Buffett Cash Hoard: Why $397 Billion Sits On The Sidelines Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, $397 billion. That’s how much “Buffett cash” now sits on Berkshire Hathaway’s balance sheet after Greg Abel’s first quarter as CEO. Warren Buffett left $373 billion behind when he stepped down at the end of 2025. Three months later, after Abel’s debut earnings report on Saturday, the hoard had grown by […]

Oil Rebounds After Iranian Denial: Will Never Give Up Nuclear Program; US Official Rejects Reports Of Lifting Sanctions For Talks Summary US denies earlier Tasnim report of agreeing to lift oil sanctions during talks. Trump calls for Iran’s total military surrender in Monday morning Truth Social post. Oil rebounds on Tasnim reporting Iranian denial: Tehran “under no circumstances” will negotiate nuclear issue as part of an end to […]

Iran Counter-Blockade Bites As No Tankers Load At Kharg For 10th Day Earlier today, in response to news that the number of tankers anchored at Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal had hit a post-blockade peak, we wondered if this means that Iran is running out of tankers to store oil, i.e., Trump’ blockade of the blockade is working. In any case, it certainly means that Iran is no longer able to sell any of the oil, depriving it of […]

Russian Drone Hits Chinese Ship In Black Sea, Less Than 24-Hours Before Xi-Putin Summit Just 24 hours before Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are set to meet for their planned summit in Beijing, soon on the heels of Trump’s visit, and a geopolitical wrench may have just been thrown into the works. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian forces have attacked a Chinese ship heading toward a Ukrainian port […]

DoJ Establishes “Anti-Weaponization” Fund After Trump Drops $10 Billion Lawsuit Against IRS Update (1130ET): The DOJ announces that as a part of the settlement agreement in President Donald Trump v. the IRS, the Attorney General established “The Anti-Weaponization Fund” to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare. “The machinery of government should never be […]

Cuban Foreign Minister Says US Is Building ‘Fraudulent Case’ For Military Action Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez on May 17 said the United States is building a “fraudulent case” ​to justify economic war and eventual military intervention against the Caribbean island nation. Cuban troops participate in a military parade in honor of former Cuban leader Fidel […]

“Scale Matters”: NextEra, Dominion To Merge In Utility Megadeal Aimed At Grid Expansion To Power AI Boom As power demand surges on the back of data-center buildouts, with hyperscalers expected to unleash about $700 billion in capex this year to expand AI infrastructure and maintain an edge over China in the AI compute race, NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy are moving to scale up. The utilities agreed to a $67 billion all-stock […]

“Shockingly Bad” Chinese Econ Data Stuns Wall Street, Sparks Hard Landing Concerns Confirming our Sunday preview, overnight China reported growth data which slowed across the board in April with investment resuming declines, retail sales missing sales and growing at the weakest rate in 4 years while industrial production rose at the slowest pace in three years, calling into question Beijing’s reluctance to add stimulus to the […]

Ukraine’s Odesa Heavily Attacked In ‘Retaliation’ For Deadly Drone Raids On Moscow The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) announced Monday that its forces executed a massive missile and drone barrage across Ukraine, which is clearly the expected big retaliatory response following Ukraine’s large-scale drone wave attack on Moscow over the weekend. Kremlin officials specifically described the new assault as indeed direct retaliation for […]

Cars Are Fast Becoming Dystopian Prison Pods… Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, The surveillance state has found its newest frontier: your car’s dashboard. What used to be a symbol of American freedom and independence is rapidly morphing into a high-tech cage that watches your every move and can override your decisions at will. In a widely shared post on X, users detailed complaints pouring in about Subaru’s […]

Key Events This Week: Nvidia Earnings, FOMC Minutes And Global PMIs Looking at the week ahead, Nvidia’s earnings on Wednesday, with a market capitalisation now of $5.46tn, will be the main event. In economics, we have the global flash PMIs on Thursday, along with inflation data from Canada tomorrow, the UK on Wednesday, and Japan on Friday. From central banks, the highlight will be the FOMC minutes on Wednesday. Those flash PMIs […]

Switzerland To Vote On Capping Population At 10 Million In less than four weeks, on June 14, Swiss voters will decide on a proposal that, if passed, would mark a constitutional first: enshrining a hard limit on the country’s total permanent resident population. The “No to a Switzerland with 10 Million” initiative, backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), seeks to amend the Federal Constitution to keep the […]

The Question This Week Is “Does Trump Go Back To The Well On Bombing Iran?” By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank Hormuz diary, day 79. The strait remains functionally closed and global crude and refined product stocks are rapidly drawing down. President Trump has returned from Beijing after much bonhomie with no concrete commitments from China to help get shipping moving again, though the American side has […]

