forms used in these languages.” They added that the vocabulary list reflects “everyday life, including references to men and women, him and her, boys and girls, mothers and fathers,” and claimed their Stonewall membership ended over two years ago.
The Department for Education itself sounded a note of caution, stating: “Our expectations are clear: gender identity is an area of significant debate. Schools should not endorse any particular view or teach it as fact – including the idea that all people have a gender identity.”
Yet the guidance still permits the very practices critics say undermine real education. Allowing fantasy spellings and pronouns in a French GCSE doesn’t prepare kids for the real world – it prepares them for ideological conformity. French speakers in France won’t understand “iel” any more than they’ll understand a British teen demanding to be called “they” in Paris.
This is the inevitable next step after the trans guidance fiasco. Once you accept that feelings trump biology in the classroom, it was only a matter of time before the same logic infected subjects like languages, history and science. Stonewall’s influence may be officially over at Pearson, but the damage lingers in the specs they helped shape.
Parents and common-sense voices have every right to be furious. Education should teach facts, grammar and reality – not indulge every passing social trend. The UK already lags behind in basic skills; turning GCSEs into optional pronoun workshops only accelerates the decline.
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END
UK
Cable, Gilts Under Pressure As UK PM Starmer On The Brink As Rebellion Spreads
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 09:31 AM
UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is on the brink this morning as The Telegraph reports that six Cabinet Ministers reportedly call on him privately to quit and the number of MPs on the record saying he must go reaches 84.
The Telegraph learnt before the meeting that six ministers – Shabana Mahmood, John Healey, Ed Miliband, Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper and Wes Streeting – had been expected to demand Sir Keir’s resignation.
However the Prime Minister did not give Ministers a chance to speak against him and instead set out his case on why he should remain in office.
He told Ministers: “The Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered. The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”
He then spent the rest of the hour discussing policy issues and the impact of the Iran war.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, who served under Jeremy Corbyn and was sacked from Sir Keir’s shadow cabinet in August 2020, demanded that the Prime Minister “end this chaos” and set out a timetable for an orderly leadership transition.
Long-Bailey, the 84th MP to call for the Prime Minister’s departure, said:
“Many former Labour voters now feel our party is no longer on their side.”
“What we witnessed with the last government was the chaos of constantly changing leaders,” Starmer said.
“And it cost this country a huge amount, a huge amount.”
Some Labour MPs are now talking down the prospect of higher spending despite many of the party’s critics of Downing Street calling for a more relaxed approach to borrowing at various points since Starmer was elected in 2024.
“I don’t think there’s anyone who’s seriously asking for large unfunded pledges,” said Yuan Yang, a Labour MP on parliament’s Treasury Committee.
“We understand the importance of fiscal rules, we understand the importance of getting down the cost of borrowing.”
Still, others on the left of Labour are touting various ways to boost public services.
But, despite that placting, the pound extended losses on Tuesday morning, down more than 0.5% to $1.3536 having traded above $1.3650 the previous day. Gilts came under further pressure, with the yield on 10-year notes jumping beyond 5.10% on Tuesday as bond investors expressed concern that any replacement for Starmer would increase fiscal spending, potentially driving borrowing costs higher. The yield on 30-year debt hit its highest level since 1998.
Finally, as Nick Corbishly writes in detail via NakedCapitalism, Starmer’s rapid rise and (apparent) fall are symptomatic of a broader trend unfolding across the Davos regimes of the collective West.
Following the Labour Party’s drubbing in last week’s local elections, Prime Minister Keir Starmer needed to do something big and/or bold to salvage his crumbling “leadership” (for lack of a better word) — something that might have conveyed to his disenchanted voters that their welfare actually mattered. He did neither.
Instead, he brought Harriet Harman back into government as his “adviser on women and girls”. In the 1970s, Harman wrote a paper for the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) defending child pornography. As The Canary notes, “Starmer’s first act of his reshuffle, after months of scandals over his knowing appointment of paedophiles’ pals to senior positions”, was “to appoint a woman linked to a notorious paedophilia advocacy group.”
Starmer’s next move was to bring back former Prime Minister Gordon Brown as the government’s “special envoy on global finance and cooperation”, which, again, was an interesting choice. Besides failing quite abjectly as prime minister (2007-10), Brown is probably best known for two things:
- Selling nearly 400 tonnes of UK gold reserves between 1999 and 2002 at a 20-year market low, in what famously came to be known as the “Brown Bottom“. By announcing the sale in advance, Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer, helped trigger a 10% fall in the market price of gold before a single ounce has been offloaded.
- Helping to unleash the “animal spirits” of financial liberalisation during his tenure as chancellor (1997-2007), only for his tenure as prime minister to be marked by the 2008 crash — a crisis often described as a collapse of those same spirits. That painful history wasn’t enough to prevent Starmer from pledging last year to “bring back the animal spirits of the private sector” by reducing the regulatory burden on businesses.
Starmer’s third move was to try to deliver a skin-saving speech that would, if not inspire the nation, at least put paid to any internal stirrings within his government. But impassioned, inspirational speeches are not exactly Starmer’s forte. As the veteran political analyst Andrew O’Neil noted in the wake of yesterday’s speech, “there’s rarely been a situation so bad that it can’t be made worse with a Keir Starmer speech”:
It certainly wasn’t the Gettysburg Address. But nobody expects that from Keir Starmer. In places it was a familiar walk down memory lane, with the PM bigging up, yet again, his alleged working class credentials. As if we care.
There was plenty of emoting with working people. Though much good it has done them so far. There was a lot of talk of the need for radical change. But no concrete examples of what that would entail. The three policies he announced were simply a rehash of existing policies.
And there were a few outlandish claims, including the assertion that he’d stabilised the economy — and that our economic ‘fundamentals are sound.’ Yes he actually said that.
Normally, when a sitting PM is thumped as badly by the voters as Starmer was on Thursday, they feel the need to say something to the nation. But Starmer wasn’t speaking to us today. He was speaking to the Labour Party, especially its MPs who hold his fate in their hands.
Hence the Labour crowd-pleasing sections on renationalising British Steel — it’s already under state control — taking Britain back to the ‘heart of Europe — whatever that means — and more apprenticeships for young folks — already party policy. So far Starmer’s efforts to save his own skin have been a textbook case of how NOT to save your own skin.
At this point, the only thing that could possibly save Starmer’s skin is the absence of a clear successor within the party’s senior ranks. Labour’s neo-Blairite health secretary, Wes Streeting, appears to have already mounted a leadership challenge. But Streeting is even more exposed than Starmer to the Labour Party’s “prince of darkness”, Peter Mandelson, who is now under criminal investigation over his associations with Jeffrey Epstein.
Streeting is also about as soulless and characterless as Starmer and is even more craven to corporate interests (see below). Labour’s soft-left members, like John McDonnell, will stop at nothing to prevent a Streeting premiership. If they fail in that task, Streeting’s ascendance would represent the ultimate coup for the Blairite wing of the Labour Party that sabotaged Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership with the bogus charge that Corbyn was anti-Semitic.
As of writing (Monday evening, GMT), the odds of a Streeting challenge appear to be rising. According to Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, the prime minister looks in increasing peril as several of Streeting’s allies, including his PPS Joe Morris and constituency neighbour Jas Athwal, have called for Starmer to stand down:
— Labour MPs and aides say developments could now happen quickly if momentum continues to build. A loyalist says it’s now a matter of when not if.
— A Labour official says they believe several Cabinet members are ready to tell the PM he has to set a timetable for his departure if it becomes clear he has lost the authority of the backbenches. They think if the number of public dissenters heads toward three figures that will happen.
— However Cabinet aides insist we are not there yet and they don’t think the whole Cabinet is yet ready to move. One notes that Streeting’s allies appear to have gone after markets closed, after gilts dropped on Monday on the political instability. There will be a lot of attention on market open tomorrow.
— Streeting is silent but there appears to be an orchestrated plot by his supporters to call for Starmer to go so he can move. There was disappointment among some of Streeting’s allies today that he has not moved already but it now feels increasingly inevitable.
Another possible successor is — or at least, was — Manchester City Mayor Andy Burnham, but he would need to become a member of parliament to be able to run as Labour leader. And the Labour Party leadership recently blocked him from being able to stand as a candidate for the by-election in Gorton and Denton. According to Wickham, “Burnham’s allies say he will soon be ready to show he has a route to parliament.”
There’s also the fact that Burnham, who was once a minister under Tony Blair, has already run for the party’s leadership twice before, with underwhelming results. Like Streeting and most other high-ranking party members, he also has close ties to Labour Friends of Israel and other Zionist lobbies.
Meanwhile, the party is haemorrhaging support, both to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party on the right and the Green Party on the soft left. This is not a surprise given the scale of Labour’s betrayal to its core voters, beginning with the proposed scrapping of the winter fuel allowance in its first months of power, as well as the authoritarian excesses of Starmer’s rule, writes Yannis Varoufakis:
The crux of their debacle lay, first, in a distinctly dictatorial, authoritarian reflex. And second—crucially—in a seething contempt for those who lent them their votes, while simultaneously performing a grotesque pantomime of flattery toward those who never would, and never will, support them.
Having exorcised from the Labour Party its most authentic voices—people of unimpeachable integrity, such as Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, a purge that eluded even Tony Blair’s repertoire—Starmer embarked on a rampage:
He slashed disability benefits; armed and fed intelligence to the Israeli government as it executed genocide in Gaza; channeled his own inner Farage, perhaps his inner Enoch Powell, to vilify migrants and treat refugees as vermin; gutted international aid to masquerade as a defender of defence spending; bulldozed wildlife and their habitats; unveiled a new lexicon of draconian anti-protest laws; left trans people suspended in legal limbo; clung with religious fervour to absurd, socially ruinous fiscal rules; allowed Rachel Reeves to squander £100 billion covering the Bank of England’s outrageous and wholly unnecessary Quantitative Tightening losses—a gift that keeps giving to the City’s banks—while imposing yet another round of austerity on government departments and public services.
Once the great hope of the downtrodden, Starmer’s Labour has become the villain – the genuinely nasty party. Once a human rights lawyer, he has single-handedly plunged Britain into a shoddy, incompetent authoritarianism.
We have covered that creeping authoritarianism in some depth in our two-instalment post, “Just How Dystopian Can Starmer’s Britain Become?” (here and here). Indeed, arguably Starmer’s most important legacy is the way he has instrumentalised the law, particularly the anti-terrorism laws, to arrest and intimidate pro-Palestinian journalists, activists and protesters.
With ruthless zeal, his government has criminalised public opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza while lending support to the furtherance of said genocide, including through the provision of more than 100 RAF spy flights over Gaza. In Starmer’s Britain, merely expressing critical views about the political ideology of Zionism in a private conversation can get you arrested…
5. RUSSIA AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS
ISRAEL USA/IRAN/MONDAY NIGHT
‘Mediator’ Pakistan Hosted Iranian Military Aircraft To Insulate Them From US Attacks, Graham Fumes At Islamabad
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 06:45 PM
Summary
- CBS reports Pakistan sheltered Iranian military planes, Sen. Graham outraged, calls for ‘reevaluation’.
- US President blasts ‘piece of garbage’ Iran response, says ceasefire on ‘life support’, reportedly mulls renewed military action; US Treasury imposes yet more sanctions.
- Trump mulls restarting Project Freedom in Hormuz and says forcibly retrieving ‘nuclear dust’ is still on the table, oil jumps on headline.
- Iran Foreign Ministry: “Everything we proposed in the text was reasonable and generous.” However, US officials insist on their “unreasonable demands.“
- Saudi Arabia condemns Iran for its latest drone attacks targeting the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait on Sunday.
- Qatari LNG tanker abruptly U-Turns In Hormuz chokepoint after earlier in weekend an initial one made it through – an unprecedented first for a Qatari tanker of the war.
https://embed.polymarket.com/market?market=us-x-iran-permanent-peace-deal-by-june-30-2026-837-641-896-877&height=300US x Iran permanent peace deal by June 30, 2026?
Yes 40% · No 61%
View full market & trade on Polymarket
* * *
Pakistan Hosted Iranian Military Planes To Insulate Them From US Attacks
There’s been some outrage in D.C. and among the pundit class over a late in the day Monday CBS News report alleging that US-ally Pakistan allowed Iran to park military aircraft at its airfields, and thus outside the US-Israeli strike zone during Operation Epic Fury:
As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields, potentially shielding them from American airstrikes, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.
Iran also sent civilian aircraft to park in neighboring Afghanistan. It was not clear if military aircraft were among those flights, two of the officials told CBS News.
President Trump and admin officials have repeatedly declared the utter and total destruction of Iran’s air force and navy, but apparently some planes were missed. According to more from CBS:
Together, the movements reflected an apparent effort to insulate some of Iran’s remaining military and aviation assets from the expanding conflict, even as officials publicly served as brokers for de-escalation.
The U.S. officials, who all spoke only under condition of anonymity to discuss national security issues, told CBS News that days after President Trump announced the ceasefire with Iran in early April, Tehran sent multiple aircraft to Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan, a strategically important military installation located just outside the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Among the first to very angrily vent outrage is you know who from South Carolina…
US Rolls Out Yet More Sanctions, & Connected to China
Per Reuters on Monday afternoon: “The U.S. government on Monday announced sanctions against three people and nine companies, including four based in Hong Kong and four in the United Arab Emirates, for aiding Iran’s shipment of oil to China. The ninth company is based in Oman.”
“The Treasury move follows sanctions announced on Friday on individuals and companies aiding Iranian purchases of weapons and components used to make drones and ballistic missiles,” the report adds. These new measures target some Iran-linked entities in Hong Kong/China.
As there’s not a whole lot to still sanction inside Iran, it looks like the US Treasury is focused on taking aim on external entities, though this is sure to increase Washington tensions with Beijing…
Trump Mulls Military Action As Ceasefire On “Life Support”
President Trump is meeting with his national security team Monday to discuss the way forward in the Iran war, including possibly resuming military action, after negotiations with the country deadlocked on Sunday, three U.S. officials told Axios.
