Robin Brooks: Markets are fixated on weaker US data and mounting recession risk, but there's a good chance recent weaker data are noise. Take yesterday's personal spending data, which showed a big fall in Jan. '25. There was a similarly big fall in Jan. '24. The US did NOT tip into recession.

China's official manufacturing PMI (larger firms than the Caixin PMI) returned to a slight expansion in February at 50.2, just over the 50 dividing line, from 49.1 in Jan, while the services PMI accelerated slightly to 50.4 from 50.2.

Nvidia gets a weekly close below the 200D moving average for only the 2nd time since January 2023

Cryptocurrency Funds just saw a weekly withdrawal of more than $2 Billion, the largest outflow in history

Advanced data shows the US goods trade deficit spiked to record highs in January, with imports jumping by $34B as businesses and consumers rushed to buy foreign goods ahead of Trump's tariff hikes

CNBC: Tesla $TSLA shares are on track to notch their worst week in more than two years. The stock has tumbled around -16% this week. If that holds through Friday’s closing bell, it would mark the electric vehicle maker’s biggest weekly loss since December 2022.

Warren Buffett Goes to Cash 💵 Berkshire Hathaway is now holding 27% of their total assets in cash, the highest percentage in history

The Kobeissi Letter: Americans are becoming less bullish on equities: 46.8% of consumers expected stock prices to rise over the next 12 months in February, the lowest share since April 2024. This was down from 54.2% in January, marking the largest monthly drop since the March 2020 crash.

President Trump: "We want to balance the budget. We want to have a balanced budget within a reasonably short period of time — meaning maybe by next year or the year after, but maybe even sooner than that."

So far, Trump has implemented tariffs on $435B worth of imports from China, signed tariffs that (without more can-kicking) will hit $916B in imports from Canada & Mexico in 4 days plus $50B in steel & aluminum in 12 days, and verbally threatened tariffs on ~$819B in other imports

Nick Timiraos: Economists who translate the CPI and PPI into the PCE expect it to show that core prices rose 0.27% in January. Because core prices rose 0.50% in January 2024, core PCE inflation on a 12-month basis would slow to 2.6% from 2.8% in December on account of this base effect

Robin Brooks: The Dollar is up 1% on the latest tariff announcements and the S&P 500 is down sharply. Overall, the Dollar is up 4% since the election on Nov. 5 (lhs), while S&P 500 is up only 1% (rhs). The Dollar has a lot further to rise if tariffs really do go into effect next next week...

Mega Cap Tech Stocks are now the most oversold since early August

Holger Zschaepitz: White House clarifies that the 10% China tariff Trump announced today is in addition to the 10% tariff he announced earlier this year, bringing total to 20% in new tariffs on all Chinese goods, effective March 4th.

The Kobeissi Letter: The Nasdaq's market cap to US GDP ratio hit a record 103% in 2024. This ratio has risen by ~40 percentage points since the 2022 October low and exceeds the previous high posted in 2021. To put this into perspective, at the 2000 Dot-Com Bubble peak, the ratio was just ~62%.

33.4% of consumers said jobs were “plentiful,” down from 33.9% in January, while 16.3% of consumers said jobs were “hard to get,” up from 14.5%. The difference between these two — a metric followed by some economists to gauge the job market — narrowed for a second month.

In Asia, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index was down for the 3rd day in 4 after hitting 4-mth highs on Friday -0.4%, reversing from earlier gains which saw HongKong's Hang Seng (-0.3%) hit a three-year high before reversing.

The NY Fed in a detailed blog post argues that there appears to be upwards of $100 billion in “missing imports” from China in U.S. data (the difference between what China says they are exporting to the US and what the US says they are importing from China)

Liz Ann Sonders: As of December, typical U.S. homebuyer’s down payment was $63,188, up from 7.5% a year earlier (biggest increase in 5 months) … typical down payment was equal to 16.3% of purchase price in December (up from 15% a year earlier)

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan stated that the bank is ready to enter the stablecoin market, provided that the regulatory framework allows it. In an interview with Bloomberg, Moynihan said that the issued stablecoin would be a fully dollar-backed currency, comparing it to a bank account.

Egg Prices could soar more than 40% this year, warns USDA. Eggs are already at all-time highs

From Bloomberg: “Investors yanked more than $1 billion from spot Bitcoin ETFs on Tuesday, the biggest one-day loss since the cohort’s debut last January.” Consistent with these outflows, Bitcoin is trading at around $86,000.”

Tesla has now plummeted more than 40% since its December 18th all-time high. That's a total market cap loss of roughly $630 Billion

Joey Politano: Official data is just in—and US power generation rose to a record high in 2024, up 3% from 2023. That was powered by record generation for solar (up 27%!), wind (up 8%), and natural gas (up 3.2%) Clean energy (Nuclear, Hydro, Solar, & Wind) made up a record 40.5% of electricity!

U.S. Credit Card Defaults soared to $46 Billion, the most since the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis