Monday, Feb 16 2026, 12:00 UTC time

Latest Important Headlines

📋 ✅ US / Markets
📌 Focus week: US GDP, PCE inflation and Fed minutes due — major drivers for FX and bond moves; dollar steady in thin holiday trade. Fed minutes and data will set tone for risk and yields.

✅ 🔖 New Zealand
📌 New Zealand: Composite and Services PMIs dip slightly from multi-year highs; credit card spending falls the most in a year. Kiwi subdued ahead of RBNZ outlook — risks to NZD from softer activity data.

🔖 📋 Australia
📌 RBA minutes expected to highlight the fight against inflation; Australian dollar rebounds ahead of the release. Australia 10-year yield hits a 4-week low as markets digest monetary outlook.

📋 🔖 China / Energy
📌 Offshore yuan hits a fresh 34-month high. China set to import a record volume of Russian oil in February as India cuts back — implications for global oil flows and sanction dynamics.

✅ 📌 United Kingdom / Europe
📌 UK: Rightmove shows house-price gains cooling as higher supply tempers February growth; property asking prices steady after post-budget jump. Sterling steady as markets await key UK data; UK 10-year gilt yields fall to one-month low. Labour law changes prompt survey-reported pullback in permanent hiring.

📋 🔖 Eurozone & EU members
📌 Eurozone industrial output posts sharpest drop since April — downside risk to growth and EUR if weakness persists. European stocks edge higher in quiet trade; DAX cautiously up. ECB signals confidence, euro holds firm.

🔖 ✅ Switzerland
📌 Swiss economy swings back to growth, Q4 GDP up 0.2% — franc maintains strength amid resilient data.

📌 📋 Romania / Eastern Europe
📌 Romania: January inflation eases to 9.62% y/y but remains elevated; current account deficit widened to €30.13bn and gap hits 5-month high — central bank likely to remain cautious.

📋 🔖 Nordics & Others
📌 Sweden jobless rate down to 8.6%; Norway trade surplus narrows in January. Estonia sees lowest unemployment in two years. Slovakia inflation hits a 4-month high — mixed regional macro signals.

✅ 📌 Commodities & Precious Metals
📌 Gold and silver ease on thin holiday volumes; bearish momentum noted for gold. Oil steadies while iron ore halts trading for Lunar New Year.

Market takeaway: Major focus on US data and Fed minutes for global rates and FX; Asia-Pacific central bank cues (RBNZ, RBA) to influence AUD/NZD; China-Russia oil flows and a stronger yuan bear on commodity and EM dynamics; European growth/inflation prints keep ECB and regional yields front of mind.

Worlds biggest nickel mine has been told to slash production

- It accounts for ~17% of global nickel production
- Its production quota has been cut by ~70%

That reduction is massive... effectively the equivalent of wiping out ~4 of the top 2 producing mines.

Low prices are the cure for low prices.

#GOLD #XAU/USD M15 #Indicator #Signal #Trading #GlobalOneAI

Gold volatility can move fast. Leverage magnifies it.

Trade commodities with up to 250x leverage ➡️ gains.trade/trading#XAU-USD

Samsung’s solid-state #silver battery could be a game changer.

- Needs ~1 kg of silver per 100 kWh vs ~20 g for lithium batteries
- Has ~2x the range
- Charges ~4x faster
- Lasts ~2x longer
- Is much safer

Just a doubling of range could mean a ~2 kg silver content that would save a ~$14K battery replacement.

If just 10% of global EV production adopted this technology, it could add ~55 m oz of annual silver demand, in a market that has already recorded deficits for 6 consecutive years.

Industrial silver demand remains strong

$RCAT $PLTR $KTOS $UMAC $DPRO $ONDS | Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on the Drone Dominance initiative: " This program will drive costs down and capabilities up. We will deliver tens of thousands of small drones in 2026, and hundreds of thousands by 2027."

Unknown person to Epstein:

"we should look at the possibility and how to make money, should China decide to drop the currency US$ peg and use #gold instead"

This was in 2011.

Elites were talking about the debasement trade long before it was mainstream.

#BRICS countries say they will soon introduce digital currency to reduce dollar dominance in the world.

If BRICS pulls this off, it won’t just be about a new digital currency… it’ll be about leverage.

The dollar dominance isn’t just economics, it’s influence, sanctions power, trade settlement control. So the real question is not “can they build it?”,it’s “can they trust each other enough to use it?”

China and India have border tensions. Russia is sanctioned. Brazil shifts politically every few years. South Africa has its own domestic pressures.

A shared currency needs shared discipline.

This will spark headlines, but adoption is where the real battle is. The dollar didn’t become dominant by announcement. It became dominant by trust, liquidity and global usage.