U.S. officials say Trump wants a deal to end the war, but Iran’s rejection of many of his demands and refusal to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program puts the military option back on the table.
This sent oil prices back to the highs of the day…
President Trump also told Fox, that he sees a 1% chance of an Iran deal materializing and succeeding, as even the ceasefire is one of “the weakest, on life support“:
President Donald Trump called out the “piece of garbage” peace proposal from Iran on Monday from the Oval Office, saying only “stupid people” in Iran are questioning his resolve in guaranteeing Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
The latest Iranian proposal reneged on a past vow to give up enriched uranium.
None of this bodes well for the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz opening up anytime soon. Oil prices have reflected general pessimism at the start of this week.
Trump Might Fully Restart Project Freedom
Fox News is reporting that President Trump is considering renewing Project Freedom, pushing oil up. According to the developing story:
President Donald Trump has stated in an interview with Fox News that he is considering renewing Project Freedom, a military operation originally launched to secure the passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. This operation, involving significant U.S. naval assets, had been paused amid diplomatic efforts with Iran. The initial pause was influenced by diplomatic progress mediated by Pakistan, although recent developments suggest a potential escalation.
However, the reality is that the de facto US naval blockade has remained in place. The Iranians last week fired on US warships which were escorting foreign vessels through the strait. Since then there’s been an uneasy calm amid stalled negotiations. There’s really no movement on either side. Trump indicated in the fresh comments that all of this could be part of a larger operation, and strangely a bit of a contradictory stance: he said of Iran’s “hardline leaders” that “they are going to fold” and that “I will deal with them until they make a deal”. Of course, the very label of ‘hardline’ would suggest the opposite.
The same Fox correspondent was told by Trump that forcibly retrieving Iran’s ‘nuclear dust’ is still on the table:
ISRAEL/USA VS IRAN
Iran Deploys Combat-Ready Mini Subs In Hormuz As US Flexes Nuclear Submarine En Route
by Tyler Durden
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 09:20 PM
Rival submarine threats have emerged Monday amid the ongoing Strait of Hormuz showdown and as President Trump has said the ceasefire with Iran is on “massive life support”.
A US Navy nuclear-armed submarine has arrived in Gibraltar while en route into the Mediterranean Sea and likely Central Command or Middle East regional waters, in a very rare Pentagon admission of the whereabouts of one of America’s most secretive weapons.
“The port visit demonstrates U.S. capability, flexibility, and continuing commitment to its NATO allies,” the Navy announced, confirming that the submarine arrived in Gibraltar on Sunday. “Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines are undetectable launch platforms for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, providing the U.S. with its most survivable leg of the nuclear triad.”
The Wall Street Journal has emphasized, “The Pentagon almost never acknowledges the locations of its boomers [US naval slang], which are highly classified. The Navy didn’t provide the name of the submarine in Gibraltar.”
The revelation of the nuclear sub’s movements comes just atter President Trump blasted Iran’s latest counterproposal to a US peace plan as “totally unacceptable” and even called it “garbage” while threatening renewed anti-Tehran military action. It also comes as Trump is about to travel to China for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping.
There’s current some rival ‘sub flexing’ going on among the two rival and warring powers, given also the following from Bloomberg on the same day: “The Islamic Republic has at least 16 of the Ghadir-class midget submarines, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.”
“Each has a crew of fewer than 10 people and can carry either two torpedoes or two Chinese-designed C-704 anti-ship cruise missiles,” the report described.
Iranian Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said the domestically built submarines, known as the “Persian Gulf Dolphins,” are deployed in active operational positions calibrated to confront evolving threats.
Tehran is in essence warning it still possesses the capability to take out American destroyers and warships patrolling the area, as the deployment reinforces Tehran’s broader asymmetric warfare strategy across the Persian Gulf.
State-linked Iranian outlets have characterized the submarines as “trigger-ready” – but also say they are capable of prolonged seabed-resting surveillance operations.
All of this suggests intense submarine warfare could soon come to the Hormuz Strait and Persian Gulf waters. Already most of the Iranian Navy’s surface vessels were obliterated in over a month of intense US-Israeli airstrikes.
ISRAEL /USA VS IRAN
Netanyahu Insists Iran War To Continue Until Uranium Is ‘Physically’ Removed
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 10:10 PM
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 60 Minutes interview which aired Sunday that President Trump still wants Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium removed. Trump on Monday warned that the Iran ceasefire is on ‘massive life support’.
Netanyahu told CBS show host Major Garrett that the military campaign had achieved “a great deal” but insisted additional operations remain necessary. That’s when he described, “There’s still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled.”
“There are still proxies that Iran supports,” Netanyahu added. “There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now, we’ve degraded a lot of it, but all that is still there, and there’s work to be done.”
Clearly the Israeli prime minister is trying to hold the line of maximalist demands on Iran, even as it seems Washington is trying to extricate itself from the conflict while still seeking to present a narrative of ‘victory’.
It is true that Trump has still not let up on insisting that what he calls all the “nuclear dust” must be removed from Iran, amid Tehran’s repeat objections to this. This lone issue is primarily what has collapsed peace negotiations at this point.
Garrett pressed Netanyahu on just how the removal of Iranian nuclear material would be accomplished, given such a gambit would be obvious recipe for prolonging and even escalating the war.
“With what?” Garrett posed. “Special Forces from Israel, Special Forces from the United States working in tandem under international supervision? How?”
Netanyahu dodged the question, amid growing criticism among the American public that Washington is doing the bidding of Israel in starting and prolonging Operation Epic Fury:
“Well, I’m not gonna talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, ‘I want to go in there,’ I mean, he’s said that publicly. He’s said it and I think he’s right. He’s very committed to this. And I think it can be done physically,” Netanyahu responded. “That’s not the problem. If you have an agreement, and you go in, and you take it out, why not? That’s the best way.”
“What if there isn’t an agreement? Can it be taken out by force?” Garrett asked.
The below segment has raised some serious questions: Bibi trying to dictate US foreign policy?…
“Well, you’re gonna ask me these questions. I’m gonna dodge them, so you can ask me that second time, third time, and I’ll dodge it second time, third time,” the prime minister replied.
At one point Netanyahu had said: “I think it can be done physically.”
While there remains the distinct possibility that this conflict could morph into an eventual ground war, US officials have downplayed the potential of Israeli boots on the ground. And yet Washington hasn’t discounted putting American soldiers in harm’s way. This is has resulted in anger and frustration among some sectors of the Right in the US.
ISRAEL TBN
end
IRAN
Iran Executes Top Young Aerospace Scientist, Alleging CIA & Mossad Ties
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 07:40 PM
Iran has executed 29-year-old aerospace engineer Erfan Shakourzadeh on Monday on espionage charges despite his protestations that authorities tortured him into giving a false confession, according to a prison note published before his execution, as recounted in Western press reports.
Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website announced and confirmed the execution, describing that he was hanged after being convicted for allegedly collaborating with the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.
Various human rights organizations have rejected the validity of the charges, and have decried his execution, having for weeks raised the alarm that he was on death row.
Shakourzadeh studied electrical engineering at the University of Tabriz before graduating top of his class in the master’s program in Aerospace Engineering and Satellite Technology at Iran University of Science and Technology.
He was a leading young specialist in the field and worked at a scientific organization focused on satellite technology before intelligence agents from the elite IRGC arrested him in February 2025. So the case predates the current war, but is highly significant amid the US pressure campaign.
State Mizan agency went on to allege that Shakourzadeh was “a joint CIA and Mossad spy,” stating that he had been recruited “as a project and due to his expertise.”
CBS has said he’s the latest death in a growing list of espionage cases:
He is the fifth person to be executed on espionage charges since the beginning of the war in late February.
Authorities have also since then executed 13 men charged over January protests, one more over 2022 demonstrations and 10 accused of links to banned opposition groups, according to IHR.
President Trump had weeks ago personally highlighted that eight women protesters were also set to be executed, but that he intervened with Iranian officials and threatened more military action, effectively stopping it.
However, Trump’s claims have been largely debunked. It has been confirmed that at least one among the eight is real and is likely in prison, but other details concerning the group of women have not been established or else outright disproven.
Iran executed Erfan Shakourzadeh, a 29-year-old aerospace engineering master’s student at Iran University of Science and Technology who worked on satellite projects.
He was convicted of espionage for the CIA and Mossad, accused of sharing classified satellite data, employee information, and receiving cryptocurrency payments after contacts via LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Google calls.
But it does remain clear that Iran has been busy hunting down alleged collaborators, also after Mossad and Israeli officials have time and again openly boasted that they are working with individuals and networks on the ground inside Iran.
END
UAE/IRAN
UAE Secretly Carried Out Attacks On Iran, Making It An Active Combatant
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 05:45 AM
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become an active combatant in the Iran war, according to fresh reporting in The Wall Street Journal.
Last week saw the US-Iran ceasefire briefly break down, during which time the US struck some Iranian coastal sites and the Iranians sent drones and missiles on several Gulf states once again. Iran also reportedly tried to attack three American warships carrying out Trump’s ‘Project Freedom’ operations.
But even before this, during the intense missile exchanges of early April (before the ceasefire), the UAE also ‘secretly’ attacked Iran: “The United Arab Emirates has carried out military strikes on Iran, people familiar with the matter said, casting the Gulf monarchy as an active combatant in a war in which it has been Iran’s biggest target,” WSJ writes.
As for whether the UAE was active in hitting Iran last week, this remains unknown. There’s much that may yet be revealed in the future, amid the current fog of war.
At this moment, however, the UAE has yet to publicly disclose these prior alleged offensive attacks on the Islamic Republic. But WSJ reports:
The strikes, which the U.A.E. hasn’t publicly acknowledged, have included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, the people familiar with the matter said. That attack took place in early April around the time President Trump was announcing a cease-fire in the war after a five-week air campaign and sparked a large fire and knocked much of its capacity off line for months.
Disclosures of sites that came under attack from the Iranian side are consistent with this reporting, however. “Iran said at the time that the refinery had been struck in an enemy attack and launched a barrage of missile and drone strikes against the U.A.E. and Kuwait in response,” continues WSJ.
The publication further says Washington issued no objection upon the UAE’s getting directly involved. In fact, US officials have been calling on regional allies to step up to the fight, so the United States is not shouldering the burden alone.
By and large the Gulf allies relied solely on the US and Israel to pummel Iran during the prior 38 days of heavy bombing which marked the peak of Operation Epic Fury.
This as the Gulf absorbed the bulk of Iran’s retaliation. Iran sent hundreds if not thousands of ballistic missiles and drones on Gulf energy, infrastructure, and even central areas of cities.
Prior online open-source murmurings turning out true…
Iranian officials declared they were primarily targeting US assets and military bases, and further vowed to ‘punish’ these countries for ever hosting American bases in the first place.
The UAE in effect joining the US military campaign marks yet another escalation. If the Saudis join too then the potential for further runaway escalation only grows. The ceasefire meanwhile seems effectively dead at this stage.
end
IRAN/KUWAIT
My goodness: IRGC tried to inflitrate Kuwait!!
Shadow Wars: IRGC Operatives Tried To Infiltrate Kuwait, Firefight Ensues
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 09:15 AM
Kuwait and Iran are barely separated by a small section of Iraqi coastline at the head of the Persian Gulf, but they do share a maritime border. But given the small oil-rich Sunni sheikdom’s close proximity to the Islamic Republic, and given its historic role in hosting American forces and bases, it is to be expected that it would be heavily targeted in Iranian military operations.
Indeed, Kuwait has alongside the UAE absorbed some of the biggest ballistic missile and drone attacks out of Israel during the US-Israeli Operation Epic Fury. US forces have even had to retreat to other locations deeper in the Middle East or even outside the theatre, given the repeat attacks and looming threat of new attack even amid broader ceasefire.
But in tandem with an air war, there’s has been a covert war happening in the shadows, with Kuwait’s interior ministry newly announcing on Tuesday it has arrested four ‘infiltrators’ affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). The ground attack incident is said to have happened earlier this month, and involved heavy exchanges of fire.
The elite IRGC operatives reportedly tried to enter the Gulf state by sea, per Kuwait state news agency KUNA. A firefight ensued, and the ministry later confirmed one member of Kuwait’s armed forces was seriously wounded in resulting clashes with the infiltrating small group of Iranians.
The Interior Ministry accused the IRGC operatives of seeking to launch “hostile” activities inside Kuwait. “Confession of the infiltration group to Kuwaiti territories during interrogation with them of their affiliation to the Revolutionary Guard in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the ministry stated.
It appears that only two of the Iranian group are in custody while two escaped, per an initial statement. As for the operatives in custody, “They confessed to being tasked with infiltrating Bubiyan Island aboard a fishing boat rented specifically to carry out hostile acts against Kuwait,” the official Kuwaiti statement added.
Other sources, including the defense ministry, say that all four have been detained and identified, amid early conflicting reports:
Kuwait’s Defense Ministry reported on May 3 that naval Col. Amir Hossein Abdolmohammad Zaraei, naval Col. Abdolsamad Yedaleh Ghanavati, naval Capt. Ahmad Jamshid Gholamreza Zolfaghari and 1st Lt. Mohammad Hossein Sohrab Foroughi Rad had been arrested in territorial waters after attempting to infiltrate Bubiyan Island.
Kuwaiti Armed Forces stationed on Bubiyan Island exchanged fire with the men during the confrontation, resulting in severe injuries to one service member.
Bubiyan is the largest of a group of eight islands belonging to Kuwait, lying in the north-western corner of the Persian Gulf. Importantly, the large island is home to Mubarak Al Kabeer Port, part of China’s Belt and Road initiative.
That the alleged Iranian high-risk operation focused on an island with a key China-built port is quickly becoming focus of Western media reports. According to ABC:
Kuwait accused Iran on Tuesday of sending an armed paramilitary Revolutionary Guard team to launch a failed attack earlier this month on an island in the Middle East nation home to a China-funded port project.
The accusation by Kuwait of an Iranian link to the incident came just before U.S. President Donald Trump travels to Beijing for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Tehran has yet to acknowledge or own up to the incident, and is not expected to, unless it is an outright denial.
