IEA Warns Escalation In US-Iran Hostilities Could Upend Oil Surplus Forecast

Despite the tentative recovery of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and the first build-up in global stocks since the war began, this week’s re-escalation of the U.S.-Iran hostilities could flip the outlook for an oil market surplus for next year, the International Energy Agency said on Friday. 

Oil prices have plunged since the United States and Iran signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) in the middle of June, with North Sea Dated prices down by $31 per barrel in June to $68 a barrel by early July, their lowest since January and $2 per barrel below pre-war levels, OilPrice reported.

And while the oil market is still expected to move to significant surplus towards the end of the year, IEA said that this is heavily predicated on the assumption that tanker flows through the Strait will gradually recover: “An escalation in hostilities on 7-8 July, however, clouds the outlook and could upend the forecast that sees the market flipping to a surplus next year,” the IEA said in its closely watched Oil Market Report for July. 

Since the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, tankers have rushed to exit the Persian Gulf, including millions of barrels of Iranian crude that Tehran couldn’t move past the U.S. blockade between mid-April and mid-June. As a result, global oil supply rebounded by a massive 4.1 million barrels per day (bpd) to 98.8 million bpd in June, amid a partial recovery in Gulf production, the IEA said.

However, global oil output remained about 9.4 million bpd below pre-war levels, with supply on track to decline by an average of 3.7 million bpd to 102.6 million bpd in 2026, “contingent on a swift de-escalation of renewed hostilities.” Meanwhile tanker crossings have slowed to a trickle, while insurers are reportedly demanding a pound of flash, with Reuters reported that “war insurance for ships inside the Gulf has already ticked higher towards 3% of a vessel’s value, up from 2% at the end of last week.” Meanwhile, quotes for coverage as high as 5% are still circulating. 

At the same time, global demand - which was hit by demand destruction when crude prices topped $100 early this year - is starting to recover from the lows seen in the second quarter, with annual declines easing from 4.8 million bpd in April-June to an expected yearly drop of 1.7 million bpd in the third quarter, the IEA reckons.

Despite the wave of crude managing to clear the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks, product supply and deliveries are much slower to rebound, with the markets still tight, the agency noted.

“The disconnect between apparently well supplied crude oil markets and tight product markets underpinned a rally in cracks and refinery margins to four-year highs by early July,” said the IEA.

“While concerns over jet fuel shortages have eased in recent weeks after refiners pushed output to new highs, diesel and gasoline markets have tightened, with gasoline cracks moving sharply higher.”

Here are the key highlights from the report:

• On demand, there has been significant sequential improvement with +1.2mbd YoY growth forecast in 4Q vs. -1.7mbd YoY in 3Q and -4.8mbd YoY in 2Q.  For context, Asia accounted for 2/3 of the peak demand drop. Overall, demand forecast increased slightly vs. last month report with 2026 now -1mbd YoY and 2027 +2mbd YoY (vs. -0.7mbd and +2.1mbd GS Research forecasts).
• On supply, June increased by 4.1mbd MoM to 98.8mbd, although still 9.4mbd below pre-war levels. Focusing on the Gulf, total June exports increased 6.5mbd MoM to 16.1mbd vs. 24mbd pre-war average.  In particular, it is worth noting that UAE (who recently left OPEC+) produced record volumes in June with further growth expected. 
• Inventory data showed 21mb increase in June, the first increase in four months following 360mb decline from March to May.  The IEA said that 69% of the proposed 400mb emergency inventory release has been completed, with uncertainty over the timing of release of the balance. 
• A recovery in world oil demand is underway, with consumption set to rise from its May nadir on seasonal trends and as pent-up demand is released in line with a rebound in product supplies. Annual contractions ease from 4.8 mb/d in 2Q26 to 1.7 mb/d in 3Q26, followed by a rise of 1.2 mb/d in 4Q26, for an overall decline of 1 mb/d this year. Forecast growth of 2 mb/d in 2027 results in a two-year pace of expansion well below historical trends. 
• Global oil supply rebounded by a sharp 4.1 mb/d to 98.8 mb/d in June, as a resumption of flows through the Strait of Hormuz underpinned a partial recovery in Gulf production. World output was nevertheless some 9.4 mb/d below pre-war levels, with supply on track to decline by an average of 3.7 mb/d to 102.6 mb/d in 2026, contingent on a swift de-escalation of renewed hostilities. If transit volumes improve, oil supply will expand by 7.5 mb/d next year. 
• Refined product cracks and margins surged to four-year highs in early July, as increased crude supplies pushed oil prices sharply lower, while product markets remained tight. Global refinery runs rose by 1.5 mb/d in June, down 6 mb/d y-o-y, with Middle East export refineries yet to restart, Russian throughputs curtailed by attacks and Asia still running at reduced rates. Global runs are expected to decline by 2.4 mb/d this year and rebound by 3.1 mb/d in 2027. 
• Global observed oil inventories rose for the first time in four months in June, by 21 mb, as sharply higher oil on water volumes more than offset continued draws in onshore tanks. Following a decline of 73 mb in May, total OECD stocks fell by a further 62 mb in June, of which an estimated 44 mb came from government stock releases. Non-OECD crude stocks eased by 37 mb in June, led by a 41 mb draw in China. 
• Benchmark crude oil prices continued to spiral lower in June, erasing all of their wartime gains, as tanker traffic out of the Gulf picked up and market focus shifted to the prospect of oversupply. North Sea Dated crude plunged by $22/bbl m-o-m, to around $68/bbl, with prompt time spreads reverting to contango. Prices rose after the ceasefire agreement was breached on 7-8 July, with Dated trading around $77/bbl at the time of writing. 

Here is the full visual recap, courtesy of Goldman

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 11:01

No Takers, Nor Tankers

By Molly Schwartz, cross-asset macro strategist at Rabobank

Daily crossings through the Strait of Hormuz increased substantially after the US and Iran announced a “peace” agreement in mid-June. However, those numbers have started to dwindle as the ceasefire—peacefire, shmeasefire—appears increasingly shaky. According to Bloomberg, the Joint Maritime Information Center said that traffic through the Strait remains at “reduced levels,” (around 24% of pre-war transit) even though US-assisted vessel transits have been largely uninhibited.

Reuters reports that “some war insurers advise shipowners to pause Hormuz voyages after attacks,” adding that “war insurance for ships inside the Gulf has already ticked higher towards 3% of a vessel’s value, up from 2% at the end of last week.” Meanwhile, quotes for coverage as high as 5% are still circulating. So even though the Strait is technically open, there don’t seem to be many takers—nor tankers.

Trump did declare just a few days ago that the ceasefire was “over,” with the US commencing strikes on Iranian sites, including the Iranshahr airbase, and Iran responding by attacking its neighbors in Kuwait and Jordan. Yesterday afternoon, explosions were heard in Bushehr, which is—likely not coincidentally—home to Iran’s only nuclear power plant. Initial reports suggest that the power plant itself was not hit. Brent crude oil prices did not move in reaction to the announcement.

Whether the ceasefire is truly “over,” or whether another MOU will emerge in the coming days (weeks? months?), remains very much an open question. Oil markets, however, remain as optimistic as ever. While Brent crude climbed by roughly $8, briefly trading above $80/bbl for the first time since 22 June, more than half of that move was retraced yesterday, with prices closing at around $76/bbl.

In other news, Anthropic has tapped former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke to join its Oversight Trust, which seeks to “keep the artificial intelligence company accountable to its public mission.” The importance of the Oversight Trust has only intensified following earlier events this year, when Anthropic delayed the release of its Mythos model and triggered an emergency meeting among global leaders to address concerns about its potentially dangerous capabilities.

New York Fed President, John Williams, made several notable comments today on inflation, that seem to be at odds with those of current Fed Chair Warsh. In a speech organized by the New York Fed, Williams highlighted his concerns about the inflationary effects of AI, saying that “if [AI demand] creates a sustained impulse to demand relative to supply in inflation, I do think that’s the kind of situation where you don’t look through.” Some readers may recall Warsh’s manifesto published to the Wall Street Journal in November of last year titled "The Federal Reserve’s Broken Leadership,” where Warsh calls attention to the disinflationary effects of AI, saying that “AI will be a significant disinflationary force, increasing productivity and bolstering American competitiveness.” While Williams also notes the potential for AI to “play out in a more benign way,” his aforementioned base case shines a light into the varying schools of thought and the potential for “good family fights” when the Fed next convenes.

Task Force Warsh also announced the individuals who will be leading each of his five Fed task forces:

• Communication: Former BoE governor Mervyn King, UW professor Peter Fisher, and former BCB President Arminio Fraga.
• Balance sheet: Harvard University professors Karen Dynan and Jeremy Stein, and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan.
• Data sources: Harvard University’s Raj Chetty, former Walmart CEO, Doug McMillon, and UChicago’s Kevin Murphy.
• Productivity and jobs: Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, Stanford’s Carles I. Jones, and Asha Sharma from Microsoft.
• Inflation framework: Harvard University’s Greg Mankiw, NYU’s Thomas Sargent, and the BIS’s former economic advisor, William White.

Canada’s Mark Carney spoke with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah (the first Canadian PM to make the trip since the year 2000) to discuss the war between the US and Iran, as well as opportunities for economic collaboration. This resulted in the signing of several MOUs, including one to “strengthen cooperation across key defense, economic, trade and investment, cultural, educational, scientific, and consular priorities. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is now also scheduled to attend the Canada Investment Forum in September.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 10:45

Guns Fall Silent As Trump Says US-Iran Talks On Again, But Insists 'In No Uncertain Terms, Ceasefire Is OVER'

The guns have actually been silent in the Middle East overnight, after two days of deadly strikes between the United States and Iran, amid a general return to premarket open headlines of 'peace imminent again' as mediators desperately work to get diplomacy back on track. The White House position is that the ceasefire is over but that Washington has agreed to reengage Tehran in mediated talks.

Trump indicates US has agreed to Iran talks, but United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that cease fire is over.

The New York Times writes early Thursday that "Qatar, which helped broker the U.S.-Iran truce last month, has been in talks with Washington and Tehran to de-escalate the crisis, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. In recent days, several other regional countries — Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, all of which host U.S. military facilities — said they have come under Iranian attack."

via Shutterstock/National Interest

The same report further says, "Even as the fighting appeared to subside on Friday, it remained unclear whether the latest mediation efforts could prevent that cycle from repeating." The situation has devolved into a "dangerous test of wills, with each side trying to show that it can absorb the other’s attacks and respond forcefully, without tipping the conflict back into full-scale war," NYT continues.

And separately Bloomberg also reports, "Talks between the US and Iran on a permanent peace deal are continuing, according to a US official, despite two days of clashes that threatened an already fragile ceasefire. The renewed hostilities risk undermining efforts to rebuild depleted global oil inventories, the International Energy Agency said."

Bloomberg continues: "Oil prices steadied on Friday after a bumpy week. While gasoline prices have fallen since the fragile ceasefire, they’ve lagged crude’s sharp decline, prompting one asset manager to buy protection against stickier-than-expected US inflation."

There appears real movement on this, given also that Reuters is freshly reporting that Qatar negotiators are currently in Iran to meet Iranian officials, as part of the effort to immediately de-escalate tensions and create conditions for broader negotiations.

Still, the crisis is on edge and full-scale war could return at any moment, also as the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency is once again alerting global vessels security threat in the Strait of Hormuz remains at its highest level.

In Iran, the burial of the slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has finally concluded, and the IRGC's top commander, Brigadier-General Ahmad Vahidi, has pledged vengeance against the US and Israel for the assassination, saying it won’t "be erased from the historical memory."

The Revolutionary Guard chief called for the "full realization of justice and a fitting response to the criminals, especially the child-killing American army." An estimated 41-43 million people attended the six-day funeral for the late Khamenei, according to Iranian media.

NEW: Iran warns it will retaliate against infrastructure attacks and strike Israel in response. pic.twitter.com/JmkyZ7Zeyy

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 10, 2026

In the meantime we commented overnight on who is not seeking permanent Iran peace at this point, on lingering concerns about the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. The Wall Street Journal in a Thursday evening report says that Israel has provided fresh intelligence to the White House indicating just such a Tehran-linked plot.

The timing is quite curious and interesting given it comes just as the warring sides standing on the brink of returning once again either to talks, or to full-scale war:

Israel shared new intelligence with the U.S. that it said indicated a fresh Iranian plan to kill President Trump, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that would mark an escalation in the war between Washington and Iran.