Space Stocks Take-Off On Musk’s SpaceX IPO Comments AST SpaceMobile, EchoStar, and Rocket Lab moved higher in premarket trading in New York after Elon Musk, speaking by video at the Samson International Smart Mobility Summit on Monday, said a SpaceX IPO is coming “pretty soon,” adding to investor hype around the publicly traded space industry. “We’ve got to get the SpaceX IPO stuff going here pretty soon,” Musk told the summit, […]

D-Day For “Huuuge” Meta Layoffs Looms As AI Job Apocalypse Accelerates ‘D-Day’ for Meta layoffs is quickly approaching, as the Facebook and Instagram owner will slash 10% of its global headcount – or about 8,000 employees – in the initial round as it swaps headcount for GPUs. Former Meta employee Adel Wu described the current situation on X, saying her millennial and Gen Z friends still at the tech company are currently “either […]

“Taiwan Loses Its Strategic Importance In 18 Months,” Says Chamath Palihapitiya In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that aired Friday, President Trump said that he doesn’t want “to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war” over Taiwan. “I’m not looking to have somebody to go independent and, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,” Trump told Baier. “I’m not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want […]

“Please Work Remote”: NYC Braces For Commuter Chaos With Ongoing LIRR Strike Welcome to day three of the Long Island Rail Road strike, which is set to cause commuter chaos this morning in the New York City area, as more than 3,500 workers across five unions walked off the job Saturday after contract talks with the MTA collapsed. Negotiations between the MTA and unions resumed Sunday and are set to continue Monday morning. LIRR […]

Futures Slide After Bond Yields, Oil Prices Jump Around The Globe Futures are lower, but off their overnight lows as markets focus on soaring global yields after US/Iran talk progress remains stalled (but at least armed hostilities did not resume contrary to some speculation). Yields also spiked on rising oil prices, concerns of an extra budget in Japan and continued political chaos in the UK. As of 7:00am ET, S&P futures are […]

EPA Unwinds Massive Biden-Era Auto Emissions Regulations That Had 2027 Deadline Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (Emphasis ours), The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a deregulatory action to delay compliance deadlines for Biden-era emission standards, in a bid to make vehicles more affordable for Americans while ensuring greater consumer choice, the agency said in a May 14 statement. Ford Motor […]

Samsung, Union Resume Talks After Labor Action Scare; Goldman Says “Korea: Buy” Downward momentum in South Korean stocks was halted on Monday as optimism returned to Samsung Electronics after the company and its union reopened talks to resolve contract disputes and avert a strike that could begin as soon as Thursday. Bloomberg reported that the union’s leader would “sincerely engage” with Samsung executives. The world’s most […]

Canada Rethinks Selling Its Crown Jewel Pipeline Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com, The Canadian federal government may reconsider a plan to privatize the Trans Mountain oil pipeline. Since the expanded TMX pipeline launched in 2024, exports to Asia—especially China—have surged, with up to 70% of shipments from British Columbia heading to Asian buyers by late 2025. Officials now see TMX as a highly […]

Behind Turkey’s Gold Sales: The Biggest Ever Plunge In Foreign Reserves Shortly after the Iran war started, with gold unexpectedly tumbling, we showed that the reason behind gold’s paradoxical move – after all, the precious metal has traditionally been a store of value in times of geopolitical stress – was the furious liquidation of gold by emerging markets, in this case Turkey, scrambling to obtain reserve dry powder so Ankara […]

Trump Tells Iran ‘Clock Is Ticking, Move Fast’ After New Peace Proposal As Analysts Predict Likely Return To War Update(1410ET): President Trump has warned Iran on Sunday that the “clock is ticking” as Pakistani-mediated talks have not only stalled, but show no signs at all of restarting anytime soon. “They better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” he wrote on Truth Social. “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” He […]

So Where Does Wokeism Come From? (Spoiler Alert: The French, Of Course!) Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.org, How did wokeism happen? A French intellectual, who goes by Brivael Le Pogam on X, has written a tightly focused and brief explanation of it worthy of Eric Hoffer, putting his finger on the thinking of French philospher-historian Michel Foucault, French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and French […]

Net Zero Fearmongering In Tatters After Climate Report ‘Implausibility’ Ruling Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org, The fallout from the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ruling that computer model high emissions pathway RCP8.5 is “implausible” is only just beginning. Most mainstream media fearmongering stories over the last 15 years need to be moved into the junk file, as do the increasingly […]