One freight and oil transit industry headline from early March underscores just how ambitious and costly the China-backed project remains: Kuwait, China Advance USD 4.1 Billion Mubarak Al-Kabeer Port Project…
Kuwait and China have agreed to strengthen their commercial and maritime cooperation through the construction of a new container port on Kuwait’s Bubiyan Island. The project marks a significant step in deepening bilateral economic ties and enhancing the oil-rich country’s strategic position within regional shipping networks.
The Chinese majority state-owned firm China Communications Construction Company will undertake the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) works for the project’s first phase.
The development of the new container hub in the north of the country is expected to expand Kuwait’s port capacity and reinforce its role in both regional and global trade flows.
And yet, current Kuwaiti oil export flows remain forcibly halted, due to the Strait of Hormuz closure and ongoing standoff, which has on the one hand seen Iran target ‘unauthorized’ foreign shipping with drones and missiles, and on the other seen the US Navy maintain its own blockade of Iranian ports.
HEZBOLLAH
HOUTHIS/(YEMEN)/ISRAEL
First Houthi Drones Sent On Israel Since Iran Ceasefire Took Effect
by Tyler Durden
In what appears to be the first Houthi attack out of Yemen since the broader Iran ceasefire came into place starting in early April, the Israel Defense Forces said a drone “launched from the east” was intercepted by the Israeli Air Force near the southernmost city of Eilat on Tuesday.
The IDF further indicated it is believed to have been launched from Yemen, although the IDF is still investigating its origin, according to Israeli media reports. Israel’s Channel 12 is citing that at least two drones were sent.
However, no sirens sounded, “according to protocol,” the military said further. The Iran-allied Houthi rebels had launched several missiles and drones at Israel during the war, in support of the Iranian side.
The Houthis also played a key role during the prior two-year Gaza war, during which time ballistic missiles targeted Israel on a weekly basis, and shipping and in the Red Sea was essentially halted due to the threat of Houthi attacks.
The Shia military group further has demonstrated its ability to reach and disrupt several of Israel’s airports, including the key international bub of Ben Gurion airport.
Throughout Trump’s Operation Epic Fury and Project Freedom the Houthis have surprisingly stayed relatively quiet and on the sidelines. But they hold a big card in alliance with Iran – the threat of again shuttering vital Red Sea shipping and seriously denting Suez Canal traffic.
In the meantime, the close cooperation between Iran and the Houthis continues to be on display when it comes to weapons manufacturing and transfers:
The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen continue to use Iranian components in drones, according to a new report. For instance, “external support remains a key factor in the Houthis’ ability to sustain operations,” notes Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which compiled the report.
This is important as it illustrates how the Houthis continue to assemble advanced weapons. Any future conflict with them will need to take this into account. The Houthis burst onto the scene in 2015, moving from the mountains of Yemen and trying to take the port city of Aden.
Going back to the start of the war with the Saudis and Emirates over a decade ago, it was well understood by Western intelligence that the Houthis were able to achieve impressive ballistic missile capabilities due to the close relationship with Tehran.
At various times over the years, vessels bound for Yemen were intercepted by US military ships, and found to be transferring guns, ammo, or missile parts. Iranian parts continue to be frequently found in Houthis weapons systems.
RUSSIA/INDIA
India Rejects Russian LNG Under Sanctions
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 09:45 PM
India rejected Russia’s offer to sell it liquefied natural gas subject to US sanctions, despite a huge shortfall driven by Middle East tensions, leaving a tanker bound for India in limbo as talks continue on permitted cargoes, Reuters reports.
The stance highlights the fine balance the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer is seeking to strike between securing energy supplies and avoiding LNG cargoes on which the U.S. has placed sanctions, which are harder to disguise and carry greater compliance risk. It also underscores the limits of Moscow’s ability to pivot its LNG exports to new markets.
India’s reluctance has left an LNG cargo from Russia’s U.S.-sanctioned Portovaya plant in the Baltic Sea unable to discharge, despite indicating India as its destination in mid-April, one of the sources said. The vessel was tracked despite documentation suggesting the cargo was non-Russian, the source added.
Reuters had reported in mid-April, citing LSEG shipping data, that the 138,200-cubic-metre tanker Kunpeng was heading to the Dahej LNG import terminal in western India. The vessel is now near Singaporean waters with no destination broadcast, according to LSEG.
India, the biggest buyer of Russian seaborne crude, conveyed its decision not to buy LNG that was under sanction to Russia’s Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin during his April 30 visit, when he met Indian officials including Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, one of the sources said. It was their second meeting in as many months, and Sorokin could return in June for further talks, said the source.
India’s purchases of Russian crude have meanwhile continued unabated, aided by a temporary waiver of U.S. sanctions introduced to help countries cope with an energy crisis resulting from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28.
Arctic LNG 2 is Russia’s other export plant subject to U.S. sanctions. Washington stepped up sanctions on the LNG plants in early 2025 over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
While crude oil cargoes can be hidden through ship-to-ship transfers at sea, LNG shipments are far harder to conceal from satellite tracking.
While India is open to buying authorised Russian LNG, most of those volumes are committed to Europe, Reuters notes. Meanwhile, China remains a major buyer of both sanctioned and unsanctioned Russian LNG. Moscow is also seeking long-term deals to supply India with LNG and fertilizers such as potash, phosphorus and urea, the source added.
Before the Iran conflict disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, India was meeting half of its gas consumption through imports, about 60% of which had come through the waterway. More than half of its crude supplies came the same way.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged people to conserve fuel and foreign exchange by working from home, limiting foreign travel and reducing imports of gold and edible oil.
END
6.GLOBAL ISSUES, COVID ISSUES, VACCINE INJURIES/HEALTH ISSUES
Media Spreads Hantavirus Hysteria In Attempt To Save Disgraced WHO
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 04:15 AM
The establishment media has been drumming up fear after a recent outbreak of Hantavirus on a cruise liner traveling from Argentina to West Africa. The Guardian has used the opportunity to assert that the US is currently ill equipped to deal with future pandemic threats, largely because of Donald Trump (of course) and the dramatic US exit from the now disgraced World Health Organization.
Is Hantavirus a serious danger to the world, or, is it another hyped up virus like Covid being used to trigger public hysteria? And if it is being hyped, who (or WHO) stands to benefit?
For decades the WHO constructed its image as a global angel of benevolence; the primary line of defense against what they said was the inevitable invasion of a population rending plague. However, when the time finally came in the form of a mutated Coronavirus (Covid), they dropped the ball, and evidence suggests they may have done it deliberately.
During the initial outbreak in China, the WHO echoed CCP propaganda suggesting that human-to-human contact was unlikely and, knowingly or unknowingly, aided China in hiding details behind the outbreak. Details surrounding the involvement of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the largest dangerous disease lab in Asia, were actively dismissed (or suppressed). Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus even praised China’s “transparency”.
The WHO then set up a joint task force to determine the origins of Covid, only to let the Chinese dominate the investigation and lead it away from the activities at the Level 4 lab in Wuhan. The Chinese wanted to push the theory of animal-to-animal mutation instead of the gain of function research that was ongoing at the lab (partially funded by US interests in the Obama Administration).
Today, evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Covid originated in the Wuhan Lab. In January 2025, the CIA assessed that a lab-related origin is more likely than natural spillover. This determination matched with similar FBI assessments.
In 2025, German Intelligence also reported their findings, indicating a 90% likelihood that Covid was engineered and originated at the Wuhan Lab in China.
Of course, anyone who made this claim online during the pandemic response was called a dangerous “conspiracy theorist” and was deplatformed (much like Zero Hedge).
The WHO would go on to exaggerate the death rate of the virus, claiming an initial Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of 3.4%. This data was based on studies which ignored mild cases as well as asymptomatic cases, thus artificially pumping up the death rate.
Dozens of studies as early as May 2020 showed that the median Infection Fatality Rate (a more accurate number) was only 0.27% (later adjusted to 0.23%). The WHO continued to spread disinformation and hysteria surrounding covid while ignoring the true IFR data. That is to say, all the lockdowns, the mandates, the social media censorship, the arrests, the push for vaccine passports, etc. – all of it was over a virus that 99.8% of the population would easily survive.
The WHO has been exposed as a perpetrator of pandemic disinformation and is no longer trusted by the public. The US under the Trump Administration has exited the organization on these grounds, and as a result the WHO has lost at least 20% of its total funding. It is now facing dire financial conditions. In response, the UN and the establishment media have been running a spin campaign to present the WHO as indispensable.
It is therefore not surprising that the WHO and the media are suddenly jumping on the cruise line Hantavirus story as if it is significant, while at the same time arguing that Trump is putting the public at risk by not participating in the WHO’s antics. They need the money badly, and so they’ve decided to remind the public why we should be afraid.
For those who are unaware, Hantavirus is a common virus around the world and in the US. Estimates show around 100,000 cases of the disease occur annually. In 2023, there were 40 cases in the US. The virus is most often contracted when humans are exposed to dried rodent feces and urine, floating as particulates in the air which are then inhaled into the lungs.
The spread from human to human is rare and only occurs with the South American strain. Contraction is difficult, with the virus passing from one person to another through “prolonged contact with bodily fluids”. It makes you wonder what kind of pleasure cruise these people were on when the most recent outbreak started? The point is, the story is being inflated from a normal event into a crisis event.
This is probably why the Spanish Government set up an elaborate bus transfer of supposedly highly infectious cruise passengers, only to drop off a psychiatrist with the Ministry of Health down the road without protective gear like he’s going home after school.
The bottom line? Hantavirus is all over the world and it’s not a threat to the vast majority of people. The artificial media panic and the opportunism of the WHO may be an effort to test the waters for another fraudulent pandemic scare, but the majority of the propaganda seems to be aimed at restoring the WHO’s reputation and saving it from financial ruin.
END
As Hantavirus Cases Rise, US Officials Say Risk To Public “Very, Very Low”
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 10:45 AM
A total of 11 hantavirus cases have been confirmed as of Tuesday morning, with global health officials warning that the number could rise.
The risk to the public from an illness called the hantavirus is low, a U.S. official said on May 11.
“Let me be crystal clear: the risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” Dr. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health and head of the U.S. Public Health Service, told reporters during a briefing in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said in a May 8 health alert to doctors and health departments that doctors should be aware that imported hantavirus cases were possible but that “the risk of broad spread to the United States is considered extremely unlikely at this time.”
As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, multiple people on board the M.V. Hondius, which departed from Argentina on April 1 and traveled to remote locations, including Antarctica, contracted a variant of the hantavirus called the Andes variant.
Three have died.
Christine said on Monday that “the Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged close contact with someone who is already symptomatic.”
An American cruise ship passenger who tested positive on one test and negative on another was transported early Monday to the biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, officials said. That individual is doing well and has no symptoms, Dr. Angela Hewlett, director of the unit, said at the briefing. That person will be tested again at some point.
Fifteen other Americans, including a British American, who were on the Hondius were admitted around the same time into a separate area called the quarantine unit. They have not displayed symptoms. They may be tested, based on conversations between physicians and those individuals, officials said.
Two additional Americans who were aboard the ship were transported to a biocontainment unit at Emory University in Atlanta. One of those Americans has shown symptoms of hantavirus; the other is that person’s partner.
The people being cared for at the facilities in Nebraska and Georgia can leave after they have been symptom-free for at least a few days, according to Dr. Brendan Jackson, acting director of the CDC’s Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology.
Other Americans who previously left the Hondius are in contact with state officials and have been told that if they develop symptoms, they should alert their doctors and those officials, Jackson said.
Symptoms of the hantavirus include fever, fatigue, and shortness of breath.
The virus typically spreads from contact with infected rodents, but officials say it may have been transmitted from person-to-person on the cruise ship.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting CDC director, said over the weekend that hantavirus is “not COVID” because it does not transmit as easily.
“I can assure you that the CDC has been absolutely on top of this outbreak,” he said.
“There’s not a great wealth of information,” said WHO epidemiologist Olivier le Polain during a public briefing Monday.
“We don’t know how much it might spread just before people develop symptoms.”
Decades of experience in South America have shown the virus to be associated with “rare human-to-human transmission after close and prolonged contact with a sick, infected person,” Erica Pan, California’s public health officer, told reporters Monday.
But the available evidence is limited.
No indications of a larger outbreak of the deadly hantavirus have appeared so far, a World Health Organization official said on May 12.
“At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s director-general, told reporters in Madrid, Spain, during a press conference with Spain’s prime minister.
“But, of course, the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.”
The incubation period for the Andes variant of the virus is up to 42 days
GLOBAL ISSUES
MARK CRISPIN MILLER
DR PAUL ALEXANDER
MICHAEL EVERY/OR OR PICTON/GIFFIN OR RABOBANK EXECUTIVE/COMMENTARY ON WORLDLY AFFAIRS
Massive Life Support
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 10:25 AM
By Benjamin Picton, Senior Markets Strategist At Rabobank
Massive Live Support
“On massive life support” was Donald Trump’s characterization of the US-Iran ceasefire yesterday. This followed Sunday’s rejection of Iranian terms for peace that Trump described as “totally unacceptable”. In a boy-who-cried-wolf-style sign of growing market insensitivity to Presidential prognostications, Brent was only up 2.88% to $104.21/bbl and WTI crude remains below $100/bbl. Dated Brent rose by 0.6% yesterday to $105.62. This even as the Wall Street Journal reports that the UAE has been “secretly” carrying out attacks on Iran, including on refining infrastructure.
US equities closed broadly higher but European stocks were mixed. The FTSE100 eked out gains despite (because of?) fresh signs that Keir Starmer’s premiership is also on “massive life support” as more than 70 of his own MPs have now publicly voiced opinions that the Prime Minister should go following last week’s shellacking at the hands of the Reform party in local government elections. The French CAC40 fell by 0.69% and the German DAX was virtually unchanged. Asian stocks also had a mixed session earlier in the day with losses for Japanese and Australian indices, but gains for chip-heavy markets in China, South Korea and Taiwan.
Bond markets have been more unified in their gloom over the last 24 hours. Yields on US 10s were unchanged at 4.41%, but virtually everywhere else saw chunky rises in benchmark borrowing costs. Yields on 10-year OATs were up 3.9bps, 3.5bps for Bunds, while Gilts saw yields spike 8.6bps in a sign that bond traders might be thinking it’s a case of “better the devil you know” when it comes left-of-centre Prime Ministers in the UK.
With the prime ministerial instability gauge now well and truly pointed towards “embattled”, Starmer gave a speech yesterday that was intended to strike a tone of defiance and send the message that he wouldn’t be going anywhere. In that speech he suggested that he had not been sufficiently radical in forcing the pace of change, that the UK needed to forge closer military and economic ties with the EU, and that “if we don’t get this right, our country will go down a very dark path” – by which he presumably means it would elect Nigel Farage as his replacement.
This might sound like a curious response to the rising appeal of a Eurosceptic party channelling popular sentiment that the country has already changed too much, too fast, while the incumbent government’s revealed lack of electoral appeal suggests that many voters think the country is already headed down a very dark path under Starmer’s leadership. The implication here is that Starmer isn’t really fighting Reform, but the rise of the left-wing Green party who are siphoning off erstwhile Labour votes. Clearly, the center cannot hold and we should expect even more intense polarisation ahead, and probably more damage to the budget. Whither the Gilt market?
Speaking of budgets, Starmer isn’t the only Anglosphere Labour leader saying that things aren’t changing fast enough. Australian PM Albanese made the same comment in relation to his country’s poisonously expensive housing market this week as his Treasurer prepares to deliver the Commonwealth budget later today.
As is now the norm for budgets, most of the major initiatives have been strategically leaked well in advance and a wind-back of investor tax concessions has been telegraphed as a social cohesion measure to placate Gen Zs angry about their effect on house prices (for our detailed thoughts on this, see here). The budget is also expected to introduce new rules for discretionary trust distributions to be taxed at the company rate (to reduce their appeal as a tax-minimisation device) alongside measures to boost defence spending and cut the pace of growth in the welfare state – something that Starmer was unable to secure support for among his own MPs.
Treasurer Chalmers has said there will be a focus on resilience with “more than the usual amount of savings, and more than the usual amount of [tax] reform”. Overall, the vibe seems to be a tightening of fiscal settings – which ought to be welcomed by the RBA – coupled with tax nudges to direct a greater volume of capital toward the productive sectors of the economy rather than allowing it to congeal in the housing market. Whither Aussie bonds?
Of course, while all this is going on the Strait of Hormuz remains functionally closed and world fertilizer and energy markets are treading air like Wile-e-Coyote run off the cliff. Donald Trump will be traveling to Beijing tomorrow to meet with Xi Jinping. Finding a resolution to the war is sure to be at the top of the agenda, with Trump likely to press Xi to lean on his Iranian and Russian allies to seek peace in their respective theatres. Russia has made conciliatory noises in recent days, while Iran has indicated a willingness to hand over some highly enriched uranium to an unspecified third party (Russia?). Is there a grand bargain to be made?
In a case of curious timing, the US just imposed fresh sanctions on individuals and firms involved in facilitating Iranian oil sales to China, and Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao yesterday released a new 30-year shipbuilding plan. That plan anticipates the acquisition of 11 nuclear-powered Trump class battleships, new underwater drones, and an ongoing review to the Ford class aircraft carrier design to increase lethality and reliability while reducing unit costs and production lead times. The planned expansion of the US fleet and shipbuilding industrial base is undoubtedly a reaction to China’s growing naval strength and substantial advantage in production capacity. The message to Xi is an unsubtle one.
The FT’s Gideon Rachman characterises Trump as arriving at Xi’s court in a state of supplication, having effectively lost the trade war vs China and the shooting war vs Iran. This perhaps overstates the weakness of Trump’s position by ignoring the fact that the US has tightened its grip on global energy supply chains and has shown that is has the power to put its foot on the hosepipe of Chinese energy imports whenever it likes. In the flurry of commentary over China’s bumper trade surplus in April, it seems to have been missed that import volumes for crude oil were down sharply, but values were higher. Yesterday’s April PPI figures for China also underscored the uncomfortable effects that the Iran war is having on the Chinese industrial economy.
Xi will be acutely aware of this, and he will also be aware that the US holds similar power to disrupt Chinese food imports if it was of a mind to do so. Seapower IS power, as the shipbuilding plan should remind us all. In this respect, Trump holds better cards than the FT is giving him credit for. Perhaps it is no coincidence that China bought more soybeans in April than it had done for months.
7. OIL AND NATURAL GAS COMMENTARIES
8. EMERGING MARKETS//AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND ISSUES
INDIA// OIL
Modi Urges Indians To Conserve Fuel As Oil Shock Spreads
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 06:00 PM
India’s Prime Minister called on the nation to work from home, travel less, and conserve fuel to help the government save foreign exchange, OilPrice reported.
“In the current situation, we must place great emphasis on saving foreign exchange,” Narendra Modi said, as quoted by Reuters. The prime minister also urged Indians to stop buying gold, again to conserve foreign exchange. Modi also called on farmers to reduce their fertilizer use by as much as 50%.
CNBC recalls that India spent $174.9 billion on crude oil and refined product imports in the financial year that ended on March 31, as its import bill swelled amid the oil price jump prompted by the war in the Middle East. Another $72 billion was spent on gold imports over the period.
Since then, oil prices have risen further, with Brent crude topping $105 per barrel again earlier today, after President Donal Trump rejected Iran’s response to a peace plan he proposed last week. Trump called Iran’s version of the peace deal “totally unacceptable”, dampening hopes of a swift resolution of the war. West Texas Intermediate was trading at $100 per barrel at the time of writing.
More than 40 India-bound vessels, nearly half of which carry energy products, are still trapped in the Persian Gulf, unable to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, officials told India last week. The ships are laden with crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and LNG, as well as fertilizer and other products. A total of 13 ships flagged to India are still stuck west of the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Indian government.
India relies on the Middle East for as much as 50% of its crude oil imports and 60% of its liquefied natural gas imports.
Dependence is the heaviest in liquefied petroleum gas, however, which Indians use for cooking. In LPG, India is almost entirely dependent on the Middle East.
END
YOUR EARLY CURRENCY/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN CLOSING MARKETS AND EUROPEAN BOURSE OPENING AND CLOSING/ INTEREST RATE SETTINGS TUESDAY MORNING 6;30AM//OPENING AND CLOSING
OPENING LEVELS OF CURRENCIES// AND CLOSING ASIAN STOCK MARKET AND OPENING EUROPEAN STOCKS:6 AM EST
EURO VS USA DOLLAR: 1.1747 DOWN 0.0032
USA/ YEN 157.61 UP 0.370 NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT 1.75% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…//YEN STILL FALLS//END OF YEN CARRY TRADE BEGINS AGAIN DEC 2024/Bank of Japan raises rates by .25% TO 1.75 ..TAKAICHI NEW PM AS YIELDS RISE//JAPAN DEEPLY IN TROUBLE WITH RISING RATES AND A FALLING YEN!!
GBP/USA 1.3535 DOWN 0.0068 OR 68 BASIS PTS
USA/CAN DOLLAR: 1.3707 UP 0.0028 CDN DOLLAR DOWN 28 BASIS PTS//
Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 10.73 PTS OR 0.25%
Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 274.12 PTS OR 0.44%
AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN 0.79%
// EUROPEAN BOURSE: ALL RED
Trading from Europe and ASIA
I) EUROPEAN BOURSES: ALL RED
2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SENG CLOSED DOWN 274.12 PTS OR 0.44%
/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 10.73 OR 0.25%
AUSTRALIA BOURSE CLOSED DOWN 0.79%
(Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED UP 274.12 PTS OR 0.44%
INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE RED
Gold very early morning trading: $4702.80
silver:$84.18
USA DOLLAR VS TRY (TURKISH LIRA): 45.40 PLUS 2 BASIS PTS AND NOW WE SEE THEIR STUPIDITY OF SELLING SOME OF THEIR GOLD.
USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIAN ROUBLE: 73.96 ROUBLE// UP 0 ROUBLE AND 30 BASIS PTS
UK 10 YR BOND YIELD: 5.120 UP 12 BASIS PTS
UK 30 YR BOND YIELD: 5.792 UP 9 BASIS PTS
CDN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.539 UP 7 BASIS PTS
CDN 5 YR BOND YIELD; 3.191 UP 7 BASIS PTS
USA dollar index early TUESDAY MORNING: 98.15 UP 33 BASIS POINTS FROM MONDAY’s CLOSE
TUESDAY MORNING NUMBERS ENDS
And now your closing TUESDAY NUMBERS 10.00 AM
Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 3.4667% UP 7 in basis point(s) yield
JAPANESE BOND 10 yr YIELD: +2.546% UP 2 FULL POINTS BASIS POINTS /JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/
JAPAN 30 YR: 3.835 UP 6 BASIS PTS//
SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.525 UP 7 in basis points yield
ITALY 10 YR BOND: 3.878 UP 9 points in basis points yield ./ THE ECB IS QE’ ING ITALIAN BONDS (
GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.0928 UP 5 BASIS PTS
IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES : MID DAY TUESDAY
Closing currency crosses for day /USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/10:00 AM
Euro/USA 1.1737 DOWN 0.0041 OR 41 basis points
USA/Japan: 157.60 UP 0.362 OR YEN IS DOWN 36 BASIS PTS// HIGHLY INFLATIONARY TO JAPAN
Great Britain 10 YR RATE 5.118 UP 12 BASIS POINTS //
GREAT BRITAIN 30 YR BOND; 5.787 UP 12 BASIS POINTS.
Canadian dollar DOWN 38 BASIS pts to 1.3716
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The USA/Yuan CNY UP TO 6.7921// ON SHORE ..
THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE// CNH UP TO 6.7919
TURKISH LIRA: 45.40 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WATCH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.//
Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 3 in basis points from MONDAY at 4.443.% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%)
USA 30 yr bond yield 5.009 UP 2 basis points /10:00 AM
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 3.989 UP 4 BASIS PTS.
GOLD AT 10;00 AM 4686.50
SILVER AT 10;00: 84.02
Your 11:00 AM bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates TUESDAY CLOSING TIME 10:00 AM//
London: CLOSED DOWN 4.11 PTS OR 0.04%
GERMAN DAX: CLOSED DOWN 395.35 OR 1.62%
FRANCE: CLOSED DOWN 76.46 PTS PTS OR 0.95%
Spain IBEX CLOSED DOWN 278.90 PTS OR 1.56 %
Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 673.97 PTS OR 1.36%
WTI Oil price 101.54 10.00 EST/
Brent Oil: 107.54 10:00 EST
USA /RUSSIAN ROUBLE /// AT: 73.81 ROUBLE DOWN 0 AND 21 / 100
CDN 10 YEAR RATE: 3.576 UP 4 BASIS PTS.
CDN 5 YEAR RATE: 3.225 UP 3 BASIS PTS
CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM
Euro vs USA 1.1743 DOWN 0.0036 OR 36 BASIS POINTS//
British Pound: 1.3538 DOWN 0.0063 OR 64 basis pts/
BRITISH 10 YR GILT BOND YIELD: 5.110 UP 9 FULL BASIS PTS//
BRITISH 30 YR BOND YIELD: 5.795 UP 11 IN BASIS PTS.
JAPAN 10 YR YIELD: 2.563 UP 5 FULL BASIS PTS (DANGEROUS TO THEIR ECONOMY
JAPANESE 30 YR BOND: 3.830 UP 8 PTS AND STILL VERY DANGEROUS TO THEIR ECONOMY
USA dollar vs Japanese Yen: 157.57 UP 0.333 OR YEN DOWN 33 BASIS PTS
USA dollar vs Canadian dollar: 1.3697 UP 0.0019 PTS// CDN DOLLAR DOWN 19 BASIS PTS
West Texas intermediate oil: 102.28
Brent OIL: 107.74
USA 10 yr bond yield UP 5 BASIS pts to 4.465
USA 30 yr bond yield: UP 4 PTS to 5.031%
USA 2 YR BOND 3.991 UP 4 PTS
CDN 10 YR RATE 3.596 UP 6 BASIS PTS
CDN 5 YEAR RATE: 3.247 UP 6 BASIS PTS
USA dollar index: 98.16 UP 35 BASIS POINTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 45.40 GETTING QUITE CLOSE TO BLOWING UP/IDIOTS SOLD GOLD
USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIA//// ROUBLE: 73.81 DOWN 0 AND 22/100 roubles //
GOLD $4704.00 3:30 PM)
SILVER: 86.30 3;30 PM)
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: UP 56.76 OR 0.11%
NASDAQ 100 DOWN 188.92 PTS OR 0.71%
VOLATILITY INDEX 18.05 DOWN 0.33 PTS OR 1.80%
GLD: $ 432.95 DOWN 1.70 PTS OR 0.39%
SLV/ $78/55 PTS UP 0.55 OR OR 0.71%
TORONTO STOCK INDEX// TSX INDEX: CLOSED UP 141.38 PTS OR 0.41%
end
TRADING today ZEROHEDGE 4 PM: HEADLINE NEWS/TRADING
‘AI Tax’ Threats & NACHO Nerves Trigger Market Tantrums
WRAP UP:
Stocks swing as energy prices climb and tech sees profit taking – Newsquawk US Market Wrap
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 04:15 PM
- SNAPSHOT: Equities mixed, Treasuries down, Crude up, Dollar up, Gold flat
- REAR VIEW: Hotter-than-expected US CPI; Fed’s Goolsbee remains concerned on services inflation; US releases another 53.3mln barrels from SPR; Iran will not enter second round of talks with US until its five preconditions are met; Iranian Parliamentary spokesperson says “One of Iran’s options in the event of another attack could be 90% enrichment”; Saudi Arabia reportedly carried out unpublicised retaliatory strikes on Iran during the war; UK PM Starmer reportedly tells Cabinet that he will not be setting out a timetable for departure; Average US 10yr note auction; Negative commentary on QCOM.