Iran for years has vowed openly to retaliate against Trump for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who was a top general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in the president’s first term. 

The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment. Iran’s Mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House referred The Wall Street Journal to comments the president made on Wednesday. 

The Israelis have remained deeply dissatisfied with terms laid out in the previously agreed-to MoU, and so have every incentive to goad Washington further into the conflict. Certainly many within the US administration know this, and so might be taking this new 'intelligence warning' - which was leaked rather quickly to major media - with the appropriate degree of skepticism. 

The US has still - somewhat surprisingly - affirmed it remains engaged in 'technical talks' with Iran, despite the prior days of tit-for-tat bombings. "Technical talks between the US and Iran are continuing, according to a US official, following two days of clashes that threatened to shatter an already fragile ceasefire between the two nations," reports Bloomberg, also late in the day Thursday. "The US is still committed to finding a solution with Iran, the official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter."

Israel says ready to attack Iran for 'third time if necessary' pic.twitter.com/KDkJ62iEfJ

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 10, 2026

So it appears there's still hope that things might not spiral further. As for the alleged assassination plot, this isn't the first time Iran has faced such accusations, and each time Tehran officials have vehemently denied them.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 10:40

Trump Refuses To Sign Landmark Housing Bill In Protest Over Stalled Elections Legislation

President Donald Trump declared Friday morning that he won't sign the sweeping bipartisan housing bill awaiting action on his desk in protest of the Senate's failure to pass his signature elections legislation. Unless the president issues an outright veto by midnight, however, the housing package will become law Saturday without his signature.

President Donald Trump attends an event to mark the launch of "Trump Accounts" in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., July 6, 2026. Photo by Evan Vucci/ Reuters

In a Friday morning Truth Social post, Trump said he was withholding his signature "in PROTEST" over the Senate's inability to pass the SAVE America Act, a comprehensive elections overhaul that would require photo identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register, and would bar most mail-in balloting, with exceptions for military service, disability, illness and travel.

The president asserted that the elections bill is "polling at 97% with the Republican Party" - a figure he offered without citing a source - and called its failure "a serious threat to any politician who votes against it." He renewed his demand that Senate Republicans "TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER," warning that Democrats would abolish the 60-vote rule "in their very first hour" back in power. Rendering "Democrats" throughout with a derisive misspelling, Trump added that the "title of DUMB" would revert to Republicans if the party allowed the stalemate to stand.

A Deadline, Not A Veto

This is of course performative unless Trump actually vetoes it. Under the Constitution, a bill becomes law automatically if the president neither signs nor vetoes it within 10 days, excluding Sundays, while Congress is in session. That clock on the housing measure - the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act - runs out at the end of Friday.

Because Congress has remained formally in session through the window, the "pocket veto" that would let the bill die quietly is widely viewed as unavailable. That leaves Trump two choices: veto the legislation outright, or let it lapse into law. His post on Friday, notably, promised only not to sign it.

A veto would face long odds. The Senate approved the package 85-5 on June 22, and the House passed it 358-32 - margins far beyond the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override. Congressional observers caution, though, that override votes can scramble such numbers, as some members retreat rather than be seen defying the president. Lawmakers overrode a Trump veto of a defense bill once before, in the final weeks of his first term.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a close Trump ally, has already conceded the likely endgame. "If he doesn't, it's still law," Johnson said last week of the president's refusal to sign.

The Housing Bill

The bipartisan measure marks the most comprehensive federal housing legislation in decades. It aims to expand supply and lower costs by cutting regulatory barriers to construction, streamlining reviews, encouraging local zoning reform and restricting large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes, alongside pilot programs to expand access to smaller mortgages.

Republicans had planned to campaign on the law this fall. With the average 30-year fixed mortgage hovering near 6.5 percent, affordability consistently ranks as voters' top concern heading into November's midterm elections - and Trump's approval on housing has slipped since he began blocking the bill.

Trump upended the bill's rollout on June 24, canceling a Capitol signing ceremony roughly an hour before it was to begin - with the stage, desk and presidential seal already set in Statuary Hall - and declaring on social media that he would not sign until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, which he labeled "a National Emergency." He has since dismissed the housing package as being "of minor importance" and a "yawn" next to the elections bill.

The tactic is familiar: earlier this year, the president derailed a bipartisan deal on surveillance authorities to press the same demand.

The SAVE America Act has passed the House but failed five times on the Senate floor, where Democrats are unified against it and Republicans' 53 seats fall short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. Four Republicans - Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - have twice voted no.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD, has flatly refused to gut the filibuster, telling Fox News that Republicans are "bound by arithmetic." Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the bill's most vocal Senate champion, has countered that the party is only "10 votes shy of cloture" and should force Democrats into a grinding floor fight. Roughly two dozen House conservatives, meanwhile, have vowed to block other legislation until the voting bill moves - a rebellion that stalled the annual defense bill and sent the House home early for its July Fourth recess.

Friday's post also appears to walk back a compromise Trump embraced only days ago. On Tuesday, he endorsed House GOP leaders' plan to pass pieces of the SAVE Act through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process - a package Johnson has dubbed "reconciliation 3.0." The president's return to demanding the filibuster's termination suggests that détente may already be fraying.

And Of Course, Outrage Ensues

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, who helped steer the housing bill through the Senate, urged Trump in a video posted to X to "sign the damn bill." Sen. Mark Kelly, D-AZ, accused the president of holding the legislation "hostage."

Republican patience is thinning in public, too. Tillis, who is retiring, reduced his objection to a sentence: "It's quite simple: It's a math problem." Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas quipped that any colleague not at least a little frustrated by now should question their own sanity. Thune, asked about the canceled signing last month, would say only that the decision was the president's call to make.

Trump has shown no sign of relenting. He promoted the SAVE Act from the National Mall during his July Fourth address, and in a weekend post warned that without it, "I don't want to be the last Republican President!"

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 10:25

Polymarket Seeks Approval To Bring Margin Trading To U.S. Customers

Authored by Olivier Acuna via CoinDesk,

Prediction market Polymarket applied for a license to offer U.S. users margin trading, enabling them to place bets with less upfront capital, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Polymarket takes another step in its return to the U.S. (Kanchanara/Unsplash)

Polymarket's U.S. affiliate, Coming Home GBA LLC, filed for a futures commission merchant license with the National Futures Association, Bloomberg said, citing a company representative. Polymarket will also require authorization from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for changes to its rulebook that would allow trading without fully collateralized positions.

Prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi offer yes-or-no wagers on the outcomes of events, such as weather, sports and elections. Margin trading lets investors open positions with less upfront capital, a practice common in traditional markets. Kalshi received clearance to offer margin trading in March.

Polymarket's application comes as prediction markets continue to grow. Volumes hit $51 billion last year and are on pace to reach about $240 billion in 2026. Wall Street broker Bernstein recently said it expects volume to rise to $1 trillion by 2030 as the sector evolves from niche wagering into wide-based "information markets" spanning sports, crypto, politics and the economy.

Polymarket's application follows a marketing campaign it announced Wednesday to convince policymakers, regulators and potential users that it is trustworthy. Four years ago, the company agreed to stop serving U.S. customers as part of a $1.4 million settlement with the CFTC, which alleged it had offered unregistered event-based derivatives.

Polymarket did not respond to a CoinDesk request for comment.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 10:05

Ryanair Passenger Partially Sucked Out Of Plane After Window Shatters

A 61-year-old Serbian man was almost sucked out of a Ryanair flight after a piece of the plane's engine broke off and struck a window on the Boeing 737-800, causing it to shatter. 

The man's wife and other passengers pinned the man to his seat for five minutes as his "head and shoulders" were hanging outside the plane, which had left Greece's Macedonia airport for Germany at 5:55 a.m. CNN Greece reports. 

"The plane window broke and his wife held him for 5 minutes from the feet so that he would not leave. With the help of many passengers, they managed to pull him into the cabin," said trade union official, Michalis Giannakos, adding "the injured person is in shock and with friction burns." 

Engine debris shattered a cabin window on a Ryanair Greece–Germany flight, nearly pulling a 61-year-old passenger out. She suffered friction burns. pic.twitter.com/cGh1Wwmoq3

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 10, 2026

The window shattering sounded like "a tire bursting," one passenger told Radio Thessaloniki, adding "We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams … for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door."

"The masks dropped and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window. Fortunately, he hadn’t taken off his seat belt."

BREAKING: Ryanair passenger reportedly saved from being sucked out the cabin after window fails during a flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen.

According to local media Ryanair flight FR1879, a Boeing 737-8AS, returned safely to Greece on Friday after part of a damaged engine… pic.twitter.com/YPgRodjPFp

— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) July 10, 2026

"A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memingen on Friday morning (10 July) returned to Thessaloniki shortly after take-off when a passenger window detached on the fly. The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal," the airline said in a statement cited by ENIKOS. 

"One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki," the statement continues. "In order not to be long overdue, an aircraft was mobilized to transport the passengers to Memingen, which departed Thessaloniki at 9:35 local time this morning."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 09:45

"GPIF To The Rescue?" Yen Jumps After Japan Urges Pension Funds To Invest More At Home

After a relentless collapse in the yen to a 40 year lows, the trajectory was finally dented overnight when Japan’s finance minister called for the nation’s massive pension funds to increase investments in domestic assets, boosting the yen from near four-decade lows and spurring a rally in bonds.

“One priority is to encourage households, as well as pension funds including the GPIF, to increase their investment in Japanese financial assets. We intend to pursue policies that support that objective,” Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Friday, referring to the Government Pension Investment Fund. It’s one of the world’s largest pensions with ¥293.6 trillion ($1.81 trillion) in assets.

The remarks in response to a question at a regular press briefing about government investment plans caught markets off guard, leading to a jump in the yen and a drop in bond yields. Both assets had been under considerable stress this week.

According to Bloomberg, Katayama’s comments on the GPIF were prepared in advance, citing a person familiar with the matter said. It’s unclear if they were intended to be form of verbal intervention, although they certainly impacted the yen more than the recent BoJ rate hike or ongoing currency jawboning.

Japan's giant GPIF pension fund is overseen by the labor ministry, not finance, and any changes to its investment strategy would have to go through an established process that would take time to implement. If any changes to allocations were to occur, the implications could spread beyond Japan. The nation is the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries with a $1.2 trillion stockpile, and almost $5 trillion of the country’s capital is deployed overseas.

Ironically, over the past decade, the big push domestically was for the GPIF to invest more abroad, especially in US equities, at a time when Japanese stocks languished for year after year. However, with the Nikkei now significantly outperforming the S&P, it is hardly a surprise that local authorities are pushing for another reallocation, this time from abroad back to home.

Katayama’s comments were in response to a question on how the government’s plan to increase investment in strategic areas, such as artificial intelligence, would benefit its people. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi unveiled a plan last month for ¥370 trillion to be invested in the economy over the course of 14 years, with more than a quarter of it earmarked for AI and chips alone.

“We want to ensure that the public can directly benefit from Japan’s economic growth,” Katayama said.

The Takaichi administration is a well-known proponent of accommodative monetary policy. An early draft of its economic policy guidelines released last month fanned market worries that the government is trying to exert influence over the BOJ, prompting several revisions to tame concerns. Katayama also said on Friday that monetary policy should be handled by the BOJ.

The call to reallocate investments signals the government’s intention to channel more household and institutional savings into domestic assets as the nation enters a new phase of economic growth accompanied by positive interest rates. Japanese equities have performed strongly this year, with the Nikkei 225 recently climbing above the 70,000 mark for the first time.

While it’s not clear how seriously the government is considering the issue, a reallocation of funds toward domestic investment would be a boost for the yen near 40-year lows. Besides rate-differentials with the US that have weighed on the currency, the yen has also been under pressure from capital outflows and concerns about the Bank of Japan’s independence. 

In immediate response to the comments, the yen strengthened to as firm as 161.29 per dollar before paring some gains. Bonds rallied, with yields across the curve declining about 10 basis points.

GPIF’s potential changes “cannot be ignored” given the size of its assets under management, said Yugo Tsuboi, chief strategist at Daiwa Securities. Katayama’s comments “could help sustain a ‘triple rally’ of bonds, the yen and stocks in the Japanese market.”
Some market participants doubted whether the comments will lead to any changes in asset allocation.

However, some traders doubt whether the comments will lead to any changes in asset allocation.

