Nvidia shares rose slightly in premarket trading in New York after Reuters reported that the US chipmaker has informed customers it plans to ship its second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, to China before the Lunar New Year in mid-February.

Sources familiar with the shipment say Nvidia plans to deliver about 5,000 to 10,000 chip modules, equivalent to 40,000 to 80,000 H200 AI chips, to China in the coming months.

Those same sources noted that the chipmaker plans to expand H200 production capacity in the new year, with orders for that capacity scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2026.

Designed by Nvidia, the H200 AI chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company using its advanced 4-nanometer process. This is the same foundry that manufactures most of Nvidia’s Hopper-generation GPUs.

Major Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba Group and ByteDance, are interested in the H200s for training large AI models. This chip offers about six times the performance of the H20.

However, the sources noted:

Significant uncertainty remains, as Beijing has yet to approve any H200 purchases and the timeline could shift depending on government decisions, the sources said.

“The whole ‌plan is contingent on government approval,” the third source said. “Nothing is certain until we get the official go-ahead.”

. . .

Chinese officials held emergency meetings earlier this month to discuss the matter ‍and are weighing whether to allow shipments, Reuters reported this month. One proposal would require each H200 purchase to be bundled with a set ratio of domestic chips, according to the report.

This report follows the Trump administration’s approval of Nvidia’s sale of H200s in China, but only on the condition of a 25% surcharge. The opportunity from the US Gov’t will also be available to other chipmakers, such as Intel and AMD.

However, China’s move to expand domestic production of advanced AI chips may be at odds with Western chipmakers trying to expand market share in the world’s second-largest economy.

Authored by Eric Salzman via Racket News, (emphasis ours)

By just about any metric it has been a blowout year for the retail brokerage company Robinhood Markets. The company’s stock (HOOD) price is up about 220% in 2025, revenues and account growth have shot higher, and founder Vlad Tenev has become a multi-billionaire.

Robinhood was founded in 2013 but really burst onto the scene in 2020, changing the face of the retail brokerage industry. After a near-death experience in 2021 with the infamous GameStop episode, the company has become a phoenix, rising from the ashes, turning itself into a casino that can fit in a young man’s pocket. On the Robinhood app you can buy and sell stocks, options, crypto and bet on Monday Night Football all at the same time!

Robinhood is a pusher in plain sight and dopamine is the drug it peddles. It rounds up retail, non-professional traders and matches them up with the best and fastest traders in the world and gets paid handsomely to do it. Tenev continually claims he’s democratizing investing, but his customers are, in effect, profitable lab rats. Their order flow is sold to professional trading firms and studied. They’re more like marks than investors.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported:

The chief executive of Robinhood took the stage at the online brokerage’s annual summit in Las Vegas this fall decked out in a race-car driver’s jumpsuit and customized Nikes.

Vlad Tenev told the hundreds of cheering traders in the audience that they had chosen “one of the most intense lifestyles out there.” He compared trading to driving a race car. “A finely tuned machine can make all the difference,” he said, “and that’s the role we feel Robinhood plays for our active investors.”

Vlad is right about one thing: trading for a living is definitely intense. I’ve done it professionally until I realized I really wasn’t good at it (most people aren’t) and went back to sales and strategy! A veteran trader, who was actually very good at it, said to me once, “If it were easy, Girl Scouts would be doing it.”

As far as Vlad taking the stage in race-car driver get-up and talking about a finely tuned machine making the difference, the analogy only works if the driver knows how to handle the damn car.

If you put 99.99% of us into a Formula One car, we’re going to run that thing into the first wall we see. Maybe the odds are a little better trading stocks, or options on stocks and the host of other high-octane wagers that Robinhood promotes and offers, but over the long term, not much better.

The Journal’s story includes that of a 35-year-old man who says he gets up at 6:30 a.m. every day to start trading zero-day options.

It’s a hobby he said he never would have picked up if not for how easy it is on Robinhood. “The thrill gets me going. If $500 can get me $50,000 or $60,000, let me just try.”

Good Lord.

I have to admit that I’ve looked at the meteoric growth of Robinhood with fascination and a sick sense of admiration for what Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt built.

I felt the same way when I watched “Narcos Mexico” and saw how Felix Gallardo built the first Mexican marijuana and cocaine cartel.

My admiration comes from the rather brilliantly evil way Tenev and Bhatt took their early experiences with high frequency trading (HFT), identified a new brokerage profit model that could offer a no-fee brokerage combined with a video game-like interface to serve up dopamine hits to a whole new generation of investors that the traditional brokerage houses either overlooked or didn’t know how to reach effectively.

A Ticket to Billions: Payment for Order Flow

Fee-less trading was Robinhood’s main draw when it started in 2013. You might ask yourself how Robinhood could have made money without the traditional fees a retail broker would charge per trade. To this day, most users of Robinhood don’t know the answer to this question.

From their experience with high frequency trading, the Robinhood boys learned that they didn’t have to send your order to the publicly visible New York Stock Exchange, but could sell customer orders to buy and sell stocks and options to the big and secretive HFT market makers, like Citadel, Dash, Wolverine, Susquahanna, Jane Street and Morgan Stanley, who will happily take the other side of your trade and quietly pay Robinhood for the privilege. This is called Payment for Order Flow (PFOF). You may have read or heard about this from Michael Lewis’ book, “Flashboys.” Before all the super geniuses of the planet went into Artificial Intelligence, they went to Wall Street or Chicago to build these super-fast trading algorithms that can transact in about 100 milliseconds, or faster than you can blink your eyes.

Without getting too into the weeds, when a Robinhood customer places an order to buy a stock, Robinhood can go to say, the New York Stock Exchange to fill the customer’s order or can route the order to one of the HFT market makers as long as it’s making the best effort to get the best execution (essentially, price) for the customer. The HFT market makers post where they will buy or sell a particular stock or option. The market maker profits from the difference.

Profit isn’t guaranteed but market makers typically make a penny or two per share on stock trades — and they are potentially making tens of millions of pennies per day. For options, the HFTs can make a much larger spread, anywhere from 10 cents to a few dollars. This is why HFT market makers like options! HFT market makers pay retail brokerages like Robinhood and Charles Schwab a certain amount per share of their retail orders to direct the orders to them, and as long as the retail customer is getting the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) at the moment of trade, all good, right? Maybe.

The SEC found that from 2015 to 2018, Robinhood was not disclosing to its retail clients how the company was making money off orders by selling their order flow. from the 2020 SEC press release.

“…Robinhood made misleading statements and omissions in customer communications, including in FAQ pages on its website, about its largest revenue source when describing how it made money – namely, payments from trading firms in exchange for Robinhood sending its customer orders to those firms for execution, also known as “payment for order flow.” As the SEC’s order finds, one of Robinhood’s selling points to customers was that trading was “commission free,” but due in large part to its unusually high payment for order flow rates, Robinhood customers’ orders were executed at prices that were inferior to other brokers’ prices. Despite this, according to the SEC’s order, Robinhood falsely claimed in a website FAQ between October 2018 and June 2019 that its execution quality matched or beat that of its competitors. The order finds that Robinhood provided inferior trade prices that in aggregate deprived customers of $34.1 million even after taking into account the savings from not paying a commission.

After that ethical speed bump, Robinhood really got down to business. The demographic Robinhood was going for suddenly had lots of time on its hands when Covid hit. The Robinhood app provided a fix as people went to work day-trading, especially trading options. When it comes to getting your dopamine on, trading options — especially those expiring in a week or two — can do the trick.

Leverage

Here is a simple example. Back in 2021 when stocks were on a huge bull run, especially the big technology stocks like Google, Robinhood traders used options to get leverage. Leverage means using a smaller amount of your own money to control a much larger position or exposure in the market — essentially amplifying both potential gains and losses.

In this case, one standard stock option contract gives you control over 100 shares of the underlying stock (without having to buy the shares outright). Therefore, the trader could buy 10 call option contracts for $1,200, betting that Google stock will go higher by more than about 5% in the next two weeks. That $1,200 controls exposure to 1,000 shares (10 contracts × 100 shares each), which is the leverage in action.

At the end of two weeks, if Google went up say, 7%, the options could roughly double in value (or more, depending on the details), letting the trader turn that $1,200 into a big profit. However, if Google only goes up 4% (or less than the break-even point), the options the trader paid $1,200 for expire and become worthless, and the entire $1,200 is lost.

From June 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, (Source Bloomberg) Google went up 102% and the option bets paid off handsomely. Since this was the first time many Robinhood traders invested in options, they felt it was a license to steal! They had never really lost. However, in 2022 Google shares dropped 39% and option bets got creamed as newbie traders learned the downside of leverage. In 2021 Bloomberg News reported on Robinhood’s option activity.

New disclosures show the app’s monthly volume of options executed tripled last year, making the firm the second-most active among peers behind Charles Schwab Corp., a 50-year-old stalwart that just bought TD Ameritrade. Offering options is so lucrative that they accounted for two-thirds of Robinhood’s reported revenue from order flow, a significant source of income. A single contract can generate more money than handling 100 shares.

Using its app, clients can unlock Robinhood’s most advanced level of options strategies in minutes by tapping their details into a smartphone. They can then instantly start placing wagers on some of the most complex U.S. markets available to the investing public. Approval for similar access can take days at competitors such as Schwab and Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade.

Between 2020 and the 3rd Quarter of 2025, Robinhood has been paid billions by HFT firms for their option order flow. For example, in the 3rd quarter of 2025, HFT market makers paid Robinhood approximately $260 million.

Robinhood gets paid more than other retail brokers for its option order flow. Why?

As of September 2025 Robinhood was paid by HFT firms $0.53 per options contract. Their closest option flow competitor Schwab got $0.39 per contract. Why is Robinhood’s flow so much more valuable than Schwab’s? One theory that I subscribe to is that Robinhood’s main client base — young men — is aggressive risk takers and relatively predictable. As we learned in the “Meme Stock” craze of 2020-2021, this client base moves in herds. HFT algorithms study the trading patterns of this demographic and predict what the Robinhood customer is going to do before they do it and I would bet that Vlad and Baiju knew about this when they started the firm more than a decade ago.

The HFT firms are not guaranteed wins every time, and they are taking risk which means they are not necessarily doing anything wrong. Robinhood on the other hand, pushing option trading aggressively because they know their option order flow is the most valuable by a wide margin is, at best, sleazy.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported:

(Vlad) Tenev has come to realize that plugged-in, aggressive traders are actually key to his company’s success.

Robinhood offers a host of ordinary financial products, including retirement accounts and credit cards. It is the riskier products tailored to day traders that make the most money for the company. In the most recent quarter, customer trading generated more than half of Robinhood’s revenue, and 78% of that transaction-based revenue came from crypto and options trading.

Tenev said he directed his team to cater more to that group. “These are our most engaged customers that generate the lion’s share of our revenue,” he said in an interview. “We put our best people on active traders.”

This sort of reminds me of “The Wire” druglord Avon Barksdale

Crypto

Robinhood has continued to expand rapidly in crypto. The Block reported last week:

Robinhood wants to attract more advanced, high-volume crypto traders in both the U.S. and EU and is unveiling new features to do so, including lower fees and added leverage for altcoin futures, the company said Monday.

Hoping to woo sophisticated traders away from rival exchanges, the stock and crypto trading platform has in the U.S. expanded the number of available fee tiers from three to seven, “offering rates as low as 0.03% for high-volume traders,” Robinhood said in a statement. In the EU, users who want to trade perpetual futures will now have access to new trading pairs with eligible customers able to trade up to 7X leverage.

7x leverage on altcoins, what could possibly go wrong?

Zero Day Options

Also recently, Robinhood has piled into a fabulous product mentioned earlier, zero-day options. If there was ever a product where probably 99% of Robinhood customers should not be playing in, it is zero-day options or 0DTE (Zero Days to Expiration), especially with Michael Lewis’ “Flash Boys.”

The way the product works is, say the S&P 500 index starts the day at 6,800. The customer can buy an option that pays off if the S&P 500 goes up 1% by the end of the day or down 1% (greater than 6,868 or less than 6,732). This is called “buying volatility.” If the S&P moves more than 1% in either direction by the end of the day, the customer wins; if not customer loses. There are many iterations of this type of trade, the type of trade Flash Boys wrote the book on, and they are the ones Robinhood’s customers are trading against. Who do you think will win that one over time?

Robinhood is getting paid handsomely to serve up its customers to the sharks. I imagine there are lots of guys like the one the Wall Street Journal spoke to who put down a daily bet at the opening bell and stare at their phone or iPad until the 4 pm close instead of actually living a life.

Prediction Markets

Finally, there’s the prediction markets. Prediction markets have been around for a while. The biggest prediction exchange in the U.S. is Kalshi, which started up in 2021. Kalshi is pretty simple.

Take an event like the presidential election. The player thinks Trump will beat Harris and currently 53% of all betters think Trump will win. The player bets $0.53 on Trump, and if Trump wins the player gets $1.00 and has made $0.47. Conversely, the players that bet on Harris put up $0.47. Now you can pretty much bet on the outcome of anything with Kalshi, including most sporting events.

The genius of Kalshi is that it’s able to call its product an “event contract” regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Kalshi is now considered to be a regulated exchange. Not having its product classified as a wager, but instead a regulated financial product, means that it’s legal to sell to 18-year-olds in all 50 states. Online sports gambling sites like DraftKings at least require customers to be 21 years old.

Brilliant.

Naturally, this August, just in time for football season, Robinhood partnered with Kalshi to put prediction markets for the NFL and college football on Robinhood’s app. Then in late November, Robinhood partnered with Susquahanna (one of the HFT Flash Boys that buys Robinhood’s order flow) and bought an existing CFTC-regulated exchange, acquiring a designated contract market (DCM) and derivatives clearing organization (DCO), MIAXdx. Susquahanna will be the market maker. The whole shebang will be launched in 2026 and the best news is, those highly entertaining but idiotic Same Game Parlay NFL bets will be available.

Starting Tuesday, users are able to trade preset combinations of the outcome, totals and spreads of individual NFL games, and starting in early 2026, users will have the ability to create custom combos of up to 10 outcomes across NFL games. Those will have “a structural look or feel as a parlay,” JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, told CNBC.

Even more, the company is allowing users to wager on the performances of individual NFL players in real time. For example, they can place prop bets on a certain player scoring a touchdown at any point during a game as well as the passing, receiving and rushing yards for a player.

Awesome, bro.

We have been in a bull market for stocks for three years now. At some point we are going to have a draw down, probably a big one. Unfortunately, these three years have drawn in hundreds of thousands of our kids to the Robinhood pocket-casino. I’d like to think something can be done before the bad event to at least stop Robinhood’s growth, but there’s really nothing that can or will be done. I’d like to see the prediction market on that.

You can also listen to Eric Salzman discuss Robinhood on his podcast, Monkey Business.

President Donald Trump announced late Sunday on Truth Social that he is appointing Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry to serve as the U.S. Special Envoy to Greenland. The move prompted Denmark’s Foreign Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, to summon the U.S. ambassador, saying the appointment suggests continued American interest in the resource-rich island.

“I am pleased to announce that I am appointing the GREAT Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, as the United States Special Envoy to Greenland. Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our national security and will strongly advance our country’s interests for the safety, security, and survival of our allies, and indeed, the world. Congratulations, Jeff!” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.

Following Landry’s appointment, Rasmussen told Reuters in an emailed statement, “The appointment confirms the continued American interest in Greenland. However, we insist that everyone—including the U.S.—must show respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.”

In a separate statement, Rasmussen told CBS News he was “deeply angered” by the appointment and warned Washington to respect Denmark’s sovereignty.

This prompted Denmark to summon the U.S. ambassador. Danish officials also summoned the U.S. ambassador in August after a report that at least three people with connections to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.

I am happy to see the Trump Administration isn’t giving up on acquiring Greenland. It should be one of the top goals for the Administration to require Greenland. I would tell NATO that we are done if a deal isn’t reached. There are a lot of reasons why we need to have Greenland. pic.twitter.com/se5dRz50hj

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) December 22, 2025

Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland didn’t come out of nowhere. The US has had a military presence in Greenland since World War II and became its military defender in 1951. Harry Truman offered to buy it for $100M in gold. And our bases there are still deterrents against Russia. pic.twitter.com/zLetEHvCzv

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) January 23, 2025

Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. should have jurisdiction over Greenland, mainly for defense and mineral-rich deposits. The strategically located Arctic island fits into the broader theme of Western Hemisphere Defense.  

In March, Vice President JD Vance toured the U.S. Pituffik Space Base, met U.S. Space Force personnel on the island, and accused Denmark of underinvesting there.

According to a January opinion poll, a majority of Greenland’s 57,000 people wanted to become independent from Denmark but did not want to join the U.S.

The continued American interest in Greenland underscores the strategic importance of the resource-rich island in the Arctic for hemispheric defense purposes.

Beijing has condemned the U.S. interception of sanctioned crude tankers off the Venezuelan coast after a China-bound oil tanker was seized on Saturday. Beijing said Venezuela has the right to conduct trade with other countries.

Reuters cited China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a regular press briefing, who said the US seizure of another country’s tanker was a serious violation of international law. Jian added that China opposes all “unilateral and illegal” sanctions.

On Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the Centuries, which was loaded with 1.8 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan crude and was flying under the false name “Crag.” The tanker was bound for China.

China is the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude, but Venezuelan oil accounts for only about 4% of China’s total crude imports.

Reuters reports that data this year show Venezuelan crude exports to China range from 400,000 to 580,000 barrels per day, depending on the period and shipping patterns.

A White House spokesperson told Reuters that the Centuries was a “falsely flagged vessel” and carried sanctioned oil that was part of Venezuela’s shadow fleet.

So far, the US has seized two sanctioned tankers. The first, VLCC Skipper, earlier this month. Skipper is set to be unloaded in the coming days at the Galveston Offshore Lightering Area (GOLA). After Saturday’s seizure, news hit late afternoon Sunday of US forces in pursuit of yet another tanker.

All of this fits within the Trump administration’s gunboat diplomacy foreign policy strategy, which is designed to accelerate regime instability in Caracas while materially weakening Cuba; the core objective is to disrupt financial flows, sever funding channels, and allow second- and third-order effects to follow.

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

There’s nothing ‘right-wing’ about defending the Bill of Rights.

Being called “right-wing” or “fascist” is detestable. The label implies a preference for dictatorship, authoritarianism, and government supremacy over personal freedom. The exact opposite is true. I would describe myself as a supporter of autarchism in the sense that we should rule ourselves and not be ruled by others.

As someone who believes strongly in individual liberty, self-reliance, and self-government, I distrust all repositories of power — whether such power resides in government, corporations, or social institutions. As Lord Acton advised: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In my estimation, nothing in this physical world can be trusted with power for very long. Regrettably, all forms of power eventually become abusive.

Nineteenth-century diplomat and political writer John O’Sullivan (the man who coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in 1845) helped to popularize a sentiment shared by other luminaries of his time such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain: “The best government is that which governs least.”

Government is Leviathan. It knows only how to grow its size and the number of its tentacles until it is capable of wrapping its predacious powers around everyone and everything.

Emissaries of Big Government globalism speak of government as a benevolent “friend” and “parent” whose job is to “protect” and “take care of” the people. But government is none of those things. Government is coercion. It is force, including the threat of lethal force. It robs people of their labor in the form of taxes. It presumes to know what is best for everyone. It insists on telling people how to use their property and how to live their lives. It intrudes into family households and inserts itself between parents and children. Whereas a friend will fight beside you and a parent will sacrifice everything for your well-being, governments start wars recklessly, sacrifice citizens callously, and ignore the pleas of those suffering.

The German Nazis, Italian fascists, Soviet communists, and Chinese Maoists were all Big Government socialists who justified murdering their citizens for the good of the government. Government is not a “friend” or a “parent.” It is a homicidal maniac that society tries to keep somewhat restrained lest it indulge its basest instinct: to kill everyone in its path.

Government does not “protect” people. It uses people to its advantage. Government does not “take care of” people. It bullies them, steals from them, and keeps them divided against each other. Anybody praising the “virtues” of Big Government is nothing more than a macabre salesman for institutional slavery, indemnified violence, and legalized theft.