- COMING UP: Data: Swedish Inflation Final (Apr), French Inflation Final (Apr), EZ Employment Change (Q1), Industrial Production (Mar), GDP 2nd Estimate (Q1), US PPI (Apr). Events: BoC Minutes (Apr), IEA OMR (May), OPEC MOMR (May), Riksbank Minutes (May). Speakers: BoE’s Mann; Fed’s Collins, Kashkari; ECB’s Lane, Lagarde. Supply: Australia, Italy, Germany, and the US. Earnings: Cisco Systems, Alibaba, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Allianz, E.On, Merck, RWE.
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MARKET WRAP
Stocks were mixed on Tuesday, with the Nasdaq and Russell underperforming while the S&P 500 closed flat and the Dow closed slightly firmer. Sector performance was also mixed, with Health Care, Consumer Staples and Energy outperforming, while Technology, Consumer Discretionary and Industrials lagged. Tech weighed on the broader market as semiconductor names saw profit taking after recent outperformance, although equities did pare the majority of losses into the close as chip stocks bounced from intraday lows without a clear driver.
The geopolitical backdrop remained tense, with markets continuing to focus on the risk of renewed conflict in the Middle East after President Trump described the ceasefire as “very weak”. Tuesday’s developments included reports that Iran had targeted Kuwait, drawing strong condemnation from the UAE, while additional reports suggested Saudi Arabia had struck Iran during the early stages of the conflict. Meanwhile, Iran reiterated it would not return to negotiations unless five conditions are met, including an end to the war, sanctions relief, the release of frozen funds, compensation, and the recognition of Iranian sovereignty over Hormuz.
The elevated geopolitical risk premium pushed crude prices higher, weighing on Treasuries and lifting yields across the curve. Meanwhile, the April CPI report came in hotter than expected, particularly across the core metrics, while services inflation accelerated further. The data saw markets increase Fed tightening expectations, with traders pricing around a 43% probability of a rate hike this year.
In FX, the Dollar remained firm amid higher Treasury yields and elevated energy prices. Sterling lagged on continued political pressure surrounding UK PM Starmer, while petro-sensitive currencies like CAD found some support from the rise in crude prices, and AUD was supported by the afternoon equity turnaround.
US
US CPI: Headline CPI rose 0.6% M/M in April, in line with expectations and easing from the prior 0.9% pace. However, the Y/Y rate accelerated to 3.8% from 3.3%, above the 3.7% forecast. Within the report, the energy index rose 3.8% in April, accounting for more than 40% of the monthly increase in headline CPI. The underlying inflation details were firmer. Core CPI rose 0.4% M/M (0.376% unrounded), above both the 0.3% forecast and the prior 0.2%, while the Y/Y rate accelerated to 2.8% from 2.6%, also topping expectations of 2.7%. Core services inflation picked up to 0.5% M/M and 3.3% Y/Y, while supercore inflation accelerated to 3.4%, reinforcing concerns that underlying price pressures remain sticky beyond the energy shock. The hotter core metrics are likely to concern Fed officials, particularly given the acceleration in services inflation. Fed’s Goolsbee (2027 voter) noted the report was worse than expected, highlighting services as the most concerning component. Officials had previously expected tariff-related inflation effects to gradually roll off over the next two quarters, but persistent services inflation alongside elevated energy prices tied to the ongoing US/Iran conflict could delay any return to Fed easing. Attention now also turns to the expected nomination of Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair on Wednesday, ahead of the June meeting, after he was confirmed by the US Senate to be Federal Reserve Governor today. Warsh is widely viewed as more dovish and forward-looking than Powell, although his recent Senate testimony pushed back against perceptions he would support politically driven rate cuts, stressing he would not pre-commit to policy decisions.
Fed’s Goolsbee (2027 voter) said CPI report showed “not much that’s good”. He added that the April CPI report was worse than expected, and the worst part is the services inflation. This isn’t the first time the Chicago Fed President has shown concern over services inflation, reiterating that inflation is going the wrong way, not just in oil-related and tariff-related things. Goolsbee, however, remains optimistic that rates can come down a fair amount, but need progress on inflation. He noted that the labour market is stable, but not good. Separately, he said the interconnection of private credit with conventional institutions is not as big as the connections in the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
FIXED INCOME
T-NOTE FUTURES (M6) SETTLED 12 TICKS LOWER AT 110-01
T-notes settled lower across the curve on Tuesday as oil prices extended gains amid ongoing geopolitical tensions and a hotter-than-expected CPI report added to inflation concerns. At settlement, 2-year +4.3bps at 3.994%, 3-year +4.8bps at 4.026%, 5-year +5.1bps at 4.124%, 7-year +5.2bps at 4.292%, 10-year +5.1bps at 4.463%, 20-year +5.1bps at 5.027%, 30-year +4.8bps at 5.032%.
THE DAY: T-notes remained under pressure throughout the session as energy prices continued to rise. The geopolitical backdrop was largely unchanged from Monday, with markets still focused on the risk of renewed conflict in the Middle East after President Trump described the ceasefire as “very weak”. The main development on Tuesday was reports that Iran had targeted Kuwait, a move strongly condemned by the UAE, keeping regional tensions elevated.
The rise in energy prices pushed yields higher across the curve in a bear steepening move as front-end yields led amid firmer inflation expectations. Meanwhile, the April CPI report came in hotter than expected, particularly across the core metrics, while services inflation also accelerated. The data saw markets increase Fed tightening expectations, with traders pricing around a 43% probability of a rate hike this year.
The CPI release triggered two-way trade in Treasuries, with T-notes initially rallying before quickly reversing lower ahead of the 10-year auction, which ultimately came in broadly in line with recent averages.
SUPPLY
Notes
- US sold USD 42bln of 10-year notes; Tail 0.4bps.
- US to sell USD 25bln of 30-year bonds on 13th May
Bills
- US sold 6-week bills at a high rate of 3.615%, B/C 2.80x; sold 1-year bills at a high rate of 3.650%, B/C 3.41x
- US to sell USD 95bln of 8-week bills (prev. 85bln) and USD 100bln of 4-week bills (prev. 90bln) on May 14th; to sell USD 69bln of 17-week bills (prev. 69bln) on May 13th; all to settle May 19th
STIRS/OPERATIONS
- Fed Pricing: 10.7bps (prev. Dec +6.1bps)
- EFFR at 3.63% (prev. 3.63%), volumes at USD 114bln (prev. USD 123bln) on May 11th
- SOFR at 3.60% (prev. 3.60%), volumes at USD 3.09tln (prev. USD 3.087tln) on May 11th
- NY Fed RRP op demand at 1.20bln (prev. 1.13bln) across 7 counterparties (prev. 7) on May 12th
CRUDE
WTI (M6) SETTLED USD 4.11 HIGHER AT USD 102.18/BBL; BRENT (N6) SETTLED 3.56 HIGHER AT USD 107.77/BBL
The crude complex was firmer, and ground higher through the duration of the session, as US/Iran tensions show no signs of abating. Middle East headlines were still in plentiful supply on Tuesday, but not as many market-moving headlines as Trump is set to head to China on Wednesday. As a reminder, source reports on Monday suggested Trump is weighing up possibly resuming military action, but sources added they don’t think he would order any before he returns from China.
In terms of today’s updates, which garnered slight upside, Iranian Parliamentary spokesperson said, “One of Iran’s options in the event of another attack could be 90% enrichment. We will review it in the parliament”, and also reports from the Israeli army of interception of a drone in the skies over Eilat launched from the eastern direction, which is the first time air defenses intercept a drone in the Eilat region since the ceasefire of the Iran war. Elsewhere, Trump gave his usual rhetoric and reiterated that the ceasefire remains “on life support”. Lastly on the Middle Eastern footing, a source familiar with negotiations, confirmed the top directives for the Iranian negotiating team included the condition of five points before starting negotiations on the nuclear file, which were: 1) Ending the war on all fronts; 2) Lifting all sanctions; 3) Releasing frozen funds; 4) Compensation for damages and losses resulting from the war; 5) Recognizing Iran’s right of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz – something which US, and Trump, is unlikely to accept.
Shortly before settlement, oil prices rose on reports that Saudi Arabia reportedly carried out unpublicised retaliatory strikes on Iran during the war, according to Reuters, citing sources; attacks were carried out in late March.
EIA STEO: 2026 world oil demand 104.2mln bpd (prev. 104.6mln BPD), 2027 world oil demand 105.6mln BPD (prev. 106.2mln bpd).
WTI traded between USD 98.00-102.66/bbl and Brent USD 104.23-108.45/bbl, ahead of private inventory metrics after-hours, whereby current expectations are (bbls): Crude -2.3mln, Distillates -1.3mln, Gasoline -2.5mln.
EQUITIES
CLOSES: SPX -0.16% at 7,401, NDX -0.87% at 29,065, DJI +0.11% at 49,766, RUT -0.97% at 2,842.
SECTORS: Consumer Discretionary -1.06%, Technology -0.99%, Industrials -0.40%, Materials -0.15%, Communication Services +0.09%, Utilities +0.10%, Real Estate +0.10%, Energy +0.71%, Financials +0.72%, Consumer Staples +1.56%, Health +1.93%.
EUROPEAN CLOSES: European Closes: Euro Stoxx 50 -1.41% at 5,813, Dax 40 -1.54% at 23,975, FTSE 100 -0.04% at 10,265, CAC 40 -0.95% at 7,980, FTSE MIB -1.36% at 48,991, IBEX 35 -1.56% at 17,574, PSI -1.26% at 9,050, SMI +0.14% at 13,120, AEX -1.55% at 999
STOCK SPECIFICS:
- Affirm (AFRM) works with Google (GOOGL) to make AI shopping payments clear and simple; Affirm’s pay-over-time options will be Integrated into the Gemini app and Google Search, including AI Mode, through Google Pay.
- eBay (EBAY) rejected the unsolicited proposal from GameStop (GME); board concluded that proposal is neither credible nor attractive.
- GitLab (GTLB) to restructure over the coming weeks & intends to reduce the number of countries it serves by up to 30%.
- Key Context’s Tae Kim said Qualcomm (QCOM) is the problem child of the current chip rally;… “I’m extremely bearish”
- Klarna (KLAR) flexible payments is coming to Google (GOOGL) search and the Gemini app within Google Play.
- Lowe’s (LOW) upgraded at Citi to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’.
- Nelson Peltz in talks to raise funds for Wendy’s (WEN) go-private bid.
- OpenAI to save USD 97bln through 2030 in latest Microsoft (MSFT) deal.
- Brown-Forman (BF.B) rejects all-cash takeover from Sazerac, WSJ reports, citing sources.
- Microsoft (MSFT) has reportedly recouped over double its USD 13bln OpenAI investment in revenue, via The Information.
- Blue Owl (OWL) has seen inflows at its flagship credit investment fund for retail investors all but dry up, underscoring the challenges facing the group at the centre of doubts over private credit, via FT.
- People familiar with GameStop (GME) CEO Cohen’s thinking say he is still intent on going after eBay (EBAY) and will keep pressing his bid, Semafor reports.
- Google (GOOGL) and SpaceX reportedly in talks to launch data centers in orbit, WSJ reports citing sources.
EARNINGS:
- Hims & Hers Health (HIMS): Surprise loss per share and revenue light.
- On Holding (ONON): Profit and revenue missed.
- Under Armour (UAA): Deeper loss per share than expected.
- ZoomInfo Tech (GTM): Disappointing FY revenue guidance.
FX
USD saw broad-based strength as higher oil prices (due to a lack of US-Iran progress) and a hotter-than-expected CPI report. April CPI was largely higher than expected, with Core M/M accelerating to 0.4% from 0.2%, Headline Inflation Y/Y to 3.8% from 3.3%, while Headline M/M eased to 0.6% from 0.9% as expected. Services and supercore inflation proved sticky, all accelerating M/M with Fed’s Goolsbee once again expressing concern over the former, likely foreshadowing the focus from future Fed speeches, namely, concerns shifting back towards inflation as labour growth has shown stabilisation in the last couple of months. Meanwhile, higher US yields on rising oil prices gave USD a boost, as now Iran has set its own preconditions to entertain a second round of talks, some of which the US is reportedly against, i.e. “compensation for damages caused by the war”. DXY hit highs of 98.46 before retreating to around 98.27.
GBP underperformed in G10 FX as it digested domestic politics. In brief, PM Starmer told his Cabinet that he intends to remain in leadership and will not schedule an exit – a move which essentially invites a leadership challenge. There are a few key factors that markets will eye, but perhaps most pertinent are: a) Burnham announcing his intention to become an MP, or b) Streeting starting a leadership challenge. Cable now trades at the bottom end of a 1.3500-1.3614 range. Sell-side analysts are broadly in consensus on the dire situation in the UK political landscape; Mohit Kumar of Jefferies suggests that any replacement to Starmer “would likely be left-leaning and be negative for the long end of the curve and the currency”. As such, the bank maintains its short-sterling position.
CAD & NOK outperformed major peers, supported by the backdrop of higher energy prices. Meanwhile, the Yen was subject to a bout of strength in the early European session, but has since come off the 157.308 lows seen at the time. No official confirmation was given behind the move, leaving speculation over intervention/rate check at play. USD/JPY rose back to ~157.60 ahead of APAC trade.
USA DATA RELEASE
CPI
US Consumer Prices Are Rising At Their Fastest Pace In 3 Years
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 08:39 AM
Bearing in mind the one-off impact of BLS correcting for shutdown-related distortions (in rent/shelter) from last October., this morning’s CPI was expected to come in hot as the impact of the Iran war starts to spread (energy, airfares, transport) and the melt-up in memory costs (unrelated to war) as the token wars continue.
As a reminder, March saw headline CPI in line (energy) while Core CPI actually printed cooler than expected. and we suspect most attention will be on the Core side again today with investors ‘looking through’ short-term energy-driven cost pressures.