In a note from Goldman's FX team titled "The Scope for Japanese Repatriation Flows" (available to pro subs), the bank cautions that the comments do not signal an actual shift in government policy. Their framing is that meaningful repatriation flows, if they occur, would be one of the more credible paths to the yen correcting its severe undervaluation - while noting investor anticipation of such flows has repeatedly picked up over the past year (e.g., after the snap election) without materializing.

"We have long been skeptical of the scope for significant JPY-positive repatriation flows without a more favorable rate differential, especially since GPIF also has a return target that it needs to achieve. But any meaningful reallocation back towards domestic assets should be a source of support for the Yen, in addition to any rise in recession risk or more aggressive BoJ hikes" wrote Goldman strategist Karen Reichgott Fishman

In a separate note titled "GPIF to the Rescue?", Goldman said that Katayama's remarks sparked a JGB reversal rally, with 5y+ JGBs richening 5–11.5bps, but here too the bank's stance was skeptical, calling the rally "an overreaction," and noting that the FinMin used the broad term "Japanese financial assets" and did not explicitly commit GPIF to buying JGBs in size. They maintain a structurally bearish bias on ultra-long JGBs ahead of 20y/40y supply, and don't see this as a structural turnaround. 

Others agreed: “The macroeconomic backdrop has not changed, so it is difficult to see the yen strengthening for long,” said Kazushige Kaida, head of FX sales at State Street Bank & Trust Co.’s Tokyo branch. “If the latest comments suggest that the government is simply looking for ways to ease the pain of its reflationary policy, rather than abandoning it, then the broader story of yen weakness remains intact.”

The GPIF sets asset allocation parameters every five years. In March 2025, the fund decided to keep splitting a quarter of its funds equally between domestic stocks and bonds, foreign equities and debt. The fund also cut the maximum deviation from the target to 5-6 percentage points depending on movements by the various asset classes, from 6-8 percentage points.

GPIF posted its third best annual return on record in the 12 months ended March 31, according to a statement earlier this month. About half of the fund’s assets are invested overseas. The combined assets under management of Japan’s four public pension funds, led by GPIF, total about ¥332 trillion.

A shift “toward Japanese financial assets would be positive for Japanese equities,” said Yukihiro Kawanishi, a senior strategist at Aizawa Securities. “It could also encourage overseas investors, who have already moved ahead of the trend, to increase their allocations.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 09:40

The post Industrial Policy Is Like Dieting: We Always Do It appeared first on CEPR.

JPMorgan Says The Real Threat To Bitcoin Isn't Strategy (MSTR), It's Private Blockchains

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Strategy’s recent bitcoin sales and its formal monetization program have rattled investors, but JPMorgan analysts see a bigger danger to bitcoin: blockchain adoption that routes around public networks and the tokens that ride on them.

In a report led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou (ZH: available here for professional subscribers), the bank argued that Strategy is not the main structural threat to the asset. 

The company sold 3,588 bitcoin for $216 million in early July to cover preferred dividends, its largest disposal on record, and such sales can add bursts of selling pressure. The deeper concern, the analysts said, is where tokenization, payments and settlement end up.

Should that activity settle on permissioned rails rather than public chains, the crypto ecosystem could face a structural de-rating — thinner liquidity, weaker capital flows and slower on-chain volume — a drag that would reach bitcoin in time.

Institutions have leaned toward permissioned blockchains, which offer privacy, know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering controls, governance, throughput, legal accountability and regulatory certainty. 

That preference, per JPMorgan, creates a competitive problem for public networks like Ethereum.

The analysts cited the Bank for International Settlements, which has warned against public permissionless chains for systemic financial infrastructure and has pushed instead for “unified ledgers” that hold tokenized central bank money, bank deposits and assets inside regulated walls.

Tokenization as a real-world use case

Banks are building to that spec. Tokenized deposits — digital claims on bank balances, backed by banking regulation and deposit insurance — stand out as the clearest case. Should such deposits spread in the non-transferable forms regulators favor, they could crowd out stablecoins in institutional payments. 

SWIFT’s blockchain project and central bank digital currency efforts such as the digital euro and digital yuan would reinforce that regulated lane.

Real-world asset tokenization tells a similar story. The market sits near $50 billion, much of it on Ethereum for now, though the analysts read that as early experimentation rather than a settled structure. 

As adoption matures, issuance, custody and settlement could migrate to private infrastructure, leaving public chains for distribution and interoperability. DTCC and Securitize show the pattern in motion, and the analysts questioned whether public settlement is even the most efficient model for regulated firms, given the capital savings of deferred, netted settlement.

What could prove JPMorgan wrong

The Clarity Act, even should it pass this year, might not lift the threat; it could embolden bank-issued deposit tokens at the expense of public stablecoins. 

The analysts flagged three ways their thesis breaks: a hybrid model where both chain types matter, stronger stablecoin adoption under friendly rules, or bitcoin holding its role as “digital gold” and a debasement hedge whatever happens across the rest of crypto.

JPMorgan's full report is available here for pro subs...

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 09:25

Trump Took Old Air Force One To Leave Turkey As Security Measure: White House

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

The White House said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s departure from the NATO summit in Turkey aboard the old Air Force One was a “distraction and misdirection” intended to address threats against him.

The decision to have Trump travel aboard the old Air Force One aircraft came after Trump said he was at the top of Iran’s kill list following renewed conflict between the United States and Iran. The transportation swap took place just one week after the president took his first flight on the new Air Force One.

“As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal—including distraction and misdirection—to address those threats,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Cheung defended the security capabilities of the new Air Force One, a $400 million Boeing 747-8 luxury jet that was gifted to the federal government by the Qatari government last year, after reports suggested that the Secret Service advised the president to take the old Air Force One on Wednesday.

“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Cheung said.

In a social media post on Thursday, Trump said the new Air Force One was being sent to Mildenhall Air Force Base in the United Kingdom to give U.S. military members an opportunity to tour the aircraft.

“For old time’s sake, we’ll be taking the former Air Force One, from Turkey to Mildenhall, a short trip that is totally worth doing in order to give our Great Military Heroes a chance to appreciate our beautiful new addition to the Air Force Fleet!” Trump said.

In another social media post on July 8, Trump confirmed that he had landed at Mildenhall Air Force Base and met up with the new aircraft. He said the flight to the base represented “virtually no deviation” from the flight path back to the United States following his trip to the NATO summit.

Trump later departed from Mildenhall Air Force Base for his return trip to the United States aboard the new Air Force One.

During a news conference at the NATO summit on Wednesday, Trump discussed the threat posed against his life by Iran following U.S. retaliatory strikes against the country after it fired missiles at commercial ships in the Straight of Hormuz earlier this week. “I’m number one on the kill list for Iran,” Trump said.

Trump also said the temporary ceasefire deal with Iran was over on Wednesday after the United States and Iran exchanged strikes on Tuesday.

“To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum,” Trump said, later adding, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and has not received a response before publication time.

Renewed Conflict With Iran

The U.S. military launched precision strikes against more than 80 Iranian targets on Tuesday in response to what it said was a “clear and dangerous violation of the ceasefire” by Iran. The strikes came after Iran attacked three commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

On Wednesday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it carried out a joint missile and drone operation against key U.S. military sites in Bandar Salman, Bahrain’s Fifth Naval District, and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Iran also said it shot down a U.S. MQ9 drone that attempted to interfere with the operation.

U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that U.S. forces completed another round of strikes against Iran, hitting about 90 military targets, including air defense systems, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, coastal surveillance assets, and military logistics infrastructure.

“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway,” U.S. Central Command said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 08:45

SK Hynix ADRs Priced At 3% Premium As Wall Street Readies Wave Of Leveraged ETFs

The next test of the AI trade arrives today, as South Korean memory-chip maker SK Hynix's American depositary receipts begin trading under the temporary ticker SKHYV.

Shares were priced at about a 3% premium to Thursday's close of its ordinary shares in South Korea. The $26.5 billion offering attracted demand for roughly seven times the shares available, forcing the chipmaker to scale back allocations to major investors, according to Bloomberg.

The company sold 177.9 million ADRs at $149 each, raising $26.5 billion, surpassing Alibaba's US debut to become the third-largest listing in history. Each ADR represents one-tenth of a Seoul-listed common share, giving US investors direct exposure to the world's leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory amid the AI boom that could soon unlock the Physical AI boom.

According to the report, Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners received about $5 billion of ADRs, roughly $2 billion less than indicated. Over 500 institutional investors placed orders, including long-only funds, technology specialists, and sovereign wealth funds. The allocation remained concentrated, with 10 investors taking half the deal and the top 25 accounting for about two-thirds.

Wall Street analysts weighed in with their first takes of the deal, courtesy of Bloomberg:

Jung In Yun, CEO at Fibonacci Asset Management

• "I take 3% premium as a constructive signal. It shows that global investors are still willing to pay up for direct US access despite the recent volatility in Korean equities"
• From the company's and banks' perspective, the level looks sensible; it is strong enough to demonstrate demand, but not so aggressive that it creates unnecessary aftermarket risk
• In the current market, a clean, stable debut matters more than squeezing out the last few percentage points of valuation

Sanghyun Park, founder of Clepsydra Capital

• It shows global funds accept paying up to bypass local index and currency friction and direct exposure to the company's HBM dominance
• The banks capitalized on the limit to conversion that prevents arb traders from instantly erasing the spread on the first trading day
• This avoids the typical Korea Discount seen with legacy local names and points toward a TSMC-style scarcity model
• "Since 3% is just the primary floor and the float is so heavily choked, we could easily see the premium gap much higher once US trading opens on Friday"

Travis Lundy, an independent special situations analyst who publishes on Smartkarma

• "To me that is not that much of a premium. Eminently reasonable given the current swap rates on owning SK Hynix" local shares
• The 3% premium to Thursday's close is actually a discounted price to Wednesday's close and every other close for the past few weeks when investor demand was "multiple times" the offering size
• There is an interesting dynamic whereby if the headroom expands, it will take pressure off the banks to fund local into swaps, which should reduce the swap rate, which should in turn reduce the ADR premium slightly

Dilin Wu, a strategist at Pepperstone Group

• "The 3% premium tells you the roadshow demand was strong enough to price above Thursday's Korean close — and that's the first concrete evidence that the accessibility premium is real"
• The real test will be the first two weeks of trading before upcoming earnings; if the ADR consistently trades above the Korean share dollar equivalent, it confirms US investors are willing to pay a premium for accessibility — and that should pull the Korean shares higher
• The ADRs could be included in the Nasdaq 100 in December; once that inclusion happens, passive fund inflows from vehicles like the Invesco QQQ become a mechanical buying force

Francis Oh, head of Asia business development at Rex Financial, which provides exchange-traded products

• "The current 3% premium should not be over-interpreted at this early stage"
• "TSMC's 18% premium reflects structural friction that accumulated over years, not a level established immediately post-listing; any meaningful convergence or divergence for SKHY toward comparable levels is more likely to unfold as a gradual"

SK Hynix's ADR offering comes weeks after SpaceX tapped the public markets in the largest initial public offering in history, while Alphabet is raising $85 billion to fund its AI buildout. Traders are betting heavily that AI-related demand is a secular growth story for memory stocks, which have historically been viewed as more cyclical.

Bloomberg expects that the US debut of SK Hynix will unlock a new "wave of leverage ETFs" tied to the chipmaker's American depositary receipts. It expects ProShares, Leverage Shares and Rex Shares are some of the fism planning to products taht offer 2x daily returns on the memory chip giant.

Bloomberg Intelligence noted:

A fresh pool of leveraged US-listed ETPs would mean the daily rebalancing flows would grow larger, potentially fueling already heightened volatility. The size of the leveraged products also made it difficult to meet the promise of delivering twice daily returns, creating a tracking gap.

