Rob Cherrin

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

Since the start of the Iran war...
Sulfur: +57%
Jet Fuel: +52%
Urea: +51%
Diesel: +48%
Gasoline: +36%
Fertilizer: +35%
Heating Oil: +32%
WTI Crude Oil: +28%
Brent Crude Oil: +26%
European Natural Gas: +21%
Coal: +12%
Palm Oil: +10%
Iron Ore: +8%
Rice: +7%
S&P 500: +4%
$VIX: -12%

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

https://t.co/X3MLBWJNMo

[Tushar Gupta @Tushar15]

🚨BREAKING: Bloomberg reporting that a crude oil vessel, 'Aqua Titan', changed destination from China to India, turning back from the South China Sea. Seven tankers have switched destinations to India mid-voyage.

[Cody Stavenhagen @CodyStavenhagen]

Here's the Jordan Yost home run

[Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🚂⚓️ @FreightAlley]

I have zero doubt that we are seeing manufacturing starting to rip.

Flatbed is naturally the first mode to signal it, as flatbeds haul heavy industrial raw materials.

We talked about greenshoots a few weeks ago, and it was exciting, but still a bit iffy.

I don’t recall ever seeing a national tender rejection chart surge like this.

Flatbeds are on fire. This is epic.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇨🇳 A year ago, humanoid robots were struggling with basic movements.

At China's 2026 Spring Festival Gala this week, they were doing backflips, parkour, and full kung fu routines with nunchucks.

Physical intelligence is moving faster than almost anyone expected.

Source: CGTN

[Tansu Yegen @TansuYegen]

They are now 3D printing a 12 meter boat in one piece with robots, no mold and no extra cost, so what once needed a full shipyard can now be done with a giant printer 🚢

[Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🚂⚓️ @FreightAlley]

Trucking spot rates are up $.61/mile since last May.

The fact that this is happening in early February is remarkable, typically one of the slowest times of the year.

Spring shipping starts next month and could bring one of the best markets that truckers have ever experienced.

[Donovan Jackson @TheDonInvesting]

Twins. $BTC $IGV

[Documenting Saylor @saylordocs]

In 2018, a husband and wife pitched their business on Shark Tank.

They wanted $400,000 for 10%.

The only offer was $400,000 for 25%.

They accepted and rebranded as Poppi.

Pepsi just bought them for $1.95 billion.

[Chris Camillo @ChrisCamillo]

Possibly the most important real-world FSD data point yet. $TSLA

[Dan Nystedt @dnystedt]

OpenAI will unveil its first AI earbuds, dubbed “Sweetpea”, in September this year and shipments are expected to reach 40-50 million units in 2027, media report, citing OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane. Taiwan’s Foxconn will do assembly for the buds. #openai #sweetpea #foxconn https://t.co/YY7iuR7e0I

[Balaji @balajis]

WHO LOST CANADA?
It was obvious that China/Canada would happen. Here's how it happened, and what may happen next.

(1) First, in early 2025 it looked like Canadian conservative Pierre Poilievre was a straight shot to win Canada. Instead, all the MAGA posts about annexing Canada undercut Pierre, boosted left nationalism, and turned what looked like a sure thing into an epic defeat. The result was Mark Carney:

(2) Carney is on the left but is far more intelligent than his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He's also the former governor of the Bank of Canada, and understands that the G7 (including Canada) is in the midst of sovereign debt crisis. And the Canadian dollar is going the way of the US dollar, which is to say that it's going to zero. Canada needs access to hard goods and will trade natural resources to get that. Hence, China. Carney's Canada may become a sort of North American Russia, trading oil and lumber to China for cars and electronics.

(3) Who lost Canada? The fundamental reason this happened is that MAGA ironically doesn't understand its own self-interest. Even the term "America First" is misconceived, because it groups a Blue American like Elizabeth Warren together with a Red American like JD Vance...when in reality the Red American and the Red Canadian (like Pierre Poilievre) have much more in common. All the "joke" posts on annexing Canada managed to needlessly put Red Americans at odds not just with Blue Americans and Blue Canadians, but also with Red Canadians.

The Greenland thing will have exactly the same effect, as it'll end up pushing Western Europeans to China. That's actually why most ultranationalist movements fail: they're just so shortsightedly tribal that they're terrible at building coalitions.

(4) Anyway, while Carney is the first to be this explicit about aligning with China, expect many other Western leftist leaders (like Newsom and Walz) to line up with China over time. The reason is that while Democrats really did fight Communists from ~2021-2024 over the question of who'd run the world's most powerful state, Democrats lost. All the chip sanctions and isolation tactics that somewhat worked on Russia, and frankly might have worked on almost any other country, just didn't work on China...because China had enough internal economic scale to essentially be their own autarkic civilization, and build whatever they needed.

(5) So: the anti-China Biden Democrats have been replaced by the China-curious Newsom Democrats. And now the China-aligned Carney Canadians. With Carney making the first move, you should expect many more blue state Democrats to align with China, particularly those on the West Coast like Newsom.

(6) It's simple coalitional math. Democrats are the ingroup, Republicans are the outgroup, and Communists are the fargroup. So, for Democrats: the enemy of their Republican enemy is their friend. And there is much for them to admire in the Chinese political system. After all, Democrats and Communists both built one-party states:

(7) Newsom in particular is likely the next shoe to drop, because even in 2023 he was reaching out to Xi. He's also spoken in Xinhua (Chinese state media) about becoming China's "long-term, stable, and strong partner." Newsom posts images of himself shaking Xi's hand, while also posting images of Trump in handcuffs. It's clear which President he's more comfortable with:

(8) The California wealth tax is also worth mentioning here. As M. Guimarin correctly pointed out, the net effect of the wealth tax is for blues to drive tech out of the state. That's not an unintended consequence: the purpose of the wealth tax was to either rob or deport the sole remaining political opposition to Democrats in California, namely technologists.

(Side note: Democrats are historically much better at mass deportations than Republicans, as they take a whole-of-society approach to it, and persist with it over decades, and do it silently and nonviolently. That's how Republicans were pushed out of university faculties, media companies, and California itself. It was once a dark red state, and now it's deep blue.)

(9) Anyway, with the technologists pushed out of California, Newsom's blues can welcome in the Chinese, who won't be subject to the same wealth taxes as they aren't US citizens.

(10) There is also an obvious geostrategic aspect to this: Chinese Canada is a bridge across all the blue states, from the West Coast to the Northeast. So as blue states like Minnesota and California engage in more "soft secession", they can all link up with Canada, and get supplied by China.

Decades ago, this map was made as a joke.
Perhaps it becomes all too real.

[Rob Cherrin @Rcherrin]

Ford partners with Carhartt to launch a tool bank and a special F-150 https://t.co/NdnilgVua5 via @freep

[Dan Nystedt @dnystedt]

OpenAI has dumped China’s Luxshare for Foxconn to supply AI consumer devices to avoid having products made in China, media report, citing unnamed supply chain sources. Foxconn will produce them in Vietnam or the US. OpenAI is rumored to be working on an AI-powered pen (Gumdrop) a portable music player, more. Media speculate the deal means Foxconn could also win the bulk of OpenAI’s AI server orders now. #openai #foxconn #aiservers #server #projectgumdrop
https://t.co/qMksX3JIEc

[Stephen McBride @DisruptionHedge]

The number of $10 billion companies created in the US (left) and Europe (right) in the past 50 years:

[Robin @xdNiBoR]

This is actually insane!

In the time they went from 8 to 9 million, they added a new customer every 4.1 seconds!

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

BREAKING: Tesla Model Y Robotaxi with literally no one in the car spotted driving itself on public roads in Austin, Texas!

A new age has begun 🤖

[Tom Winter @Tom_Winter]

Incredible:

[Golden State Warriors @warriors]

HOW 🤯