Headline CPI rose 0.6% MoM (as expected), pulling headline up 3.8% YoY (hotter than the 3.7% expected) and the hottest since May 2023…
Source: Bloomberg
Energy and Food costs dominated the rise in headline CPI along with Core Services…
Source: Bloomberg
CPI highlights:
MoM energy rose 3.8% in April, accounting for over forty percent of the monthly all items increase. The shelter index also increased in April, rising 0.6%. The index for food increased 0.5% over the month as the index for food at home rose 0.7% and the index for food away from home increased 0.2%. YoY CPI energy index increased 17.9% for the 12 months ending April. The food index increased 3.2% over the last year.
CPI Food:
- The index for food rose 0.5% in April after being unchanged in March. The food at home index increased 0.7% over the month.
- Five of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in April. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased 1.3 percent over the month as the index for beef rose 2.7 percent.
- The fruits and vegetables index increased 1.8% in April and the nonalcoholic beverages index rose 1.1%.
- The index for dairy and related products increased 0.8% over the month and the index for cereals and bakery products rose 0.1% in April.
- In contrast, the index for other food at home fell 0.4% in April after being unchanged in March.
- The food away from home index rose 0.2% in April.
- The index for limited service meals rose 0.4% over the month and the index for full service meals rose 0.1 percent.
CPI Energy:
- The index for energy increased 3.8% in April, after rising 10.9% in March. The gasoline index increased 5.4% over the month. (Before seasonal adjustment, gasoline prices increased 11.1% in April.)
- The index for electricity rose 2.1% in April. The fuel oil index increased 5.8% over the month.
- Conversely, the index for natural gas decreased 0.1% over the same period.
New- and Used-Vehicle prices remain stable as Shelter jumped (as expected)…
On a short-term annualized basis, it’s all about Energy…
But, the surge in the Energy subcomponent of CPI is perhaps peaking as oil has stabilized/eased.
Source: Bloomberg
Core CPI rose more than expected in April (up 0.4% MoM vs +0.3% exp), pulling the YoY rise in prices up by 2.8% (also hotter than expected).
Source: Bloomberg
While that is the highest since Sept 2025, it is clear that whatever impact the war is having, it is not spreading wildly into the broad market… yet.
However, Core Services dominated the price rises (perhaps some energy cost impact pull-through)…
Closer look at Core CPI which rose 0.4% in April, after rising 0.2% in each of the 2 preceding months.
- The shelter index increased 0.6% over the month.
- The index for owners’ equivalent rent and the index for rent both increased 0.5% in April.
- The lodging away from home index rose 2.4% over the month.
- The index for household furnishings and operations increased 0.7% over the month, after rising 0.2% in March.
- The airline fares index rose 2.8% in April and the personal care index rose 0.7%.
- The index for apparel rose 0.6% over the month and the index for education rose 0.2% in April.
- The recreation index and the motor vehicle insurance index each increased 0.1% in April.
- The new vehicles index and the communication index each declined 0.2% in April.
- The index for used cars and trucks was unchanged over the month.
- The medical care index decreased 0.1% in April, after falling 0.2% in March.
- The index for hospital services decreased 0.3 percent over the month.
- Conversely, the physicians’ services index increased 0.6 percent over the month while the prescription drugs index was unchanged in April.
CPI Core rose 2.8% YoY: the shelter index increased 3.3% over the last year. Other indexes with notable increases over the last year include medical care (+2.5 percent), airline fares (+20.7 percent), household furnishings and operations (+3.9 percent), and recreation (+2.3 percent).
Here’s the one time CPI adjustment in shelter:
Rent Inflation +0.49% in April after 0.16% in March; biggest monthly increase since Oct 2023;
Rent inflation +2.79% YoY, up from 2.56% in March and highest since January 2026
Shelter inflation 0.61% in April after 0.40% in March, biggest monthly increase since Jan 2024;
Shelter inflation +3.30% in April, up from 3.02% in March and highest since Oct 2025.
Finally, are we really ready for a 70s-style rebound in inflation?
Bonds may be hinting but stocks certainly are not, even as consumer sentiment hits rock bottom.
USA ECONOMIC REPORTS
Millions Of Student Borrowers Are Defaulting: They Are 40 Years Old On Average
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 03:40 PM
The NY Federal published its latest report on Household Debt and Credit for the first quarter: the report showed total household debt increased by $18 billion, just a 0.1% increase, in Q1 2026, to $18.8 trillion.
Some details:
- Mortgage balances shown on consumer credit reports grew slightly by $21 billion during the first quarter of 2026 and totaled $13.19 trillion at the end of March.
- Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) rose by $12 billion, marking the 16th consecutive quarterly increase. Outstanding HELOC balances now total $446 billion, $129 billion above the low reached in 2022Q1.
- Non-housing debt balances declined by $15 billion, or 0.3%, from 2025Q4. This decline was driven primarily by a seasonal decrease in credit card balances, which fell by $25 billion and now stand at $1.25 trillion.
- Student loan balances were essentially flat, decreasing by $6 billion and standing at $1.66 trillion.
- Auto loan balances grew by $18 billion, to $1.69 trillion.
- Other balances, which include retail cards and consumer finance loans, edged down by $2 billion to $562 billion.
The volume of newly originated credit held steady in the first quarter of 2026 for both mortgages and auto loans. Mortgage originations, measured as appearances of new mortgages on consumer credit reports and including both refinance and purchase originations, were largely steady with $530 billion newly originated in 2026Q1.
About 59,000 individuals had new foreclosures on their credit reports, a slight increase from the previous quarter.
There were $182 billion in new auto loans appearing on credit reports during the first quarter.
Aggregate limits on credit cards continued to rise, with a $60 billion (1.1%) uptick in the first quarter, to ~$5.5 trillion. Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) limits rose, albeit at a slightly slower pace, by $14 billion (1.4%), continuing an expansion in HELOCs that began in 2022.
The total balance of loans delinquent at least 30 days remained unchanged at 4.8% from the prior quarter after six quarters of steady increase. Still, the overall delinquency rate matched the highest level reported since 2017. Transition into early delinquency held steady for auto loans, but ticked down for credit cards, from 8.7% annually to 8.6%, and for mortgages from 3.9% to 3.8%.
“Aggregate household debt levels rose slightly, with modest increases in most debt types offsetting a seasonal decline in credit card balances,” said Daniel Mangrum, Research Economist at the New York Fed. “Delinquency transition rates were mostly steady, while student loan delinquencies are returning to pre-pandemic levels.”
More concerning is that the percentage of loan balances that are seriously delinquent and set to transition to default/discharge continues rising – student loan delinquency rate increased to 10.3% of balances 90+ days delinquent, up from the 9.6% observed in 2025Q4 – and while it hit a new post-covid high for student loans after the Biden moratorium ended last year, the credit card picture is most dire, with the percentage there on pace to surpass the financial crisis record in the next few quarters. As shown below, transition rates into serious delinquency were mostly unchanged for auto loans and credit cards, but increased slightly for mortgages from 1.4 % annually to 1.5%. The student loan delinquency rate increased to 10.3% of balances 90+ days delinquent, up from the 9.6% observed in Q4 2025.
Some more details:
- The student loan transition rate into serious delinquency, measured as a four-quarter moving sum, declined from 16.2% in Q4 2025 to 10.9% this quarter, reflecting a slower pace of new student loan delinquencies in the first quarter relative to the previous year.
- 2.6 million student loan borrowers who were more than 120 days past due had their loans transferred to the U.S Department of Education’s Default Resolution Group.
About 124,000 consumers had a bankruptcy notation added to their credit reports in 2026Q1, a pace unchanged from the previous quarter. The percentage of consumers with a third-party collection account on their credit report worsened slightly to 5.0 percent
Taking a closer look at the army of defaulting “students”, the WSJ writes that millions of borrowers are defaulting on their student loans, and they are nearly 40 years old on average. That is nearly 2½ years older than the profile of a student-loan defaulter before the pandemic. Borrowers 50 and older are now at higher risk of default than younger borrowers.
Since a pandemic-era pause on student-loan repayments ended in 2023, the federal government has been pushing people to start repaying their loans. In the fourth quarter of last year, those who failed to restart payments began defaulting, meaning they hit 270 days past due on their payments. The New York Fed estimated that more than 3.5 million people defaulted between October and March.
The Fed report offers a look at who is defaulting:
- Most recently, the share of student-loan balances past due increased to just over 10%, nearing prepandemic levels.
- The average borrower in default is more likely to live in the South, though borrowers are defaulting across the country.
- Most of the newly defaulted borrowers weren’t past due on their student loans before the pandemic.
- Borrowers who have defaulted on their student loans are struggling to make other debt payments, too. Nearly 40% of those with auto loans are past due, 56% with at least one credit card are past due and 20% with a mortgage are past due. Loan delinquencies have been broadly trending higher.
- Some of these borrowers are likely parents who borrowed on behalf of their children, New York Fed researchers said.
The report found that Gen X borrowers, including those age 50 to 61, have the highest average student-loan balance of any age group. Many of them either reached college age as the modern federal student-loan system was forming or borrowed later, likely on behalf of their children.
Just as concerning is that in late 2024, borrowers who missed their student-loan payments saw steep drops in their credit scores for the first time in years.
The Trump administration has been revamping the federal student-loan system, emphasizing repayment. It is a reversal from the Biden administration, which pushed policies to reduce monthly payments for borrowers and get them closer to student-loan forgiveness.
The biggest consequence for defaulted borrowers is that they could have their wages, tax returns and Social Security garnished. But the Education Department has delayed its garnishment plans.
Finally, the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, or SAVE, one of the more affordable student-loan repayment plans introduced by the Biden administration, is ending, forcing millions of borrowers to transition to new plans. The new Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP, is being introduced in July. As millions of borrowers transition out of SAVE, they will see their monthly payments increase under other income-based repayment plans. Many of them could also default on their student loans in the coming months, according to the Fed.
Source: NY Fed
LOS ANGELES
Probably the next mayor of Los Angeles and a good guy:
“No More Nakedness”: Spencer Pratt’s L.A. Mayoral Plan To Restore Order ‘In Weeks’ Has Democrats In Panic Mode
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 08:30 PM
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, whose social media team has been running circles around far-left incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman in recent weeks, appears to be gaining momentum. Whether from his strong performance at last week’s mayoral debate or his viral social media ads, the former reality TV star, made famous on MTV’s The Hills, has reached an inflection point as a serious challenger to the Democratic queens and kings who rule L.A. City Hall.
Pratt joined David Friedberg on the All-In podcast in an interview that premiered Sunday. Titled “Wildfires, Homelessness, Corruption & the Fight to Take It Back,” the conversation outlined how Pratt would quickly work to restore law and order in violence-plagued Los Angeles in the first several weeks of office, if he were elected.
The interview comes days after Pratt defeated Mayor Bass and Councilmember Raman in a debate last Wednesday, in which a local poll by NBC Los Angeles showed that 88% of respondents said he won.
LA MAYOR POLL: A whopping 88% say that
@spencerpratt WON the Mayoral debate last night.
Spencer Pratt: 88%
Karen Bass: 7%
Nithya Rama: 5% It wasn’t even close.
Pratt told Friedberg:
“If you start putting handcuffs on people, watch how many people leave. 100%.
“This idea that if you let everyone do drugs and do whatever they want and let the criminals make the outside an asylum with no guards… If you let them do that, they’re gonna do that.”
Pratt then laid out his plan for the first few weeks if he is elected mayor:
“But when I’m mayor, my plan is: First three weeks, signs up across the city. ‘No more nakedness, no more drug use, no more robbing, no more dog abuse.’ Very prominently on every sign, in every part of the city.
“And we’re going to warn everybody: ‘Hey, you’ve got three more weeks of this. Clock’s ticking.’ Just keep telling everyone so people are aware. They’re like, ‘Oh wow, there is a new mayor in town.’ They may start leaving.
“And then, when the three weeks are up, or maybe we’ll even do two weeks, maybe people want it faster, once we start enforcing the law, boom, the streets will be back.
“You know who I’m also going to bring in? The CDC is concerned because there are medieval diseases in these encampments. They’re not swabbing the streets. People are just living in feces, drug use, and dogs burning bodies. We need these streets cleaned.”
Pratt’s rise in the polls is based largely on common-sense policies to enforce law and order, which have alarmed the Democratic Party. Bass had to cancel an appearance this week after her poor performance in last week’s debate.
Democrats’ only counter to Pratt last week at the debate was to call him a “MAGA Republican.” If that is their rebuttal to a basic law-and-order agenda, it speaks volumes about how little they have left to offer voters watching Los Angeles spiral over the last ten years.
Polymarket odds show Pratt rising after last week’s debate, while Raman’s odds declined. Bass remains the frontrunner.https://embed.polymarket.com/market?market=will-spencer-pratt-win-the-2026-los-angeles-mayoral-election-983&height=300Will Spencer Pratt win the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election?
Yes 29% · No 71%
View full market & trade on Polymarket
Pratt’s rise also comes after years of left-wing control over the metro area, which has allowed homelessness, open-air drug use, violent crime, corruption, and social dysfunction to spiral out of control.
Pratt accuses Bass of being a communist and possibly linked to a Cuban spy operation. Rubio also received the memo.
We laid out to readers late last year:
Democrats are absolutely terrified about Pratt’s rise.
end
ILLINOIS
Illinois Sued Over Allegedly Using Race As A Factor In Congressional Map
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 03:25 PM
Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,
A public interest law firm announced Monday it was suing Illinois over its use of race in drawing congressional maps.
The lawsuit accuses the state of violating the 15th Amendment, which prohibits government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling, which found district boundaries drawn primarily with racial considerations are unconstitutional.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit May 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois after the high court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais on April 29.
“States may not use race to allocate power,” the group’s president and general counsel, John Christian Adams, said.
The suit specifically named Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its executive director Bernadette Matthews as defendants.
None immediately responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Pritzker signed a new congressional map for his state in 2021, and he said at the time that the “Illinois Voting Rights Act of 2011 ensures redistricting plans are crafted in a way that preserves clusters of minority voters if they are of size or cohesion to exert collective electoral power. The maps signed into law today meet those requirements to adequately preserve minority representation and reflect the diversity of our state.”
The Public Interest Legal Foundation argued in the lawsuit that this statement from the governor is a direct admission to violating federal law in using race to draw districts.
Furthermore, the Illinois Voting Rights Act of 2011 illegally mandated a racial map, ordering districts to be created as crossover, coalition, or influence districts, the group said.
According to the state’s legislation, a crossover district is where majority voters vote with the racial or language minority to elect their preferred candidate.
A coalition district is where more than one group of racial or language minorities can form a coalition to elect a candidate of all of their choice. An influence district is where a racial or language minority can impact the outcome of an election even if its preferred candidate cannot be elected.
All three types of districts in Illinois require “drawing district lines to preserve deliberate racial percentages, racial majorities, and the deliberate preservation of racial influence districts,” the lawsuit read.
The public interest law firm is representing Jeanne Ives, an Illinois resident, voter, and former state legislator. Attorneys for Ives said she has seen the state’s redistricting up close and how it violates the U.S. Constitution.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation is also currently challenging California’s congressional map, using the Louisiana v. Callais decision to try to invalidate it.
Since that Supreme Court ruling, Republican-led states have leapt at the opportunity to redraw their congressional districts ahead of the midterm elections this year with the GOP’s House majority on the line.
The coast-to-coast redistricting battle has shifted further in favor of Republicans following the high court’s ruling.
On May 8, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that would authorize a new primary election if a court ruled favorably on the state’s redistricting litigation. Alabama also filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to rule in its case, which was granted Monday.
Tennessee already passed redistricting legislation to carve up the state’s only blue district.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Sunshine State’s new map into law on May 4.
A South Carolina plan for redistricting is also advancing through the state’s legislature.
Meanwhile, Virginia’s Supreme Court struck down an attempt at a new map favoring Democrats. The state has now appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation’s lawsuit against Illinois and California’s maps, if successful, could tip the scales toward Republicans and set an example for other Democratic-run states.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
KING NEWS
| The King Report May 12, Issue 2026 | Independent View of the News |
| Fox’s @BillMelugin_: President Trump tells @FoxNews colleague @johnrobertsFox in a phone call just now that he is “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state”, adding that there is $40 trillion in oil there and “Venezuela loves Trump”.(Please make it stop!) Trump: In their letter, Iran didn’t commit to no nuclear weapon. That is why it was unacceptable. @FoxNews: “ I have the best plan ever… It’s a very simple plan… Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and they won’t have a nuclear weapon… How stupid! Are they stupid people? …they think that ‘Well, I’ll get tired of this or I’ll get bored, or I’ll have some pressure.‘ But there’s no pressure. There’s no pressure at all. We’re going to have a complete victory. We’ve already in theory had a complete victory from a military standpoint.” –President Trump https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2053864142621053268 Trump on Iran: Leaders Have Been Killed – BBG 11:38 ET Trump on Nuclear Dust: Iran Said US or China Able to Take Out – BBG 11:40 ET Trump on Iran: They Agree with Us, Then They Take It Back – BBG 11:42 ET Trump on Iran: I Have a Great Plan, Can’t Have Nuclear Weapon – BBG 11:43 ET Trump: “Its unbelievably weak. I would call it the weakest right now, after reading that piece of garbage they sent us. I didn’t even finish it… I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support…” – Fox News @Osint613: Trump on the Iranian leadership: “They’re very dishonorable people, the leadership. They just change their mind. I’ve had that in business many times. These people, you make a deal, and then they send you a document that takes five days to get there when it should’ve been there in 20 minutes.” @FoxNewsRadio’s @JaredHalpern: “The leadership changes that you’ve talked about in Iran, is this still a leadership that you believe you can negotiate with ultimately reach a peace deal with?” President Trump: “Yeah. I think so…. You have the moderates and you have the lunatics. And I think moderates are more respected. The lunatics want to fight till the end… I call them stupid people, too. But in Iran, they have the moderates. They are dying to make a deal. And then you have the lunatics. And I guess they’re a little bit afraid of lunatics, but — and why not? The — the level of ferocity for protests, you know, the people are watching it. They want to go out on the streets. They have no weapons. They have no guns. We thought the Kurds were going to give us weapons, but the Kurds disappointed us. The Kurds take, take, take. They have a great reputation in Congress. Congress says, oh, they fight so hard. No, they fight hard when they get paid. So, I’m very disappointed in the Kurds. But they were given — I said it wasn’t going to work, by the way. I just have to say it. I — I disagreed with what they did. They gave it. I said they’ll never get there. And I was right.,,, But we sent some guns with ammunition and they were supposed to be delivered, but they kept it. I said, they’re going to keep it. But what — what do I know? I’ve only been doing this a short period of time. What do I know?” https://x.com/CurtisHouck/status/2053872408830886367 @ariel_oseran: An Iranian source close to the negotiating team says Tehran’s response to the U.S. proposal did not include any indication of agreement to remove highly enriched uranium from the country, contrary to reports in Western media, according to the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency. Trump to meet with his national security cabinet to discuss next steps in the Iran war, including military action — Axios 12:41 ET @JenniferJJacobs: Scoop via @CBSNews: As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park in its country, potentially shielding them from US airstrikes, sources told @JimLaPorta and me. Days after Trump announced the ceasefire in early April, Tehran sent multiple aircraft to Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan. Among the military hardware was an Iranian Air Force RC-130, a reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering variant of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules tactical transport aircraft. Apparently, Pakistan played Trump and his negotiating team. How could anyone trust Pakistan after it reportedly shielded bin Laden from the US? Trump: Great Relationship with Xi (and Putin, and Kim Jong Un, and Satan) – BBG 11:54 ET Trump: We’re Doing Great with China – BBG 11:54 ET Trump: Doing Smart Business with China – BBG 11:54 ET Trump: Working on Getting Beef Prices Down – BBG Trump aims to suspend the federal gas tax “for a period of time.” — CBS @NewsPolitics: The federal gas tax is set by Congress in federal law. The president can propose a gas-tax holiday, pressure Congress, or sign a bill if Congress passes one — but he cannot unilaterally cut it by executive order. TRUMP TOUTS STOCK MARKET (It’s his core economic tool now!) – BBG 11:55 ET Fed bids for 3-year notes in the $58B auction on Monday totaled $13.8B. The results of the auction 3.965% vs 3.959% WI; 63% went to indirect Bidders; 16.9% went to primary dealers; 20.1% went to direct bidders. USMs to a daily low of 113 (-18/32) on the poor auction. June Gasoline hit a daily high of 365.06 (+12.39c or +3.5%) at 12:39 ET. June WTI Oil hit a daily high of 100.37 (+$4.95 or +5.2%) at 00:56 ET. Though energy commodities and bonds were unnerved by Iran developments, equities were mixed in NYSE trading because Trump did NOT end the ceasefire; traders expect a TACO; and negative Iran news has NOT diminished euphoria for stocks and the AI Bubble. It only briefly interrupts the euphoria. Due to the negative news about Iran on Sunday, ESMs hit a daily low of 7390.50 at 18:17 ET. They then plodded higher and hit 7420.75 at 5:45 ET. After a modest retreat, ESMs made an effective double top at 7:32 ET. ESMs then slid to 7402.50 at 8:47 ET. But traders are conditioned to buy dips and to buy for the NYSE opening, the Monday Rally, and the Expiry Week Rally. So, traders aggressively bought ESMs abetted by the enthusiasm for the AI bubble and the euphoria for stocks in general. ESMs hit a daily high of 7454.75 at 13:45 ET. ESMs then rolled over. A waterfall decline appeared after 14:33 ET; ESMs sank to 7427.50 at 15:21 ET. ESMs then went inert until the illegal late manipulation began near 15:50 ET. ESMs hit 7440.25 at 16:00 ET. The 30-year peak yield during the Biden Inflation was 5.078% on October 20, 2023. The US 30-year yield hit 4.987% on Monday. Positive aspects of previous session Fangs rallied on the AI Bubble and general euphoria for stocks – and Expiry Week upward bias. Trading sardine buying produced all-time highs for Nasdaq, Nas 100, NY Fang+ Index, and the S&P Negative aspects of previous session Gasoline and copper rallied sharply; bonds and notes declined moderately. The DJTA fell 155.10 points. The 2-yr note yield hit 3.954% at 16:58 ET. The US 30-year yield is close to a breakout. Ambiguous aspects of previous session Gold declined modestly while silver and platinum rallied sharply. First Hour/Last Hour NYSE Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour: Up; Last Hour: Up Pivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to day traders]: 7408.67 Previous session (S&P 500 Index) High/Low: 7428.97; 7384.20 Live Cattle future prices have gone up about 120% since May 2021. This fact contradicts this item that we had in our Monday report: @Hedgeye: Live Cattle prices have surged +525% since 2022 https://x.com/Hedgeye/status/2052829492083560699 Arcadia (CA) mayor Eileen Wang admits acting as foreign agent for China in plea deal Eileen Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People’s Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on US soil between 2020 and 2022. She was elected to Arcadia City Council in November 2022. The city is within LA County… Wang pled guilty to the federal charge at her arraignment in downtown Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison… https://trib.al/b5Mlv45 WSJ Editorial Board: Iran Thinks Trump Is Bluffing The regime figures it can outlast the U.S. on the Strait and uranium. Today – Because stocks did NOT sink on Monday after disappointing Iran news, traders will play for the Expiry Week Rally. Fangs and trading sardines typically lead the Expiry Week Rally. This May Expiration Week. When call volume has been extremely high, the usual Expiry Rally and Manipulation have faltered on overhanging liquidation. The liquidation tends to appear on Thursday and Friday if stocks are soft on Monday thru Wednesday. Astute traders are now monitoring US 2s, 10s, and 30s. They appeared to weigh on stocks yesterday. Will Team Trump allow April CPI to be worse than expected? Any debt rally on a ‘good’ CPI could be short lived because Mr. Bond is less apt to be deceived by bogus US economic data than stocks. ESMs are -5.50, NQMs are -34.25; WTI oil is +$0.57; gasoline is +1.47c; the 2-year us at 3.96%; the 30-year is at 4.989%; and USMs are -3/32 at 20:55 ET. Expected Economic Data: Apr CPI 0.6% m/m & .7% y/y, Core CPI 0.3% m/m & 2.7% y/y; Apr NFIB Small Business Optimism 96.1; April Federal Budget +$220.0B New York Fed Pres Williams in Zurich 3:15 ET, Chicago Pres Goolsbee at 13:00 ET S&P Index 50-day MA: 6874; 100-day MA: 6887; 150-day MA: 6846; 200-day MA: 6759 DJIA 50-day MA: 47,890;100-day MA: 48,492; 150-day MA: 48,00; 200-day MA: 47,357 (Green is positive slope; Red is negative slope) S&P 500 Index (7412.84 close) – BBG trading model Trender and MACD for key time frames Monthly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 6035.78 triggers a sell signal Weekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 6513.48 triggers a sell signal Daily: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 7284.88 triggers a sell signal Hourly: Trender is positive; MACD is negative – a close below 7395.76 triggers a sell sign Rabbi & attorney @Jon_Gross: I’m trying to sound the alarm that our justice system is broken and weaponization is ongoing and escalating. A handful of people get it but the vast majority doesn’t and won’t until it affects them. Pray to our Heavenly Father that the country wakes up before it’s too late. Supreme Court halts order for Alabama to use House map with two primarily black districts The order comes after the high court struck down maps last week that added a second majority black district in Louisiana, ruling the map was unconstitutional because it contained race-based districts. https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/supreme-court-halts-order-alabama-use-house-map-two-primarily-black-districts Kash Patel orders mass polygraphs amid FBI leak probe furor https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/kash-patel-orders-mass-polygraphs-amid-fbi-leak-probe-furor/gm-GM2E586498 @libsoftiktok: Walgreens reveals the Chicago South Side store they are shuttering after 20 years, lost $1 million mainly due to theft last year, which is 4x the company average, while they spent $400k a year on security and employees still got assaulted. | |
SWAMP STORIES FOR YOU TONIGHT
Jeffries Calls On Half-Dozen Democratic States To Start ‘Aggressive’ Redistricting
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 08:55 PM
Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday named six Democratic states he wants to join New York in pursuing mid-decade redistricting ahead of the 2028 election—a longer-term play as both parties have raced to redraw maps before the November 2026 midterms.
“It’s going to be incredibly important that states like New York, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Maryland and Illinois are aggressive in moving forward to ensure that there’s a fair national map, particularly in light of what the Supreme Court’s attack on the Voting Rights Act has unleashed,” Jeffries said in an interview with CNN published on May 8.
Congressional maps are slated to be redrawn after the next census in 2030.
The comments came the same day that the Virginia Supreme Court voided an April referendum that would have allowed state Democrats to redraw Virginia’s congressional map ahead of the November midterms. Democrats had said the new Virginia map could result in their having 10 congressional seats to only one for Republicans. Virginia now has six Democratic members of Congress and five Republicans.
Jeffries called the Virginia ruling “unprecedented” and “undemocratic” in a statement released by his office on Friday.
“Over three million Virginia citizens cast their votes in a free and fair election, yet the State Supreme Court has chosen to invalidate their voice, disenfranchise them and violate their due process rights,” Jeffries said in the statement.
He added, “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision. No matter what it takes, House Democrats will win in November so we can help rescue this nation from the extremism being unleashed by Donald Trump and Republicans.”
Despite the setback, Jeffries told CNN that Democrats could still flip “at least two” GOP-held seats in Virginia under the existing congressional map.
“If the current map holds in Virginia, we will at minimum flip two seats. And we’re exploring other options given how unpopular the policies of the Republican party have been,” Jeffries told CNN.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29 ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana’s congressional map was unconstitutional because race was the predominant factor in drawing the lines, a decision that limits redistricting based on race. Democrats and voting rights advocates say the decision guts the Voting Rights Act and gives Republican-led states grounds to revisit majority-minority districts.
Republicans hailed the ruling. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said on May 6 that the Supreme Court had “opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be color-blind.” He noted that the court had also indicated that “states can redistrict based off partisan politics” as the state began redrawing its districts.