The key question is whether SK Hynix's blockbuster ADR offering can juice memory stocks again, especially after our note earlier this week, "South Korea Falls Into Bear Market As Memory Euphoria Fizzles."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 08:25

Futures Flat As Traders Brace For Weekend Iran Escalation

US equity futures are flat on the final trading session of the week, with Tech lagging, as traders hold off on big bets ahead of the weekend, with the fragile truce in the Middle East keeping geopolitical risk front of mind. Overnight, the US said Iran talks will continue, a positive step amid the recent escalation near the Strait of Hormuz (then again the market never reacted negatively to the latest strikes in the first place). As of 7:45am ET, S&P futures are flat and Nasdaq futures are down 0.2%; pre-market, Mag 7 stocks are mixed: META +1.8%, MSFT +0.9%, while NVDA and AAPL are down 0.6% and 0.4%, respectively. Notably, META has been outperforming since the announcement of its Muse Spark AI model and its strategy for the cloud business. SemiAnalysis, whose "unbiased", often wrong but never in doubt, views at some point be investigated by a regulator, also struck a positive note on META’s AI development (here). Bond yields are 1–2 bp lower, and USD is mostly unchanged. Commodities are mixed: WTI is down 0.2%; base metals are higher, while precious metals are mostly lower. The US economic data calendar empty for the session. Next week includes June CPI, PPI data. Fed calendar empty for the session. 

In premarket trading, Magnificent 7 stocks are mixed with Meta rising 3% after research firm SemiAnalysis posted a positive report on the social media giant’s AI compute business (Microsoft +0.4%, Amazon unchanged, Alphabet +0.1%, Apple -0.4%, Tesla unchanged, Nvidia -0.4%).

• CCC Intelligent Solutions (CCC) jumps 9% after Reuters reports that the insurance software company is exploring a sale.
• Circle Internet Group (CRCL) gains 13% after the stablecoin issuer received approval from the US Comptroller of the Currency to establish “First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A.,” a national trust bank that will offer digital asset services.
• Delta Air Lines (DAL) slips 2.8% after the airline posted second quarter results.
• EquipmentShare.com (EQPT) gains 13% after the company announced a $500 million share buyback.
• Fermi (FRMI ) down -17% after offering $350 million in convertible senior notes
• Twilio (TWLO) climbs 2% as Stifel upgrades to buy on the company’s potential to capitalize on the current AI cycle.
• WD-40 (WDFC) rises 14% after the lubricant spray maker boosted its net sales forecast for the full year.

In other AI news, JPMorgan has built an array of AI-powered investing agents that beat 60/40 portfolio in back-tests. OpenAI and Google confirmed they have been supplying AI services to Singapore-based subsidiaries of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, the Financial Times reports. Netflix is said to be considering steps to deal with signs of declining subscriber engagement, according to the WSJ.  Bayer sold a minority stake in its contraceptives business to Apollo for €3 billion ($3.4 billion) and will use the funds raised to help cover its ballooning litigation costs tied to the herbicide Roundup. Polymarket is seeking regulatory approval to offer margin trading in the US, which would let users bet on events with less capital upfront.

We end a week characterized by thematic rotations, signs of a summer trading lull and low volatility at the index level. Brent crude traded near $76.50 a barrel, swinging between small gains and losses after a volatile stretch. Talks between the US and Iran are continuing despite days of fighting that drove a steep drop in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The risk of further escalation is expected to keep investors cautious as they close out the week.

“Over the weekend, discussions between the US and Iran are expected to continue,” said David Manso, chief investment officer at CaixaBank AM. “Oil prices could provide a useful gauge of investor sentiment and expectations regarding the evolution of the situation.”

Yet away from geopolitics, things are about to get busier soon, with Tuesday’s blitz of five major US bank results heralding the start of the earnings season. And speaking of rotation, Lilian Chovin at Coutts in London, notes that the firm has moved a bit underweight US equities. “Other regions are probably better placed right now to navigate the coming few months. Obviously by reducing our US exposure, we have reduced our exposure to tech mega cap.”  The Coutts team remains positive on the AI theme, he explains. “It’s more nuanced than people selling tech to go into defensive sectors. We’ve seen a rotation within tech, caused by some noise around semiconductors.” 

After an unprecedented rally in chipmakers and other AI buildout stocks helped markets shrug off higher oil prices and elevated bond yields, the bar is now high for companies to justify their lofty valuations. For hyperscalers, the onus is on proving that the spending can generate strong returns.

“What remains to be confirmed is whether growth can hold up despite that pressure, with the AI capex cycle continuing to support investment, revenues and earnings,” said Florian Ielpo, head of macro at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. “Expectations are high, but the real test is whether earnings can keep validating the expansion story.”

This morning another company capitalized on the chip bubble when SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in its ADR offering, the largest ever US first-time share sale by a foreign company. The company sold 177.9 million ADRs for $149 apiece, each equivalent to a 10th of a Seoul-traded common share. Hynix’s US debut is set to spur a wave of leveraged ETF product launches. 

Analysts have upgraded S&P 500 earnings estimates ahead of the second-quarter reporting season, setting the bar high in “an atypical move,” according to HSBC strategists. The Street now expect profits to rise 22% from a year earlier, the highest in the post-pandemic period. Meanwhile, with Q2 reports due shortly, an interesting set-up is emerging between earnings season expectations and headline risk, notes Bloomberg’s equity derivatives specialist Christian Dass. Persistently low implied correlation leaves the VIX vulnerable to a sharp repricing if markets become increasingly driven by macro headlines rather than stock specific fundamentals.

In politics, Trump fired two Democratic members of the US Election Assistance Commission, while the Republican member resigned. Graham Platner’s exit from the Maine Senate race has set off a scramble to find a replacement to take on Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins, with at least six Democrats entering the field.

In other assets, carry trades are seeing the most compelling backdrop in more than two decades, according to Goldman Sachs, while an unprecedented divergence in the oil-market crack spread gauge are prompting Vanguard to buy insurance against stickier-than-expected US inflation. 

Trade during the European session has been indecisive and non-committal alongside a particularly slow news cycle. The Stoxx 600 has oscillated around the unchanged mark: tech and energy sectors are the worst performers, while telecoms and miners are the biggest gainers. Here are some of the biggest movers on Friday:

• EasyJet shares jump as much as 15% after the budget airline received a fresh bid from private equity firm Apollo that beats a rival proposal from Castlelake. The shares remain below both offer prices.
• Vodafone shares soar as much as 14% after its biggest shareholder Emirates Telecommunications Group agreed to sell its entire 16% stake in the firm to a vehicle controlled by billionaire Xavier Niel.
• Voestalpine, Salzgitter and ArcelorMittal rose after JPMorgan upgraded the steel producers. The bank says it expects 2Q reporting to focus on the impact of cuts to EU steel imports and import tariffs effective from July, which have the potential to transfer demand to EU steel producers.
• EMS-Chemie shares gain as much as 3.5% after it reported better-than-expected first-half sales and profit and raised its net sales forecast for the year.
• Hays shares rise as much as 13% after the recruitment company reported stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter fees and forecast full 2026 profit to be at top end of the consensus range.
• St James’s Place shares fall as much as 7% after Financial News reported that one of the wealth manager’s largest advice firms has decided to exit the group, spotlighting ongoing retention troubles.
• Duerr shares fall as much as 4% as Berenberg downgrades the German stock to hold from buy and slashes its price target almost in half, citing dependency to automotive original equipment manufacturers.
• Glenveagh Properties drops as much as 5.1% after being downgraded at Deutsche Bank, as analysts believe the Irish housebuilder is fairly valued following recent gains.
• Troax shares fall as much as 6.6% after Berenberg downgraded the Swedish maker of machinery parts and warehouse fittings to hold from buy, citing a tough automotive end-market and the likelihood of a slow margin recovery.

The mood in Asia was more upbeat with the MSCI APAC index up 0.8%, boosted by a rally in tech shares. Asian stocks climbed, boosted by a rally in tech shares amid optimism ahead of the US listing by South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index jumped as much as 1.7%, the most in a week. Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were the top contributors to the benchmark’s advance and led a 5% surge in the Kospi. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up almost 2%. SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in its American depositary receipt offering, powering through recent volatility in global semiconductor stocks. Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics’ Executive Chairman Jay Lee is seeking to meet with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang in the US late July to discuss the former’s investment plans in South Korea’s southwest area, according to a media report. Elsewhere, trading in Taiwan was halted as a strong typhoon approached the island. Japan called on its pension funds, which include one of the world’s largest, to invest in domestic assets. Here Are the Most Notable Movers

• Shares of Japanese wafer maker Sumco rallied as much as 15% to hit their upper daily limit after Micron’s plan to invest in Taiwan’s GlobalWafers was seen as a sign of rising demand in the sector.
• Lenovo’ shares rise as much as 9.2% after Morgan Stanley upgrades the Chinese device maker and more than doubles the price target, citing its ability to pass through higher component costs amid AI-driven demand.
• Zhipu shares drop as much as 9.7% in Hong Kong, paring a sharp three-day rally, after Goldman initiated coverage at neutral, saying their valuation fairly reflects the competitiveness of the company’s AI models.
• Mitsubishi Motors shares climbed as much as 17%, the most since December 2024, after the vehicle maker announced a tie-up to produce humanoid robots with a Tokyo-based startup.
• Fast Retailing shares slipped as much as 3.7%, the most since May 12, after the Uniqlo owner’s 3Q earnings beat was seen as priced in

In FX, the dollar dipped 0.1% in a third straight day of losses. Bonds extended a rebound, with the yield on 10-year Treasuries falling two basis point to 4.54%. The yen outperformed major currencies, rising 0.4% after Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said the government wants pension funds to increase investment in domestic assets.

In rates, treasuries are slightly richer across the curve following similar price action across European bonds with oil prices steady. US yields are 1bp-2bp lower with curve spreads within a basis point of Thursday’s close, 10-year near 4.535% with bunds and gilts in the sector also about 1.5bp richer on the day. During Asia session, yen and JGBs advanced after Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama called on pension funds, including the GPIF, to invest in domestic assets. Long-end JGB yields ended more than 10bp lower. US session has no major scheduled events.  IG dollar issuance slate empty so far. Four borrowers priced $2.25b in new US investment-grade bonds Thursday, pushing weekly volume through $51b and more than double forecasts. Issuers paid about 2bps in new issue concessions on deals that were 4.2 times covered.

In commodities, Brent crude futures are down 0.5% and around the $76/bbl mark with traders awaiting further directional clues from events in the Middle East. WTI crude oil futures little changed as US and Iran continue talks despite a flare-up in fighting. Precious metals are on the back foot with spot gold and silver down 0.6% and 0.8% respectively. Bitcoin is higher by 1.5%. 

The US economic data calendar empty for the session. Next week includes June CPI, PPI data. Fed calendar empty for the session. Next week Federal Reserve Chairman Warsh testifies before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees on its Semi-Annual Monetary Policy Report.

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight News

US-Iran negotiations on a permanent peace deal are continuing, according to an American official, despite two days of clashes that threatened to unravel the ceasefire. BBG

Israel shared new intelligence with the U.S. that it said indicated a fresh Iranian plan to kill President Trump, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that would mark an escalation in the war between Washington and Iran. This news that comes just 24 hours after Trump unexpectedly switched back to the old Air Force One for his return flight from the NATO summit in Turkey as a “security precaution” (the New Air Force One doesn’t have the same security features as the old one). Iran for years has vowed openly to retaliate against Trump for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who was a top general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in the president’s first term. WSJ 

The UAE boosted crude production to an all-time high last month, pumping 4.1 million b/d on average in June. IEA 

Global diesel market faces a significant supply crunch as Russia bans exports due to domestic shortages following Ukraine strikes. FT

Japan’s Finance Minister, Satsuki Katayama, sparked a jump in the yen on Friday when she said the government would pursue policies to encourage pension funds to buy more Japanese assets. Japan’s biggest public pension fund will likely ignore the call to boost domestic investment, at least in the short run, because of strict rules governing asset allocation and its public mandate. BBG

Japan’s producer prices picked up in June to the fastest pace since early 2023, reinforcing the case for the BOJ to keep hiking rates. BBG

Taiwan halted trading on its stock exchange and closed schools as Typhoon Bavi approached the island. TSMC postponed its monthly sales disclosure to Monday. BBG

South African economic growth is on an upswing as efforts to improve governance and critical infrastructure are lifting bottlenecks that have held it back for years, according to Standard Bank’s chief economist. BBG

SemiAnalysis thinks Meta should be talked about alongside OpenAI and Anthropic as the top three frontier AI labs in the world (of the hyperscalers, SemiAnalysis thinks Meta, not Google, has the best chance of catching up with Anthropic and OpenAI). SemiAnalysis, which may or may not have a conflict of interest

Trump fired two Democratic members of the US Election Assistance Commission, while the Republican member resigned.

