1. War in Middle East-Volatility Index Down on 5 Day Chart.
2. Oil Move Not Large by Historical Standards.
Bespoke It’s been a large move, but today’s gain would only rank as the 80th largest one-day gain in crude oil since 1984. Given the enormity of the military action, an even larger move in crude oil wouldn’t have been a surprise.
Bespoke Premium
3. A Couple Numbers from Prof G Monday Newsletter.
-Tesla’s robotaxis have been involved in crashes at 8x the rate of human drivers. Waymo, by contrast, estimates that its vehicles get into injury-causing crashes 80% less than human drivers
Prof G Markets
4. Bank Selloff–U.S. Banks Lent $300B to Private Equity Credit Providers.
Dave Lutz Jones Trading
A recent Moody’s report showed U.S. banks had lent nearly $300 billion to private credit providers as of June 2025. Banks loaned a further $285 billion to private equity funds and had $340 billion in unutilized bank lending commitments available
5. Meta Balance Sheet Debt Up by $60B
The Wall Street Journal
6. Record Buying to Record Selling in Small Cap
7. Mecahnical Contracting vs AI…..FIX Comfort Systems USA HVAC Company (FIX) 5 year Chart +2134% vs. NVDA +1184%
Google – Morningstar
Ycharts
8. Demographics is Destiny…We need Population Growth in U.S.
The Wall Street Journal
9. 2025 Russia Gained Less than 1% of Ukraine Territory….Russian Killed or Wounded 400-450k
Perplexity
10. U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) has a Budget that Would Rank in Top 10 as a Country in World.
It reveals low status. People with power don’t need to use sarcasm to make a point. If you want to lead with status, using sarcasm undermines that goal.
It adds emotion where it’s not always needed. The emotion is an amplifier, but it often causes division and defensiveness.
If you have confidence in your standing and your idea, then sarcasm is simply getting in the way, because it undermines both.
3. Cybersecurity ETF CIBR -20%…Close to Liberation Day Lows
StockCharts
4. XLF Financials ETF Closes Below 200-Day First Time Since Liberation Day Sell Off
StockCharts
5. Net Outflows Crypto ETFs
Marketwatch “By Gordon Gottsegen U.S.-based spot ETFs have sold a net of $2.6 billion so far in 2026. This contrasts with net buying of $4.3 billion in the same period of 2025. This is a $6.9 billion buying gap from 2025,” Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, told MarketWatch.
MarketWatch
By this time last year, bitcoin ETFs had added $4.3 billion to the crypto market. This year, they’re pulling liquidity away. Photo: CryptoQuant
6. Big Names Below All-Time Highs
Charlie Bilello
7. The Weight Loss Winner Is…..LLY +220% vs. NVO -44% 3-Year Chart
Ycharts
8. AI Cash Burn $218B
Chartr
9. I Asked Perplexity About Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) for Mag 7
Perplexity
10. Share of U.S. Adults Using Each Social Media Platform-Ed Elson
However, just because China owns U.S. Treasuries does not mean it must have custodial holdings in the U.S. Look at the same holdings table and focus on Belgium and Luxembourg. In the November 2025 snapshot, Belgium shows about $481 billion in Treasury holdings, and Luxembourg shows about $425 billion. Those are massive totals for very small countries that are not building reserves at that scale
In reality, Luxembourg and Belgium are “hosting custody” for China. Just for reference look at the chart of US Treasury holdings of China and Belgium. Over the same period, while China’s holdings fell by $600 billion, Belgiums rose by $500 billion.
Advisor Perspectives
7. Single Family Housing Construction -6.9% Year Over Year
Wolf Street
8. Philadelphia Leads Job Growth in Large Metro Areas
The Philadelphia Inquirer
9. Philadelphia Sees Largest Annual Increase in Home Prices
10. Drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day tied to lower dementia risk
The Harvard Gazzette Marked differences between caffeinated, decaffeinated drinks in analysis of more than 130,000 people
Mass General Brigham Communications
February 9, 2026 4 min read
Evidence from a study of more than 130,000 people suggests that two to three cups of coffee a day can reduce dementia risk and slow cognitive decline.
The research — published in JAMA and led by investigators from Mass General Brigham, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard — analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.
“When searching for possible dementia prevention tools, we thought something as prevalent as coffee may be a promising dietary intervention — and our unique access to high-quality data through studies that have been going on for more than 40 years allowed us to follow through on that idea,” said senior author Daniel Wang, associate scientist with the Channing Division of Network Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Wang is also an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School and an associate member at the Broad Institute.