Let’s see who actually settles oil and trade in it first

🛡️ Countries with the Highest Defense Budgets 💰

1. United States 🇺🇸: 968 billions
2. China 🇨🇳: 235
3. Russia 🇷🇺: 146
4. Germany 🇩🇪: 86
5. United Kingdom 🇬🇧: 81
6. India 🇮🇳: 74
7. Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦: 72
8. France 🇫🇷: 64
9. Japan 🇯🇵: 44
10. South Korea 🇰🇷: 38
11. Australia 🇦🇺: 36
12. Italy 🇮🇹: 35
13. Israel 🇮🇱: 34
14. Ukraine 🇺🇦: 28
15. Poland 🇵🇱: 28

$IREN $CLSK $CIFR $BITF $WULF $CRWV | Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: "The amount of compute being built will likely triple every year through 2029. We are moving from 10 to 15GW in 2026 to 300GW by 2029."

Robert Friedland: We don't have the #copper… you’re dreaming

- In human history, we have mined ~700 Mt of copper
- In the next 18 yrs, we need to mine the same amount as in the last 10k yrs
- And that’s without factoring in renewables, data centers or wars

Copper is essential to modern life, yet most people assume it will always be available.... It won’t.

- Since 1900, energy required to produce copper is up 16x
- Water consumption is up 2x
- Mines are deeper and smaller
- Grades are declining

We now need more resources to produce the same amount of copper.

- 6 Tier-1 copper mines must come online every year for the next 24 yrs
- The last major copper mine came online in 2021
- Major copper discoveries are down ~80% over the past 2 decades

We are heading toward a copper supply shortage.

$ASTI $RKLB $ASTS $LUNR $RDW $VOYG | Elon Musk on SpaceX acquiring xAI: "The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars, and ultimately expansion to the Universe."

China: Yuan should to dethrone the USD

China doesn’t want the US system. It wants its own.

A financial order with Chinese characteristics:

- Production over speculation
- Society over shareholders
- Currency strength over endless debasement
- Capital flowing in, not hollowing out

The American model prioritized profit above all else. Wall Street won. Main Street lost. The real economy was sacrificed to financial engineering.

China already dominates the physical economy. Manufacturing, supply chains, trade. Now it’s moving to the next phase: financial dominance.

For the United States, this isn’t competition... it's war

America’s financial empire is its last line of defense. Lose that, and the entire U.S. economic model breaks. This is the Thucydides trap in real time

1) A rising power changes the balance (economically, militarily, technologically)
2) The dominant power realizes the old rules no longer protect it
3) Peaceful adjustment would mean accepting decline
4) Decline is politically and socially unacceptable
5) Conflict becomes the least-bad option

War isn’t chosen because it’s good....
War is chosen because every alternative feels worse.

Brace for war

🚨 CHINA IS TAKING OVER GLOBAL COPPER

production:

• 🇨🇱 Chile. 5.3M tons
• 🇨🇩 DRC. 3.3M tons
• 🇵🇪 Peru. 2.6M tons
• 🇨🇳 China. 1.8M tons
• 🇮🇩 Indonesia. 1.1M tons
• 🇺🇸 U.S. 1.1M tons

But here’s the part markets ignore

• China buys 70% of Peru’s copper
• Chinese firms control >70% of DRC mines

That means that China doesn’t need to be the biggest producer.

It controls the flow.

As EVs, grids, and AI scale, copper becomes strategic.

And Beijing sits upstream of the West’s electrification push.

#China #copper #energy

Switzerland is home to the richest French metropolis (Geneva), the richest German major city (Zurich), and the richest Italian speaking region (Ticino)

Top 100 24h Gainers 🚀

STABLE    $0.0295    +23.86%
ATOM        $2.22        +4.78% 
M              $1.36        +4.65% 
IP            $1.18        +4.59% 
LIT          $1.65        +2.50% 

Top 100 24h Losers 🔻

H              $0.1904    -21.43%
DOGE        $0.1011    -6.01% 
MYX          $1.87        -4.55% 
SOL          $83.99      -4.14% 
HYPE        $29.94      -3.94%

Envisaged Transport and Trade Corridors Across Africa by the European Union.

Romania is moving to become a strategic player in the rare earth supply chain, as state-owned Nuclearelectrica and U.S.-listed Critical Metals Corp ($CRML) signed a term sheet to form a joint venture for a rare earth processing plant in Feldioara, near Brașov.

According to Energy Minister Bogdan Ivan, the goal is not just to build a refinery, but to create a fully integrated Western supply chain from extraction in Greenland’s Tanbreez deposit to refining and final industrial use in Europe and the United States.
$CRML, majority owner of the Tanbreez project in southern #Greenland one of the world’s largest rare earth deposits will supply up to 50% of its concentrate to the future Romanian facility over the life of the mine under competitive market conditions.

The plant would convert concentrates into rare earth metals and advanced materials, including magnets for aerospace, defense, microprocessors and clean technologies. Final beneficiaries could include major U.S. tech and space companies.

The project aims to reduce Europe’s dependence on China, which currently controls over 80% of global rare earth processing capacity, and to strengthen EU economic and defense security.

Romania and $CRML are expected to seek EU funding from the €3.5 billion rare metals initiative recently announced for strategic industrial projects.
If implemented, the initiative would place Romania at the center of a Western-aligned critical minerals supply chain from mine to processing.