Graham Platner’s exit from the Maine Senate race has set off a scramble to find a replacement to take on Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins, with at least six Democrats entering the field: BBG

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsqauwk

Asia-Pac stocks traded entirely in the green, as they followed the tech-led gains seen stateside. Military strikes continued on Thursday, but energy prices and equity markets seemed to have brushed it aside and instead took a stronger liking to President Trump’s comments, in which he said Iran had reached out to the US and wanted to make a deal, easing concerns over a further escalation that could threaten energy infrastructure. To note, the Taiwan markets were closed due to the typhoon, and worries of the typhoon hitting China and Japan. ASX 200 initially opened with modest losses but has since reversed and printed modest gains. Metals & Mining topped the sector pile, cutting 4 consecutive days of losses, while Health Care was the sector laggard. Nikkei 225 gained, with SUMCO leading the way as it benefited from the semiconductor strength stateside. On the earnings front, Seven & I and Fast Retailing both posted strong earnings and raised their FY guidance; however, shares traded lower after highlighting the effects of a weaker yen. KOSPI surged, helped by gains in Samsung Electronics while SK Hynix shares traded choppy ahead of its US ADR listing. The choppiness in SK Hynix comes as investors position themselves for the ADR, with analysts stating that the US ADR may be preferred over its domestic listing, due to US ADRs commonly trading at a premium (typically at a 5-15% premium). Shanghai Comp. and Hang Seng were firmer, with another set of IPOs in Hong Kong, resulting in 15 listings this week. Today, markets were focused on Nexchip Semiconductor. The IPO price was set at HKD 32.30/shr, and shares rose at the open and briefly topped HKD 36/shr but have since come off.

Top Asian News

• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said they are to pursue steps to promote investment in Japanese assets by GPIF and others.
• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama does not comment on specific bond yield levels; specific monetary tools are up to the BoJ, closely monitoring economic indicators and market situations. Important that the government position secures market confidence. Will ensure fiscal sustainability to gain market trust. BoJ can adjust monetary policy regardless of what the government said. Predicts gradual increases in interest rates as the government is engaged in a proactive fiscal policy. Want to speed up discussions on expansion of JGB products targeting households.
• Japan's GPIF spokesperson said they are aware of Finance Minister Katayama's comments but declines to comment.
• Japan's Economy Minister Kiuchi said the government has consistently communicated its stance of taking policy that heeds to fiscal sustainability.

European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.1%) began the session on a weaker footing despite APAC optimism ahead of SK Hynix’s US debut (KOSPI +2.5% at close). Geopolitical newsflow quietened overnight, as such energy benchmarks are off best levels with Brent around USD 75/bbl. IBEX continues to outperform after it slumped earlier in the week (also has more defensive composition), while tech heavy AEX is the worst performer as top constituent ASML looks to SK’s ADR debut. European sectors opened with a positive bias and continue this way. Comms and Travel/Leisure outperform, Tech and Energy are the laggards for the above factors. In terms of individual movers, Infineon (-2.7%) said it is raising prices in some segments; EasyJet (+14%) agreed to a GBP 5.7bln takeover by Apollo at 715p/shr; Vodafone (+11%) French telecom tycoon Niel acquired E&’s stake for a GBP 0.15/shr premium.

Top European News

• UK Chancellor Reeves is to announce a new City "skills compact" that will commit financial firms to retraining thousands of workers for the AI revolution, The Guardian reported.

FX

• G10s are mixed against the Buck. JPY leads after FinMin Katayama touted measures to promote domestic inflows, Kiwi continues to eek gains post-RBNZ as markets look to price a cumulative 50bps tightening by year end and NOK is the worst performer after broadly cool inflation data.
• USD a touch weaker as JPY firms alongside the tempered recent Gulf updates. Geopolitical newsflow quietened overnight, with energy benchmarks off best levels with Brent around USD 75/bbl, about 5 Bucks off the week’s highs. DXY slipped throughout APAC as the JPY firmed, but found buyers below 21DMA at 100.85 which has proven support in recent sessions.
• JPY digests updates from FinMin Katayama who said she was to pursue steps to promote investment in Japanese assets by GPIF and others. This, on the face of it, would be a textbook tactic to encourage domestic investment and passively limit outflows, especially with a large composition (50%) of pension funds allocated to foreign investments. Several strategists note this is a positive sign in attempts to shore up the currency; though CapEco said “Much of its domestic bond portfolio is invested passively, and shifting more assets into domestic bonds would come at a sizeable fiscal cost if it requires selling equities”, and others highlight Katayama is not in a position to direct changes, it would be under the jurisdiction of the Labour Ministry. USD/JPY gradually trundled lower from a 162.50 peak, to mark a trough below 161.30 (session low 161.28), with a modest kneejerk lower on not-too-surprising BoJ sources. ING notes the JPY-funded carry keeps risks to the upside for the pair.
• NOK is the clear underperformer vs. both the USD and SEK after the soft inflation data series. Most metrics cooled beneath expectations, core Y/Y the sole figure rising above consensus, albeit unch. from May. CPI-ATE, the Norges Bank’s preferred gauge of inflation fell was 2.9%, well below the Bank’s estimate of 3.3%, will likely provide conviction for doves with the bank likely to remain on hold in the August meeting; then tighten in September should the next (August) CPI metrics not provide a dovish surprise. NOK/SEK fell from a 0.9940 peak to mark a trough at 0.9882. 8th July low at 0.9861 is the next level below.
• South Korean Forex Authority said USD/KRW market remains misaligned with economic fundamentals.

Fixed Income

• Overall, fixed benchmarks are firmer in reaction to the modest but increasing pullback seen in the energy space overnight and as JGBs lead on domestic updates.
• JGBs got to a high of 127.76 in the European morning, continuing the overnight rally after comments from Japanese Finance Minister Katayama, who said that pension funds should be encouraged to invest more in the domestic market. Commentary that underpinned Japanese assets across the board, and sent the 10yr yield lower by around 16bps on the day, down to 2.71% and now essentially flat on the month, reversing from the 2.89% YTD high.
• Commentary that also lifted peers at the time. While the shift would be a positive for the Japanese market generally, there are a few unknowns, most pertinently being whether Katayama can make such an announcement as the GPIF is under the Labour Ministry, not the Finance Ministry. As such, for FX in particular, there is an argument that Katayama’s commentary is conducting another form of jawboning, and therefore the move may well fade in the days/weeks ahead, unless a relevant official to the GPIF (i.e. Ueno, or PM Takaichi) backs the shift publicly.
• USTs got to a 109-12 peak in the early morning, as energy hit a low and the JGB-driven move topped out. Since, newsflow has been particularly light with the market essentially waiting for a resumption of negotiations or strikes, though as is often the case we might not get clarity on the next step until the weekend.
• Bunds followed suit, peaking at 125.74 with gains of around 35 ticks. Specifics limited. Continued focus on the EU funding plans, and the lack of agreement on the next 7yr plan is arguably supporting EGBs for net-contributing nations, as no agreement would see the current EUR 1.4tln figure continue as opposed to the planned uplift to EUR 2tln.
• Gilts opened lower by a few ticks, before then swiftly moving above the 88.00 mark to a 88.07 peak, in-fitting with the above. Action that leaves it just above Wednesday’s high but someway shy of the 88.93 opening level at the start of the week. Last night the first tally was done for the Labour nominations, and while the count theoretically leaves space for a challenger it is not realistic and therefore Burnham is now formally, for all intents and purposes, the incoming UK PM.
• Italy sold EUR 7.5bln vs exp. 6.0-7.5bln 3.00% 2029, 3.35% 2033 & 3.95% 2041 BTPs.
• China's MOF sold 2-year and 3-year bonds. 2-year sold at 1.2305%. 3-year sold at 1.2629%.
• Australia sold AUD 900mln 1.75% 2032 AGBs: b/c 3.16x (prev. 4.10x), average yield 4.6189% (prev. 4.1987%).

Commodities

• The geopolitical situation appears to have calmed down this morning, with no fresh reports of strikes on Iran/regional neighbours. However, the situation remains tense given some of yesterday’s actions. Iran reported a couple of strikes at two military bases, but US officials denied any involvement of this. Despite the earlier reports, some Iranian officials denied any explosions taking place.
• Despite the recent flare-up, a US official stated that the US remains committed to a resolution with Iran and technical discussions are ongoing. This, alongside the lack of new strikes overnight has led to a bearish bias in crude benchmarks this morning. Brent Sep’26 (-0.2%) is only mildly lower and trades at the towards the mid-point of a USD 75.36-76.95/bbl range. Some mild downticks were seen in the benchmark after the release of the IEA Oil Market Report. It cut 2026 oil demand, noted that the UAE is upping its supply and oil transits are passing through the Hormuz.
• Spot gold (-0.6%) trades lower this morning, hovering on either side of the USD 4.1k/oz mark; currently within a USD 4,094-4,134/oz band. The range today is very thin, amidst the lack of pertinent newsflow and fairly steady USD. Elsewhere, base metals hold a negative bias. 3M LME Copper trades within a USD 13,455-13,562/t range. For aluminium, analysts at Morgan Stanley recently stated that they see a smaller supply deficit in 2026, and likely to move into a surplus from 2027.
• Oman has set its OSP at USD 69.29/bbl for September delivery.
• IEA OMR: forecasts global oil demand in 2026 to fall by 1.05mln BPD (prev. exp. 1.12mln); global oil demand recovery is under way. Global oil demand estimated at 103.46mln bpd for 2026 and is expected to grow by 2mln BPD in 2027 and reach 105.47mln BPD. Oil supply may expand 7.5mln BPD in 2027 if transits improve.
• A fire broke out at two oil product storage facilities due to a UAV attack in the Rostov region, according to the governor; fires are being pushed out in Taganrog's Seaport, reported no injuries.
• Krasnodar task force said a fire has broken out at the Ilsky oil refinery due to the fall of a drone's debris, Interfax reported.
• QatarEnergy set August Marine Crude OSP at Oman/Dubai -USD 5/bbl; Land Crude OSP at -USD 4.50/bbl, according to a pricing document.
• China National Summer grain output reached 150.7mln tonnes, +0.7% Y/Y.

Trade/Tariffs

• China's MOFCOM announces a temporary ban on helium exports.
• US White House announces the adjustment of imports of commercial aircraft, jet engines, and aircraft and engine parts into the US; no immediate tariffs be imposed under section 232 to address the threatened impairment to the national security.

Central Banks

• BoJ reportedly to keep rates unchanged in July but maintain policy guidance and also raise growth outlook, according to sources.
• PBoC injected CNY 20bln via 7-day reverse repos with rate maintained at 1.40%.
• PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.7989 vs exp. 6.7931 (prev. 6.8036); strongest midpoint since February 2023.
• NBP's Wnorowski said signal about possible motion to cut interest rates in September is premature; do not see space for more than one cut this year.

Geopolitics: Middle-East

• Qatar, Pakistan and other regional mediators are trying to de-escalate tensions between the US and Iran and revive negotiations on a nuclear deal, Axios reported citing sources.
• A member of the National Security Commission of Iran's parliament said the UAE will pay the price for cooperating with America.
• A US official said talks with Iran will continue, Fox's Hasnie reported; The administration is still committed to finding a resolution so technical talks continue to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Iran's attacks on ships in the streets are acts of terrorism. The MoU is performance-based, and Iran's actions constitute failed performance at an unacceptable level.
• Israel reportedly shared new intelligence with the US that indicated a new Iranian plan to kill US President Trump, WSJ reported citing sources.
• A US official said the US remains committed to a resolution with Iran and technical discussions are ongoing.
• Turkey has decided it will not join the Canadian Defence Bank initiative at this point, sources suggest.
• The Israeli army said "we will continue our operations to eliminate any threat and will not allow Hezbollah to harm us", Al Jazeera reported.
• Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces are conducting extensive demolitions in southern Lebanon.
• Krasnodar task force said a fire has broken out at the Ilsky oil refinery due to the fall of a drone's debris, Interfax reported.
• Pakistan has begun mediating between Libya's rival eastern and western data centres with the backing of the US and Saudi Arabia, Nikkei reported citing sources.
• Lebanese media reported of new Israeli drone strikes in southern Lebanon, Tasnim reported.
• Four Japanese-linked vessels remain in the Persian Gulf, Kyodo reported.
• Konarak Governor said this area was targeted by enemy fighter jets in two stages on Thursday evening.

Geopolitics: Ukraine

• Ilsky (138k BPD), Russia oil refinery fire has now been extinguished.