Republican-led states have moved quickly.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on May 7 signed a new congressional map that splits Memphis into three districts and will probably eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held congressional seat. The Tennessee General Assembly first passed a measure repealing a state law that had previously prohibited mid-decade redistricting.
Republicans have also moved this year to redraw congressional maps in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, and Florida. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 4 signed a new map that could add up to four Republican-leaning seats to that state’s congressional delegation.
Democrats have countered with their own mid-decade redraws in California and the now-voided Virginia attempt. On May 4, Jeffries launched what he calls the New York Democracy Project, an effort to recruit New York into the mid-decade redistricting fight.
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), dispatched to Albany by Jeffries, pressed New York Democratic leaders to advance a constitutional amendment enabling mid-decade redistricting before the legislature adjourns the first week of June. A New York constitutional change would require passage by two consecutive legislative sessions before going to voters for ratification.
Jeffries on Monday told House Democrats in a Dear Colleague letter that he will host a caucus-wide briefing on Thursday with Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, to discuss what he called “the largest voter protection effort in modern American history.”
National Republican Redistricting Trust Executive Director Adam Kincaid told The Epoch Times this past week that the broader push amounted to “Hochul and Jeffries’s annual attempt to illegally gerrymander New York and roll back the state’s twice-voter-approved redistricting commission.”
END
Crestfallen Commie Mamdani Abandons Planned Property Tax Hike On New Yorkers
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 02:05 PM
Looks like NYC’s communist mayor has had second thoughts about extracting more taxes by raising New Yorkers’ property taxes – something he vowed to do to help close a two-year deficit.
According to Bloomberg, the decision to drop the tax hike will be included in Mamdani’s executive budget released today, which will mark the latest version of his spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
This is separate from a tax on second homes (the so-called pied-à-terre) that was initiated by Governor Kathy Hochul – which is still under consideration as part of state budget negotiations.
Earlier this year, Mamdani threatened to raise property taxes by nearly 10% as a way to lobby Hochul for more funding. He had little support for an across-the-board increase, with City Council members including Speaker Julie Menin opposing the plan. Any increase would have needed to be passed by that chamber. -Bloomberg
Mamdani’s preliminary budget proposal earned the city a credit rating downgrade to negative, citing the city’s long-term structural problems. He also proposed raiding the city’s emergency savings account for $1 billion to help close the gap.
On Tuesday, Hochul and Mamdani announced that the state would slide NYC an additional $4 billion to help close the budget gap that Mamdani has called a “generational fiscal crisis” rivaling the Great Recession. To fix this, his only solution has been higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations – because heaven forbid they slash spending to a meaningful degree (or at all).
This reversal comes amid a great exodus of wealth from New York State.
The decision to drop the across-the-board property tax hike unfolds against the backdrop of a sustained and accelerating departure of high earners, businesses, and capital from New York City and the state. New York has already lost tens of billions in tax revenue as residents and employers relocate to lower-tax states.
NYC has recorded a net loss of roughly 220,000 residents since 2021. In the past two years alone, approximately 6,000 businesses have closed or moved out. The damage is concentrated among the taxpayers who fund the majority of city services: the top 1 percent of earners contribute more than 40 percent of income tax revenue, and that group is leaving in disproportionate numbers. More than 125,000 New Yorkers have relocated to Florida in recent years, taking nearly $14 billion in adjusted gross income with them.
A May 2026 analysis noted that repeated tax increases intended to offset lost revenue have only driven more departures, with the city suffering significant wealth decline as a direct result. An April 2026 piece warned that Mamdani’s broader tax agenda – including hikes on high earners and the pied-à-terre tax still advancing at the state level – risks accelerating the migration of wealth and businesses to states like Florida, Texas, and the Carolinas. Even Governor Hochul has publicly implored wealthy taxpayers to stop leaving, underscoring how severe the fiscal pressure has become.
By walking back the property tax increase, Mamdani is confronting the hard limit of his strategy: the very people and companies needed to fund expansive spending are already voting with their feet. Yet the state continues to push additional taxes on second homes and corporations, meaning the underlying incentives fueling the exodus remain firmly in place. The wealthy are not waiting for further experiments – they are leaving.
California Mayor Indicted, Will Plead Guilty To Being CCP Agent
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 08:05 PM
In a significant development announced today by the U.S. Department of Justice, Arcadia, California Mayor Eileen Wang has been charged with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government – the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Wang, 58, has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. She resigned from her position as mayor and Arcadia City Council member this afternoon following the unsealing of the case.
According to court filings and the DOJ’s Central District of California announcement, Wang and her former fiancé, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, operated the U.S. News Center, a website that presented itself as a news source for the local Chinese-American community. From late 2020 through 2022, they received and executed directives from PRC government officials – primarily via WeChat – to post pro-PRC propaganda. Examples include publishing pre-written articles denying forced labor or genocide in Xinjiang, editing content at the direction of Chinese officials, and sharing view counts and links in coordinated group chats. PRC officials reportedly praised the speed and effectiveness of the posts, with messages such as “So fast, thank you everyone” and “Great!”
Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang in California has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China in the United States. Mayor Wang admitted to acting as a foreign agent from at least 2020 through 2022 – promoting PRC propaganda in the U.S. and acting at PRC’s direction to promote their interests. She has agreed to resign from office and plead guilty.
@FBI and our federal partners continue to move aggressively to root out this kind of influence in American institutions all over the country.
Wang did not register as a foreign agent with the U.S. Attorney General, as required by law, and failed to disclose on the website that certain content originated from or was directed by the PRC government. She was elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 (later becoming mayor on a rotating basis) with assistance from Sun, who worked on her campaign.
Linked to Previously Convicted Chinese Agent
Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, was sentenced in February 2026 to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty in October 2025 to the same charge of acting as an illegal agent of the PRC. Prosecutors said Sun monitored the 2023 visit of Taiwan’s president to California, corresponded with Chinese officials, and helped promote PRC interests while supporting Wang’s political rise. A related figure, John Chen – a high-level PRC intelligence operative who had met Xi Jinping – was sentenced in November 2024 to 20 months in prison for acting as an illegal agent and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
DOJ officials framed the case as part of broader efforts to counter Chinese influence operations. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli stated: “Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy.” FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky added that Wang “secretly served the interests of the Chinese government,” warning that such actors “will be identified, investigated, and brought to justice.”
Pattern of CCP Links to Democratic Politicians
Wang’s case fits into a documented series of instances where Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence or influence operations have intersected with Democratic elected officials, particularly in California. While no widespread conspiracy has been proven, federal investigators and counterintelligence experts have repeatedly flagged “united front” work by the PRC targeting politicians, diaspora communities, and institutions.
Dianne Feinstein’s Longtime Staffer (2018 revelations): For nearly 20 years, a Chinese national served as Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) personal driver, office gofer, and liaison to the Asian-American community in her San Francisco office. The staffer reported local political information to China’s Ministry of State Security through the San Francisco consulate. The FBI alerted Feinstein around 2013 (while she chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee). She immediately fired the individual, who had no access to classified material according to her office. No criminal charges were filed against him or the senator. The story surfaced publicly in 2018 via the San Francisco Chronicle and Politico.
Rep. Eric Swalwell and Christine “Fang Fang” Fang (2020 reporting): Axios revealed that suspected Chinese MSS operative Christine Fang cultivated relationships with several rising California Democratic politicians, most notably Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Fang raised campaign funds for Swalwell’s 2014 reelection (acting as a bundler), helped place at least one intern in his congressional office, and interacted with him socially over several years. Reports indicated a possible romantic or sexual relationship, though Swalwell has neither confirmed nor denied it in detail.
Fang abruptly left the U.S. in 2015 around the time an FBI counterintelligence investigation into her intensified. Swalwell, who later joined the House Intelligence Committee, cooperated with the FBI, received a defensive briefing, and has stated he cut off all contact upon learning of concerns. No wrongdoing was attributed to him, but the episode drew intense scrutiny given his national security role.
Other historical cases include the 1990s “Chinagate” fundraising scandals involving Democratic National Committee figures and alleged PRC-linked donors during the Clinton administration, though those centered more on illegal campaign contributions than direct agent activity.
Implications and Context
While we can’t imagine there are any American mayors of Chinese cities – U.S. intelligence agencies have long warned that the CCP employs sophisticated, long-term influence operations to shape narratives, gather political intelligence, and cultivate relationships with American elites – especially in states with large Chinese-American populations such as California. These efforts often involve ostensibly independent media, community organizations, and political operatives who do not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Wang’s guilty plea – following Sun’s conviction – represents one of the most direct recent examples of an elected U.S. official admitting to covertly advancing PRC interests while in or seeking public office. Her resignation and the DOJ’s swift action underscore federal prosecutors’ focus on holding accountable those who “act only for the people of the United States,” as Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg put it.
Critics argue these cases reveal insufficient vetting of political aides, campaign staff, and even romantic partners in an era of aggressive CCP espionage. Supporters of the implicated politicians emphasize that most relationships began innocently and that no classified information was compromised in the Feinstein or Swalwell matters.
As of this writing, Wang is expected to formally enter her guilty plea in the coming weeks. The case will likely fuel renewed debate in Washington and Sacramento about foreign influence transparency laws, campaign finance rules, and counterintelligence screening for candidates and staffers.
END
Billionaire Bucks Co-Owner Alleges $1 Billion Blackmail Plot After Affair With China-Born Entrepreneur
Monday, May 11, 2026 – 05:20 PM
Wesley Edens, billionaire investor and co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, replied to a 2022 LinkedIn message from Changli Sophia Luo, a China-born founder of a small Manhattan nonprofit that produced interview videos. Their exchanges turned personal; by June 2023 they met at her apartment and had sex, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing prosectuors.
What followed, authorities say, became an extortion case. Luo was indicted for allegedly trying to extract over $1 billion by threatening to release explicit images and videos. Prosecutors claim she repeatedly contacted Edens’s relatives, warned she would approach investors, and vowed to ruin him. She faces four charges, including blackmail and evidence destruction, and has pleaded not guilty. Released on $500,000 bond, she awaits trial.
Edens was not initially named, but a spokesman confirmed he is “Victim-1.” He reported the matter over safety concerns and is expected to testify. His side declined further comment: “Mr. Edens will be making no comment on the case as the indictment speaks for itself with respect to the charges against the defendant.”
The WSJ writes that Luo’s attorneys argue she sought accountability for what they describe as “an inappropriate and aggressive sexual encounter,” asking the court to dismiss the case. Federal prosecutors have not commented.
The dispute highlights reputational risks when personal relationships involving high-profile figures unravel. Victims often hesitate to involve authorities, partly because cases can expose private details.
“Extortion victims usually don’t want to cooperate, and don’t want to go to the government—for the very reasons that extortion or blackmail work,” said defense lawyer Scott R. Wilson.
Investigators began looking into Luo in early 2025 after Edens’s lawyer contacted the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. After their encounter, Luo sent Edens a message: “I never told you I love you, and tonight I want to tell you that, I have been restraining my feeling for you, as I do love you from the bottom of my heart!” He didn’t reply.
Months later, prosecutors say her tone shifted. She allegedly contacted Edens’s then-girlfriend (now wife), his ex-wife, and claimed the encounter was nonconsensual due to mental incapacity. She warned him: “I am sure your family and business partners will learn about you and your misdeeds from these interviews and will provide exposure that will taint your record forever.”
Seeking to stop further contact and avoid publicity, Edens agreed to mediation. Luo negotiated with his lawyers and, according to her side, a $6.5 million settlement was reached, with $1 million upfront. Later, she said she had contracted HPV-16 and sought far more money—prosecutors say up to $1.215 billion.
After hiring attorney Tyrone Blackburn, she allegedly escalated threats, including releasing images and “destroying” Edens. Defense lawyer Arthur Aidala argued those statements were aggressive negotiation, not extortion, and said prior counsel should have warned her.
Blackburn denied encouraging any threats: “To ever say that I in any way encouraged her to engage in acts of extortion…that is a baldfaced lie.”
In May, the FBI searched Luo’s apartment and found hidden phones, including one containing manipulated explicit material featuring Edens, prosecutors said. She was arrested June 14 at JFK Airport while attempting to fly to China.
END
Virginia Democrats Ask US Supreme Court To Reinstate Congressional Map
Tuesday, May 12, 2026 – 11:40 AM
Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,
Virginia Democrats, along with their state Attorney General, have asked the US Supreme Court to override the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision last week that struck down a partisan redistricting plan.
ABC News reports Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones wrote in the emergency application filed on Monday that the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” when it invalidated a ballot measure to amend the state constitution that would have netted Democrats as many as four new congressional seats.
The state Supreme Court had ruled last Friday, in a 4–3 decision, that Democrats had violated the state Constitution, by failing to follow proper procedures, while racing to get the measure on the ballot before the midterm elections.
According to SCOTUSblog, Virginia’s General Assembly adopted a new map in February that would have favored Democrats in 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the US House—a potential increase of four seats from the current balance between Democrats and Republicans in Virginia.
The new map hinged on obtaining approval for an amendment to the Virginia constitution that would give the state legislature the power to draw a new congressional map outside of the normal cycle following the decennial census.
In a referendum held in April, Virginia voters approved that amendment by a margin of three percentage points.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the referendum was not valid because the General Assembly had not followed proper procedures when it put the new amendment on the ballot.
In Monday’s 24-page filing, Jones argued:
“The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate. By forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”
Legal experts told ABC News last week that they believe Democrats have little chance of a successful appeal at the US Supreme Court because the state Supreme Court would be the highest authority dealing with state constitutional issues and no federal issues are at stake.
According to former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, “The Virginia Supreme Court is the final authority on Virginia constitutional questions. This is the end, folks. You will have the same map in 2026 that existed in 2024. That is now unchangeable and immutable.”
Politico reports that Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals arising from Virginia, instructed the Republicans who challenged the Virginia referendum to respond to Jones’ appeal by Thursday at 5 p.m.
GREG HUNTER
SEE YOU TOMORROW
harveyorganblog.com 