“While our results are encouraging, it’s important to remember that the effect size is small and there are lots of important ways to protect cognitive function as we age. Our study suggests that caffeinated coffee or tea consumption can be one piece of that puzzle.”
“While our results are encouraging, it’s important to remember that the effect size is small and there are lots of important ways to protect cognitive function as we age.”
Daniel Wang
Early prevention is especially crucial for dementia, since current treatments are limited and typically offer only modest benefit once symptoms appear. Focus on prevention has led researchers to investigate the influences of lifestyle factors like diet on dementia development.
Coffee and tea contain bioactive ingredients like polyphenols and caffeine, which have emerged as possible neuroprotective factors that reduce inflammation and cellular damage while protecting against cognitive decline. Though promising, findings about the relationship between coffee and dementia have been inconsistent, as studies have had limited follow-up and insufficient detail to capture long-term intake patterns, differences by beverage type, or the full continuum of outcomes — from early subjective cognitive decline to clinically diagnosed dementia.
Data from Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study help to overcome these challenges. Participants repeated assessments of diet, dementia, subjective cognitive decline, and objective cognitive function, and were followed for up to 43 years. Researchers compared how caffeinated coffee, tea, and decaffeinated coffee influenced dementia risk and cognitive health of each participant.
Of the 131,821 participants, 11,033 developed dementia. Both male and female participants with the highest intake of caffeinated coffee had an 18 percent lower risk of dementia compared with those who reported little or no caffeinated coffee consumption. Caffeinated coffee drinkers also had lower prevalence of subjective cognitive decline (7.8 percent versus 9.5 percent). By some measurements, those who drank caffeinated coffee also showed better performance on objective tests of overall cognitive function.
Higher tea intake showed similar results, while decaffeinated coffee did not — suggesting that caffeine may be the active factor producing these neuroprotective results, though further research is needed to validate the responsible factors and mechanisms.
The cognitive benefits were most pronounced in participants who consumed two to three cups of caffeinated coffee or one to two cups of tea daily. Contrary to several previous studies, higher caffeine intake did not yield negative effects — instead, it provided similar neuroprotective benefits to the optimal dosage.
“We also compared people with different genetic predispositions to developing dementia and saw the same results — meaning coffee or caffeine is likely equally beneficial for people with high and low genetic risk of developing dementia,” said lead author Yu Zhang, a student at Harvard Chan School and a research trainee at Mass General Brigham.
Crypto flows. “Crypto sees biggest outflow since 2022. Money is leaving the market at one of the fastest rates since the last bear market.”
DAILY CHARTBOOK
2. But…Crypto ETF Positive Flows Were Much Higher than Predicted
Eric Balchunas
3. Flows Move Away from Mega Cap Tech Stocks
Dave Lutz Jones Trading–At the end of the fourth quarter, mega-cap tech stocks were the most under-owned relative to their weightings in the S&P 500 Index in 17 years, according to Morgan Stanley analysis citing 13-F filings. Bloomberg reports
4. Online Spending Surging
5. LLY Stock Sideways Pattern Since November 2025
StockCharts
6. 1.4 Billion Barrells of Oil Sitting at Sea
Google
7. China Debt Worse than U.S. and Europe
Michael A. Arouet
8. Musk cuts Starlink access for Russian forces – giving Ukraine an edge at the front
Paul Adams-Reuters
The Starlink system has become a vital tool to give troops in Ukraine internet access
Evidence is mounting that Elon Musk’s decision to deny Russian forces access to his Starlink satellite-based internet service has blunted Moscow’s advance, caused confusion among Russian soldiers and handed an advantage to Ukraine’s defenders.
But for how long? And what can Ukraine’s military achieve in the meantime?
“The Russians… lost their ability to control the field,” a Ukrainian drone operator who goes by the callsign Giovanni told us.
“I think they lost 50% of their capacity for offence,” he said. “That’s what the numbers show. Fewer assaults, fewer enemy drones, fewer everything.”
It’s still early to assess the impact of a change that only came into effect at the beginning of the month, after Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to block Russian access to Starlink.
But in some areas of the long front line, especially east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, there is some evidence of Russian forces being forced to retreat.
BBC
9. Map of Highest Homicide Rates in America
Newsweek
10. America-Work Down Leisure Time Up-Irrelevant Investor Blog