US Event Calenadar

• The US economic data calendar empty for the session

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

I was hoping that by now the latest on the Iranian conflict wouldn’t be the lead story but it has of course returned to the top of the headlines this week. The latest is that Bloomberg reports overnight indicate that “technical talks” continue between US and Iranian officials despite the clashes this week. There were also Bloomberg reports that President Trump and PM Netanyahu spoke Thursday according to the PM’s office. To be fair sentiment turned back more positively late Wednesday night when Trump suggested that the Iranians were desperate for a deal. So markets have generally been more positive since.

So for now we can go back to trying to guess whether we’ll wake up to the KOSPI being up or down more than 5%. If you guessed in the positive side this morning you’d be correct as it’s surging +5.11% as I type, after officially entering bear-market territory yesterday. The rally has of course been driven by strong gains in semiconductor stocks with the record-breaking $26.5 billion listing by chipmaker SK Hynix helping to reinforce confidence that the AI investment cycle remains intact. Elsewhere in the region, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (+1.85%) has climbed to its highest level since June 17, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 (+1.77%) is also posting strong gains. The CSI 300 (+0.49%), Shanghai Composite (+0.75%), and S&P/ASX 200 (+0.51%) are also up. US and European futures are down between a tenth and two tenths of a percent though. 10yr USTs are -1.2bps lower trading at 4.54% and oil is fairly flat.  

In Japan, long-dated government bond yields are falling and the yen strengthening after Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama indicated that the government intends to encourage pension funds, including the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), to increase allocations to domestic financial assets. The 20-year JGB yield is down -7.8bps at 3.78%, while the 10-year is -8.7bps lower at 2.778%. The Japanese yen (+0.51%) is rallying for a second consecutive session, trading at 161.54 against dollar as we go to print. There is some scepticism here internally as to whether it'll be easy to encourage domestic pension funds to automatically buy more JGBs. The view is that asset allocations decisions are more slow moving and might actually favour equities first. However for now the move is being seen as a sign that action is being considered.  

Ahead of all that, markets saw a bit of a relief rally yesterday, thanks to easing geopolitical fears, decent tech headlines, and a respectable batch of data. So collectively, that helped to power bonds and equities on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly as falling oil prices reassured concerns about a fresh surge of inflation. So by the close, that meant the S&P 500 (+0.81%) and Europe’s STOXX 600 (+0.78%) both advanced, whilst yields on 10yr Treasuries (-4.2bps) and bunds (-0.8bps) also fell back.  

Those oil price declines followed headlines suggesting that the escalation between the US and Iran might not prove as serious as initially feared. Most notably, sentiment was supported by comments from President Trump late on Wednesday night, that we mentioned yesterday, saying that Iran wanted “to make a deal so badly”. So when US and European markets reopened yesterday, they were buoyed by the fact that Trump was still talking about some kind of agreement. So that supported oil prices lower, with Brent crude down -2.20% on the day to $76.30/bbl. And in turn, that eased fears around inflation, with the 1yr Euro inflation swap (-9.0bps) falling to 2.05%, after rising 27bps on Wednesday.

This backdrop meant that investors dialled back their expectations for imminent rate hikes again, particularly in Europe. For instance, the amount of ECB rate hikes priced by December came down -8.5bps on the day to 31bps. And over at the Fed, the probability of a hike at the upcoming July meeting fell back from 31% to 24%. So that provided a decent tailwind for sovereign bonds in turn, with yields on 10yr bunds (-0.8bps), OATs (-7.2bps) and BTPs (-7.0bps) all coming down.

Whilst lower oil prices helped sentiment, markets got another boost yesterday from the latest tech headlines, which saw the Philly semiconductor index (+3.06%) post its best daily performance in 3 weeks. That included a very strong gain for Micron (+4.52%), who raised their planned spending on new US plants to $250bn by 2035, which was $50bn on top of previously announced commitments. The rally also saw the SK Hynix ADR officially became the largest foreign company offering as the South Korean chipmaker raised $26.5bn – greater than expected and just ahead of the $25bn previously raised by Alibaba.

So that chip rally helped to lift US equities more broadly, with the S&P 500 (+0.81%) recovering after back-to-back declines on Tuesday and Wednesday. The rally was fueled by investors rotating from defensives industries back into growth and cyclical names. Autos (+2.91%), Tech Hardware (+1.99%), Semis, +(1.90%), and Banks (+1.61%) were the best performing S&P 500 industry groups, while Consumer Staples (-2.04%), Food & Bev (-1.77%), and Household Products (-1.58%) lagged. And in Europe, the STOXX 600 (+0.78%) advanced for the first time this week with a similar rotation from defensives into cyclicals.

Speaking of tech, there was an interesting acknowledgement of AI-driven inflation from New York Fed President Williams. He spoke about the potential for demand driven by AI to raise inflation, and said if it “creates a sustained impulse to demand relative to supply in inflation, I do think that’s the kind of situation where you don’t look through this”. Meanwhile on inflation more generally, he said that if core PCE were at “two-tenths a month in the second half of this year, that would be consistent with my view of a disinflationary process that’s continuing”. But he also said if it were higher, “ that would be a sign of inflation a bit more persistent.”

The other Fed news from yesterday was the release of the leadership teams of the five task forces that Chair Warsh announced to examine the Fed’s current approach and processes. The areas that the Fed are examining are the communications strategy, the use of the balance sheet, the quality and reliance on existing data sources, productivity and jobs, and inflation framework. The teams are mix of former policy makers, academics, and corporate leaders. 

Staying on central banks, yesterday also brought the minutes of last month’s ECB meeting, where they hiked rates for the first time since 2023. It spoke of inflation pressures, and said how “Further indirect effects were in the pipeline, pointing to more broadening of inflationary pressures across the economy”. Moreover, there was an acknowledgment that “memories of the 2022 high-inflation episode could make households and firms react more quickly than in the past, increasing the risk that price-setting and wage-bargaining behaviour would adjust.” Interestingly, there was also a discussion about what happened in 2011, when the ECB hiked rates before reversing course shortly after as the sovereign debt crisis became more severe. But the view was there were key differences with that period, including the lack of financial stress.

Finally, the latest US data yesterday offered fresh reassurance on the labour market, with the weekly initial jobless claims coming in at 215k in the week ending July 4 (vs. 217k expected). So that took the 4-week moving average down to 218.75k, and so far at least, claims remain well beneath their summer peaks in 2023, 2024 and 2025. However, existing home sales unexpectedly fell in June, falling back to an annualised rate of 4.09m (vs. 4.20m expected).

Looking at the day ahead now, and data releases include Italy’s industrial production for May, and Canada’s employment for June. Otherwise, central bank speakers include the ECB’s Vujcic and Stournaras.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 08:07

France Pushes Syria Strategic Energy Corridor Vision Despite Bombing During Macron Visit

Via The Cradle

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Thursday said that Paris is developing "alternative routes" following a return to war between the US and Iran, singling out Syria as a primary gateway to Persian Gulf oil.

"Among all the efforts we have made since the start of this crisis, there is the idea of preparing alternative routes so that we are not dependent on blockages here or there," Barrot said.

AFP/Getty Images: French President Emmanuel Macron shakes hands with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa during a visit to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on July 6. 

The foreign minister noted that Syria is currently reunifying after the collapse of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's government, and could emerge as a "new regional hub." He also identified Syria as a strategic corridor for Gulf oil to mitigate supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.

Barrot emphasized that France intends to expand trade and economic cooperation with Damascus while securing a pathway for Gulf producers.

The transition requires comprehensive infrastructure assessments and security guarantees, the foreign minister said, viewing these efforts as essential to securing global energy markets.

The announcement follows French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Damascus on Tuesday, where he met with former Al-Qaeda chief and self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa to discuss regional stability.

Joining Macron on his visit, TotalEnergies head Patrick Pouyanne described the nation as being "at the crossroads of the Middle East," positioning it as a vital transit link between Iraq and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Syria is not united. When Shara'a failed to take Suwayda, his forces massacred well over a 1,000 Druze civilians. And the last move, Rojava, ended the only democratic and inclusive structure within Syria.

EU & US are sponsoring the rise of a new sectarian autocracy. https://t.co/FU1s79m0I4

— Gargari (@Gargaristan) July 8, 2026

Since April, Iraq has been transporting oil through Syria by truck for re-export, exporting over 600,000 tons of fuel oil between April and June to bypass the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Last month, officials from both countries discussed rehabilitating the shared Kirkuk-Baniyas oil pipeline and establishing energy transit mechanisms.

While TotalEnergies has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for an offshore exploration block in the Mediterranean, Pouyanne clarified that no other specific projects are underway. 

He acknowledged that current conditions remain volatile, stating, "Today, it's clear that the security situation still doesn't allow us to operate, but I think it is a positive initiative to come here, to Damascus."

His remarks preceded reports of two bombs detonating near the Four Seasons Hotel where the French delegation stayed. 

#Syria | The Syrian Interior Ministry says the two explosive devices were planted only a short time before they were discovered in the area. Surveillance cameras covering the site are the primary source of evidence in the ongoing investigation. Officials also say CCTV footage… pic.twitter.com/WQeKIhVVgq

— Basha باشا (@BashaReport) July 7, 2026

Pouyanne noted, "We should give the government time to take control of the country. We shouldn't ask too much," concluding, "We need to be a little patient."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 07:20

Germany Inks Deal To Buy US Tomahawks, Filling Long-Range Capability Gap

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz newly announced Thursday that his government has struck a deal with the United States to buy American-made Tomahawk cruise missiles and station them in Germany.

"On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara we also agreed with the American government that Tomahawk missiles would be purchased by us and stationed in Germany," Merz said. "With this we are closing an important strategic gap in our defense. And at the same time we will work on developing our own European systems and deploying them in Europe."

Shutterstock

He announced this while informing parliament that the results of this week's NATO summit in Turkey "exceeded all of my expectations" -  which he said bolstered the alliance as a "united, strong and self-confident" one.

Russia loomed large in the background of his speech, given he offered a final goal of moving toward "a future where our country is not susceptible to blackmail, but rather can confidently meet every threat posed to our free way of life using its own strength."

Germany makes its own cruise missiles, the Taurus, but their range of just over 300 miles is three to five times shorter than the Tomahawk.

With this deal, Berlin is seen as greatly bolstering its long-range strike abilities, at a moment this has also been a big focus in Ukraine, in terms of inflicting damage deep inside Russian territory.

When it comes to actual deep-strike deterrence, Washington has long had the biggest monopoly on long-range capabilities in comparison to European militaries and EU domestic production.

The operational range of a Tomahawk missile varies between about 800 to 1,700 miles, depending on the specific block variant and flight profile.

While the missile is relatively slow compared to more recent developments in missile technology, it is effective as it's able to fly so low, almost at tree line level, thus better evading radar.

"Operational missiles are launched by a solid-fueled booster rocket and carried to their target by a turbofan jet engine," one source reviews.

Germany's Chancellor Merz:

On the sidelines of the NATO meeting in Ankara, we agreed with the American government that U.S. Tomahawk missiles will be purchased by us and stationed in Germany.

We are closing an important strategic gap in our defense while simultaneously working… https://t.co/LlN2EpJYAy pic.twitter.com/dbLOUTmutf

— Adam Scott (@chefcascottccc) July 9, 2026

"The Tomahawk flies near the surface at 550 mph and uses satellite-assisted navigation and TERCOM (Terrain Contour Matching) radar to guide it to a target up to approximately 1,500 miles distant," the source notes. "It can carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 06:55

My end-of-week morning reads:

• Europe chose insurance. America chose growth. Europe and America chose different points on the efficiency-equity trade-off. That used to be a matter of preferences. It isn’t anymore. Visitors notice something else, even the ones who have never heard of a purchasing power parity adjustment for GDP per capita comparisons across borders. They notice the wealth. The cars, the houses, the restaurants, the sheer scale of consumption. They notice the contrast between what is happening here and what is happening back home. You don’t need the IMF’s World Economic Outlook to see it, though the WEO will confirm it: even after adjusting for purchasing power, U.S. GDP per capita is now roughly 38% higher than the EU average. (The Two Cents)

• Boomers’ massive wealth will mostly be passed down to people who are already rich: Baby boomers are expected to pass $36 trillion to their heirs in the next two decades, an analysis found. The great wealth transfer is coming — and it’s going exactly where you’d expect. The Washington Post on the data showing intergenerational wealth concentration accelerating, not dissipating. (Washington Post) but see Hey … can you pay me back now? Welcome to the summer of financed fun, where one friend books the Airbnb and everyone else promises the money is coming. The psychology of the awkward IOU — why asking friends to pay you back is one of money’s great social minefields. (Substack)

• The Insider’s Guide to San Francisco’s A.I. Boom: The city is the tech industry’s hub for artificial intelligence, 30 miles north of the home of companies like Meta and Google. What if San Francisco is the new Silicon Valley? San Francisco has had its share of tech companies since the dot-com boom, but the money pouring into artificial intelligence has lately supercharged the city’s tech profile.
Last year, they raised nearly $35 billion of venture capital funding. The change is visible. Rents are climbing again. City buses are filling back up. And the face of San Francisco is starting to look younger. The NYT maps the geography, social dynamics, and power structures of SF’s AI scene. Where the money is, where the talent eats, and who’s actually building things versus just talking about them. (New York Times)

• The Fun Shortage Is Real, and It’s Making America Miserable: With fewer places to relax and socialize, and steeper prices for entry, having fun is quantifiably harder than it used to be. Bloomberg on the fun shortage: hotels, theme parks, and summer camps priced past the middle class. Even leisure is bifurcating. (Bloomberg free)

• The creator economy is above the law: How influencers get away with anything. the Polymarket campaign was definitely illegal. However, there’s a reason that Polymarket and most content creators don’t abide by these laws: They’re barely being enforced. Scott Galloway’s shop argues the creator economy operates in a regulatory vacuum. Influence without accountability rarely ends well. (ProfG Media)

• The year is 2063 and you were never interesting. You’re never going to be someone’s eccentric grandmother because you spent your best years consuming the lives of strangers. A sharp bit of speculative fiction: the year is 2063 and you were never interesting. The algorithm always knew. (Substack)

• Navigating by Aliveness: One thing that’s missing from those discussions is any consideration of aliveness. Yet I think it might be the key to understanding how to think and feel about AI, how to respond to it, how to integrate it into our lives or not – and how to ensure, as technology marches on, that we don’t lose sight of what really matters for a meaningfully productive life. Oliver Burkeman on navigating by ‘aliveness’ rather than obligation — his usual gentle antidote to productivity culture. (Oliver Burkeman)

• The last astronomers: Amid a flood of AI advances, astrophysicists are questioning the soul of their field. (Science)

• The only bias uncovered in the White House’s Smithsonian report is its own: A White House report alleges radical bias at the National Museum of American History. But the assembled evidence reveals a large and vibrant institution carrying out its mission. A pointed WaPo column: the only bias uncovered in the White House’s Smithsonian report is its own. (Washington Post) see also A Huge Escalation in Trump’s Smithsonian Meddling: A White House report details what the administration wants to change in museums—and suggests that a crackdown could be coming. The Atlantic on a huge escalation in Trump’s Smithsonian meddling — the American History museum is now squarely in the crosshairs. (The Atlantic)

• The Wimbledon boy living a dream that defies belief: If it were a movie script, Arthur Fery’s remarkable Wimbledon adventure would probably never have made it to the big screen because it seemed ​too far-fetched to be believable. A 23-year-old who grew up within walking distance of Centre Court. Ranked 114th in the world. A wildcard ‌entrant with only two previous Grand Slam match wins. Wimbledon semi-finalist? Reuters’ profile of the young tennis sensation whose run at the Championships is the feel-good sports story of the summer. (Reuters)

Video of the day: Why The Best Player Alive Barely Runs

Be sure to check out our bonus episode of Master’s in Business with David Risher, CEO of Lyft, one of North America’s largest ride-sharing networks. He joined Lyft’s board in 2021 when the firm was burning cash and losing ground to Uber. Lyft has returned to profitability, with its stock rising more than 75% since Risher took the reins as CEO in 2023. In Q1 2026, the firm had 28.3 million active riders and did $4.9B in gross bookings, with $1.7B revs, and $132.8m in EBITDA. Previously, he held senior roles at Microsoft and Amazon.

 

Percent Change in Median House Prices from 2000 to 2025 in the US

Source: Data is Beautiful

 

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The post 10 Friday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

BP Weighs North Sea Exit Under New CEO

Authored by Michael Kern via OilPrice.com,

BP has started to simplify its portfolio and cut costs, and will make fewer but better choices in which projects to invest, chief executive Meg O’Neill said on Thursday.

“We are taking concrete action to grow long-term value for shareholders: simplifying our portfolio, reducing costs, maintaining tight discipline on capex and strengthening the balance sheet,” O’Neill, the first female CEO of a Big Oil company, wrote in a LinkedIn post to reflect on the first 100 days as top executive of BP.

“We need to be deliberate about where we invest and where we don’t. We need to make fewer, better choices and hold ourselves to account,” O’Neill wrote.

“Investors should be able to rely on us in the same way our customers do,” the executive added.

BP has already simplified its structure by bundling operations into two businesses, Upstream and Downstream, with trading connecting both to create value.

Despite the unprecedented disruption in the energy industry in recent months, BP has continued to simplify the company and reduce costs to make the supermajor more attractive to investors, she said.

As part of the portfolio simplification, BP is reportedly considering an exit from the UK North Sea, due to unfavorable taxation policies in Britain.

BP is the last supermajor to haven’t either sold or combined its UK North Sea business in recent years. Shell and Equinor combined their oil and gas assets in a standalone company, Adura.

TotalEnergies merged its assets with NEO NEXT to create NEO NEXT+, in which the French supermajor holds a 47.5% interest.

This week, BP announced a divestiture offshore Canada, as it agreed to sell its non-operated interest in the Bay du Nord offshore oil development to Equinor.

The sale marks another step in BP’s strategy to streamline its upstream portfolio and tighten capital allocation.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 06:30

Better Off? How Generational Progress Slowed In The US

Bettering yourself financially or at least giving your children the opportunity for a more prosperous future has driven people to emigrate to the United States for generations. But is the next generation still better off in this day and age?

The answer is yes, but not by that much.

At least, as Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, this is the verdict given in a discussion paper published by the Federal Reserve Board of Washington D.C. in 2024. 

It concludes that millennials' median household income at 36 to 40 years old was still 18 percent higher than that of Generation X at the same age.

A millennial born in 1982 would have turned 40 in 2022, the last year the study looked at.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Gen X achieved a similarly low increase of median household incomes over Baby Boomers at 16 percent.

This is in contrast to the post-war generation, which at age 36-40 earned 27 percent more than the Silent Generation.

For this generation growing up during World War II, the number still stood at 34 percent on average.

Taking as a baseline the Greatest Generation, which was born between 1900 and 1927, the Silent Generation earned 34 percent more, while Boomers made a cumulative 70 percent more, Gen X took home 97 percent more and finally Millennials brought in 133 percent more than the Greatest Generation even when adjusted for inflation.

The data also shows that the Silent Generation worked 14 percent more hours than the generation before and Boomers worked another 14 percent more.

However, working hours have been relatively stable for generations since.

While the numbers show that average income wealth rose in the United States over time and that more people gained access to at least a middle-class life over the decades, this doesn't mean that everybody is necessarily making more than those who came before. 

A study published in 2017 and widely reported then showed that only 50 percent of people born in 1984 made more than their parents at age 30.

For those born in 1940 and turning 30 in 1970, this number had still been above 90 percent.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 05:45

The Men Who Own The Ukraine War Now Run It

Authored by Thomas S. Karat via AntiWar.com

There was a time when the arms dealer waited in the corridor. He financed the campaign, endowed the think tank, took the general to dinner, and hoped the man inside the office would remember him when the contract came up. The wall between the money and the decision was thin, often corrupt, but it was there. Someone held the public trust, and someone else tried to buy it, and you could at least tell the two apart.

That wall is gone. The financier no longer waits in the corridor. He holds the office. He signs the checks. He is the buyer and the seller, the regulator and the regulated, the public interest and the private portfolio, fused into a single man in a single suit, and the arrangement is entirely legal, which is the whole problem.

Getty Images

One of these men may already be familiar from a previous article. His name is Friedrich Merz.

The chancellor was the warm-up act

From 2016 to 2020, Merz chaired the supervisory board of BlackRock’s German arm, the local office of the largest pool of private capital on earth – a fact confirmed, without embarrassment, by his own party's foundation. Then he climbed back into politics, and in March 2025, as chancellor-in-waiting, he drove through the outgoing Bundestag — deliberately before the newly elected parliament could convene – the constitutional amendment that exempted defense spending from Germany’s debt brake. The borrowing limit Germans had treated as sacred since 2009 was gone. German military spending rose 24 percent in a single year to $114 billion, the largest in NATO Europe, and BlackRock held stakes in the very contractors – Rheinmetall, Hensoldt – that the money would flow toward.

He broke no law. He simply spent four years learning, from the inside, how the machinery paid out, and then went and pulled the lever. The arrangement was a particular kind that no scandal quite captures, because nothing in it is hidden. It sits in plain view, in regulatory filings and procurement requests, and it works precisely because everyone involved can say, truthfully, that they broke no rule.

It reads as a German problem only until you cross the Atlantic. There the same face turns up in an American suit, several of them, installed not adjacent to the war machine but at its controls.

The banker who became the Navy

Consider John Phelan, who until March 2025 had no connection to the military beyond a seat on a charity board. His career was money: he co-founded MSD Capital, the private investment firm that managed the personal fortune of Michael Dell, and later founded his own firm, Rugger Management. He gave Trump’s joint fundraising committee $834,600 in April 2024. Months later he was nominated to run the United States Navy, and in March he was confirmed, handed a $263.5 billion budget and command of nearly a million sailors and Marines.

Before his confirmation, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to him about the obvious. He had recently earned over $5 million in capital gains from Palantir, a defense-software contractor that took in $541 million from the Pentagon in fiscal 2024 alone, and whose relationships Phelan’s own acquisition vehicle had once advertised. She asked him to divest his defense holdings and to recuse himself, for four years, from matters touching his former clients and employers, noting that a dozen Biden appointees had voluntarily gone beyond what the ethics laws required. Phelan declined to make the stronger commitment. He was confirmed anyway, 62 to 30, with eleven Democrats joining every Republican in the room.

The man overseeing the Navy’s shipbuilding budget was, weeks earlier, a private investor with money in the companies the Navy buys from. Nobody hid it. It was printed in his disclosures and read aloud at his hearing, and it changed nothing.

The private-equity takeover of the Pentagon

Phelan is the modest case. The full expression of the thing sits one floor up, in the office of the deputy secretary of defense, where Stephen Feinberg runs the day-to-day of the entire department.

Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management and led it for thirty-three years; in his own sworn testimony to the Senate he put the firm’s portfolio at over $65 billion. He was a major Trump donor, and by the time he was confirmed in March 2025 he was, at a listed minimum net worth of $2 billion, the wealthiest official in the administration. What he has built since is not influence over the Pentagon. It is ownership of its investment arm.

Feinberg has surrounded himself with a circle of advisers drawn from his old firm. The group includes former Cerberus managing director John Gallagher and a deal team led by Cerberus alumnus George Kollitides – who was, until 2015, chairman and chief executive of Remington, the gunmaker Cerberus owned. Industry executives nicknamed the squad “Deal Team Six,” a joke on the SEAL unit that killed bin Laden, and Kollitides told a Milken Institute audience he found the name both fun and fitting while explaining that economic warfare has been a part of all successful nations for thousands of years. A Stanford professor watching this described it plainly: private equity has just acquired its largest organization.

The organization it acquired writes checks the size of nations. Under Feinberg, the Pentagon stopped merely buying weapons and began buying companies. It took a $400 million preferred-equity stake in the rare-earth miner MP Materials, enough to make the United States government the firm’s largest single shareholder at roughly 15 percent – ahead, as it happens, of BlackRock. It put $1 billion into an L3Harris rocket-motor unit slated to go public in 2026. Stakes in Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements, and ReElement Technologies followed, a portfolio that a group of House members warned was locking federal policy to the fortunes of individual firms – picking winners, and by definition creating losers.

Whose companies get the contracts

Here is where the fusion stops being abstract... Feinberg signed an ethics agreement before confirmation. He would divest from Cerberus and recuse himself from matters involving the firm. But the fine print left the door open: he could transfer his Cerberus holdings into trusts benefiting his adult children, a maneuver legal under conflict-of-interest law but one ethics experts say hollows out its purpose, and he could keep contracting with Cerberus for administrative services. That contract was meant to end in April 2026. In January, he reversed course and extended it with no end date. The financial relationship between the deputy secretary of defense and the private equity firm he used to run now continues indefinitely.

Meanwhile the department began handing out contracts for Golden Dome, Trump’s missile-defense shield, a program that has already ballooned to an estimated $185 billion. The Pentagon at first refused to name the companies winning the work. When it finally released a list, at least four of the winners turned out to be owned or partly owned by Cerberus: North Wind, Stratolaunch, Red River Technology, and NetCentrics. The department still will not disclose what those contracts are worth, and by law is required to announce only those above $9 million.

Does Feinberg personally pick the contractors? The department says he has no direct responsibility for Golden Dome acquisitions. But the general who runs the program, Michael Guetlein, described his own chain of command without ambiguity: I report to the deputy secretary and only to the deputy secretary, he said. He is the only official who can tell me no. The man who can say no to the entire missile-defense program is the man whose old firm owns the companies being paid to build it, and whose family may still profit from that firm’s returns. No single email needs to be produced. The architecture does the work.

The recruiting pitch says it out loud

For anyone wondering how normal this has become, the sales brochure settles it. To staff its new investment operation – an “Economic Defense Unit” meant to deploy up to $200 billion over three years – the Pentagon hired the headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles, whose recruiting deck went hunting for bankers at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Bank of America.

The pitch promised recruits unmatched access to top-level government officials and privileged information flow — whatever you need, you can get. It offered salaries reaching $600,000 through a government-aligned nonprofit, against a federal average near $100,000. And it described the job not as public service but as a two-year secondment leading to exceptional exit opportunities, including the chance to launch a new fund with members of the team. Come into the government, use the access, leave richer, on the strength of relationships built on the public payroll. This is not a leak of something embarrassing. It is a document written to attract people, on the assumption that the merger of private profit and public office is the perk.

A former assistant director on the White House technology-security staff, reading the same deck, warned that an effort this size has the potential to distort national-security-critical industries in ways he did not think anyone had seriously contemplated. There is, he added, obvious potential for truly egregious corruption. But corruption is almost the smaller point. Corruption implies a rule being broken. What is happening here is a rule being dissolved.

The same men, both shores

Line them up. Merz chaired an asset manager and then commanded the German rearmament that manager profits from. Phelan ran a billionaire’s money and then took command of the Navy that buys from the companies he held. Feinberg ran a private equity empire and then took the Pentagon’s second chair and filled the building with his former partners. Different countries, different uniforms, one profession and one move: from owning the assets of war to commanding the state that pays for them.

The line worth repeating from Merz’s own story turns out not to have been about Germany at all. The buildup manufactures the danger it claims to answer. Every European budget hardens Moscow’s conviction that it is being encircled, which justifies the next budget, around and around, while the men who profit count their dividends and call it security. That was true of one chancellor. It is true of an entire class of men who have stopped seeing daylight between the public interest and their own book, because across their whole careers there never was any.

The old fear, the one Eisenhower named in 1961, was that the military-industrial complex would acquire unwarranted influence over the government. That fear is quaint now. Influence is what you need when you are standing in the corridor. These men are not in the corridor. They are behind the desk, and the desk has a checkbook with no ceiling, and the recruiting brochure is on the table telling the next banker that whatever he needs, he can get.

Thomas Karat writes investigative work published at karat.substack.com and the Libertarian Institute, drawing on a corporate career and academic training as a behavior analyst to examine how institutions manufacture consent and influence.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 05:00

Europe Votes Against Thought-Policing 'Chat Control', Brussels Passes It Anyway...

On Thursday in Strasbourg, 314 Members of the European Parliament voted to reject the return of "Chat Control," the legal regime allowing tech companies to scan the private messages of roughly half a billion Europeans.

Illustration via proton.me

Only 276 voted to keep it.

So naturally, the scanning regime won - thanks to a 'quirky' voting procedure in Brussels that allowed legislation to survive even though most MEPs who cast a vote opposed it. That should alarm anyone who still believes the word "parliament" is supposed to mean something.

Losing by Winning

The vote took place at second reading, under an urgent procedure pushed through just two days earlier by Parliament's largest bloc, the centre-right European People's Party.

At second reading, the arithmetic is rigged toward passage. Rejecting or amending the text does not require a majority of votes cast. It requires an absolute majority of all 720 MEPs: 361 votes.

That means every absent MEP and every abstention effectively counts in favor of the law.

This is how “DEMOCRACY” works in Europe:

⛔️ 314 vote AGAINST mass surveillance.
✅ 276 vote FOR it.

MASS SURVEILLANCE WINS.

Then the same bureaucratic hypocrites travel the world lecturing everyone about democracy and their so-called “European values.”

WELCOME TO THE EUSSR. https://t.co/5OiJPMmg8i pic.twitter.com/zOM4OnLqkv

— Dr. Simon (@goddek) July 9, 2026

On Thursday, 607 members voted: 314 to reject, 276 to proceed, and 17 abstained. Another 113 were not in the chamber. The rejection therefore fell 47 votes short of the required threshold. A clear majority of voting MEPs opposed the measure - and the measure became law again anyway. Not coincidentally, the vote was scheduled for the final sitting day before Parliament dispersed for its summer recess, when absenteeism is at its annual peak.

The path to this outcome is as important as the result. Parliament had already rejected an extension of these same rules on 26 March. The regulation then expired on 3 April. In any functioning democratic system, that would have been the end of it. Instead, the Council returned on 2 July with essentially the same text, repackaged as a new proposal. Then, on 7 July, the EPP secured an urgency procedure by a narrow 331-to-304 vote, bypassing committee scrutiny and setting up Thursday's vote under second-reading rules.

Marketa Gregorova, the Greens/EFA negotiator on the file, accused the EPP of violating Parliament's own rules of procedure and abusing its position to force a re-run of a question the chamber had already answered. She was right to do so.

This is actually quite unbelievable.

Did you know that Nazis never won an over-whelming majority? They gained rule through such exceptions.

Evil finds its way. https://t.co/YOKnH2RStA

— Tuomas Malinen (@mtmalinen) July 9, 2026

When a legislature can be made to vote on the same question repeatedly, under progressively worse rules, until it produces the desired answer, the word "vote" begins to look decorative.

What was revived on Thursday is "Chat Control 1.0" - the ePrivacy derogation first adopted in 2021 - not the broader permanent proposal commonly known as Chat Control 2.0.

The revived regime permits, rather than requires, providers such as Meta, Google and Microsoft to scan private messages, emails and uploaded images on unencrypted services for child sexual abuse material. It will now run until April 2028, unless permanent legislation replaces it first.

Parliament did manage to push through two concessions. Amendments exempting end-to-end encrypted services passed with 369 and 362 votes, carried by an unusual coalition spanning liberals, the left and parts of the right. That matters: Parliament is now formally on record against breaking encryption.

But as civil-rights campaigner Patrick Breyer notes, the victory is partly symbolic. Providers cannot meaningfully scan end-to-end encrypted content in the first place without undermining the encryption itself.

The more revealing vote was the one that failed. An amendment to restrict scanning to individuals actually identified as suspects by the judiciary won a clear plurality, 322 to 255. But because it also needed 361 votes, it died.

In other words, a majority of voting MEPs wanted scanning limited to actual suspects.  Europe got suspicionless scanning of everyone instead.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 04:15

Is She Going To Eat It?

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Migrants continue to treat Britain's streets, parks, and waterways like a personal hunting ground, with fresh footage exposing the grim reality of unchecked mass immigration.

A disturbing new video circulating on X shows a woman - widely identified in comments as a migrant - seemingly actively hunting birds.

She uses a sheet to capture a seagull perched on a gate or property edge. After securing the bird, she looks around for more prey, scanning the area as if on a deliberate hunt.

I DONT WANT PEOPLE LIKE THIS IN MY COUNTRY pic.twitter.com/HZCiZ8mBiI

— WeGotitBack ??????????? (@NotFarLeftAtAll) July 9, 2026

When locals spot her and begin filming while questioning what she is doing with the bird, she gestures dismissively - as if to say "what's your problem?" and implying this is totally normal behaviour and none of their business.

The clip has sparked widespread outrage, with many slamming the trespass and illegal taking of wildlife.

This is sick. We don't want this barbaric and cruel shit in our country!

— Nicola Beaumont. ? (@PsychBeaulogy) July 8, 2026

ALL gulls (commonly called seagulls) are fully protected in Britain by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it illegal to kill, injure, or handle them, or to destroy their active nests and eggs.
This woman needs locking up...FOLLOW OUR LAWS OR BOG OFF ???? @BBCNews...

— Nix Randall (@Nixterr1) July 9, 2026

They're eating the birds. They're eating the cats.

They actually are. Libtards will defend it.

— GMghostmode (@GallowsMemes) July 9, 2026

There have been further suggestions that the woman was actually "rescuing" the bird, but many are not buying that explanation.

? WOMAN WAS RESCUING SEAGULL, NOT STEALING IT

A video I shared yesterday of a woman catching a seagull in a blanket, was Not what it looked like, the woman in question was actually concerned for the small seagull after it has fell off the roof previously, as you can see in... https://t.co/X4ae0MxvCR pic.twitter.com/36ONNaUHu6

— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) July 9, 2026

I've never seen someone rescue a bird by snapping it's wings and stuffing it into a bed sheet.

— NickyP (@Nickypwastaken) July 9, 2026

This does not align with the original video which shows a bird with an adult size wingspan, not a fledging who is unable to fly. The bird the woman was wrestling into the sack/blanket would have been able to fly. What this means now I cannot say, but something is amiss here.

— Tez Locke (@TezLocke) July 9, 2026

Fair play, but a juvenile gull that size does not need 'rescuing'. You can see in the original video that it tries to fly away from her. It was already fledged. pic.twitter.com/Hp2xzuaVYt

— MJ Simpson (@mjsimpsonfilms) July 9, 2026

As if that's the same woman aint even the same house.

— ????????? ??? (@CerebrAiX) July 9, 2026

You have to be an idiot to see that first video even with the idea in your head that she is trying to help it, and still think she is trying to help it.

— Monty (@MontyDean1A4) July 9, 2026

I see nothing in this video that refutes the first one. The woman is not present in this one, & it's a different gull. As a wildlife biologist, I can say that she did NOT handle the gull like someone w/ its welfare in mind. Have you been threatened into issuing this statement?

— Missy Lee (@RecoveringWLW) July 9, 2026

This one was rescued from the road ? pic.twitter.com/RK6wiXoo9S

— Harry Lines??????? (@HarryLines7) July 9, 2026

This latest incident fits a clear pattern. Migrants have been repeatedly filmed hunting pigeons, with their bare hands in UK streets, and even using fishing rods to try and catch them.

Similar scenes have played out with protected swans and ducks across the UK and Ireland, where migrants set traps and butcher birds in public spaces.

The depravity doesn't stop at birds. On the continent, a Nigerian migrant was caught cooking a cat in a public park next to a children's playground, drawing fury from locals.

These cases echo reports from Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian migrants faced accusations of snatching and consuming local wildlife, including ducks and geese in parks.

Residents described scenes of animals being grabbed by the neck, decapitated, and taken for food - claims that amplified national debate over mass migration's impact on communities and norms.

British wildlife laws under the Wildlife and Countryside Act strictly protect many of these species. Yet enforcement seems inconsistent when it involves certain arrivals who show little regard for local customs, laws, or basic animal welfare.

Locals filming these confrontations repeatedly highlight the same point: these individuals have housing, clothing, and food provided, yet they hunt urban birds as if in a survival scenario from their countries of origin.

The cultural clash is undeniable. Britain, long a nation of animal lovers with strong traditions of protecting wildlife, now contends with behaviors that treat public spaces as open butcheries. Pigeons and seagulls in cities scavenge in polluted environments, raising health risks from diseases, but that hasn't deterred the hunters.

This is a visible symptom of failed open-border policies that prioritize globalist ideals over national cohesion and rule of law. While politicians lecture about tolerance, everyday Brits watch their parks and streets transformed, and communities on edge.

Mass immigration without assimilation imports incompatible practices that erode Britain's way of life. Strong borders, enforced laws, and putting citizens first aren't radical - they're essential to preserving what remains of civilized society.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2026 - 03:30