Those of us who identify as liberty lovers and defenders of freedom harbor profound distrust of government. It is therefore galling when Big Government leftists, socialists, globalists, Marxists, and even outright communists (especially those exercising power as so-called “journalists” working for multinational corporate news organizations) call us “right-wing.”

What is “right-wing” about wanting government bureaucrats to just leave us the hell alone? I try to put myself in the small wingtips of someone such as CNN’s Brian Stelter. When I say, “I want government out of my life,” how does he hear, “Right-wing fascism is overtaking America”? Is Brian obtuse? Maliciously dishonest? Both?

I find it perplexing to hear Stelter, Jake Tapper, and their fellow ideological clones on cable news describe those of us who most ardently defend the Bill of Rights as somehow being threats to American freedom. Look around the universe of political writers today, and you will find that almost all of the staunchest advocates for free speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, and protections from warrantless government searches and mass surveillance are Americans whom Stelter, Tapper, and their cohorts would describe as “right-wing.”

On the other hand, the very leftists and globalists whom CNN anchors adore are daily calling for mass censorship in the name of fighting “disinformation” and “hate speech.” Stelter has made an entire career out of playing a “truth-telling hall monitor” who believes he is empowered to tell social media companies what should be stricken from public debate. He has explicitly called for a “harm reduction model” of permissible speech by illogically claiming that “reducing a liar’s reach is not the same as censoring freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is different than freedom of reach.” He defends censorship in the name of “freedom” because he expects to be the corporate news umpire who gets to decide what is true or false.

Could there possibly be anything more authoritarian than CNN personalities claiming the authority to declare official truths?

Nonetheless, CNN ignores its own assaults on free speech and instead decries “right-wingers” who believe parents should have a say over whether elementary school libraries include books on “transgenderism,” abortion, sexual fetishes, and pornography. CNN’s talking heads even call those of us who oppose “drag queen story hour” for kindergartners “Christian nationalists” — as if trying to be a moral person, a faithful Christian, a protective parent, and a patriotic American were the hallmarks of “fascism.”

Effective communication between human beings is difficult even when people speak the same language, share the same culture, and enjoy similar beliefs. When politicians and “journalists” defame as “fascists” those of us who fight for expansive personal freedom and against government tyranny, they rob society of peaceful public discourse and light the fuse of future violence.

Those in the “journalism” business who use words to sell fear and provoke bloodshed know exactly what they’re doing. When you demonize your political enemies long enough, some eventually get murdered. Charlie Kirk wasn’t the first, and he will not be the last. After all, there is an entire army of fascist Antifa terrorists who hunt “right-wingers” for sport. Or is that too much truth for Stelter’s “harm reduction model” to permit me to say out loud?

After nearly tripling last year and soaring to a record $13,000 a ton, cocoa futures are on track for their worst-ever annual decline, based on data going back more than six decades.

Cocoa futures in New York are set for a 50% decline if losses persist through the end of the year.

Prices are currently trading around $5,845 as of Friday’s close, a stark difference from the $12,000 to $13,000 range in late 2024 and early 2025.

The cocoa surge sparked a price shock and crushed margins for major food companies that relied heavily on chocolate production. Those companies include Nestlé, Hershey, and many others.

In return, supermarket prices for chocolate rose, but now Wall Street analysts don’t expect the latest declines to translate into cheaper candy until the second half of 2026.

“The prices that the chocolate industry is currently working with are very high and painful,” said Jonathan Parkman, head of agricultural sales at commodities brokerage Marex Group in London, as quoted by Bloomberg. “It’s going to take us quite a while to work through that.”

Swiss-Belgian cocoa processor Barry Callebaut has noted that supply risks in West Africa, the world’s top-growing region, persist due to underinvestment, climate stress, and disease. The processor said chocolate was “far too cheap for far too long.”

Lambertz, one of Germany’s oldest confectioners, has enough cocoa supplies to last through the midpoint of 2026, after securing them when prices were high, said owner Hermann Bühlbecker. “As far as I can remember, there has never been such a price explosion,” he said.

To cope with the price shock, many brands have responded with shrinkflation and reformulation, such as lighter bars or reduced cocoa content. Companies like Mondelez have made significant adjustments to formulation.

Last week, Bonnie Herzog, managing director and senior consumer analyst at Goldman Sachs, highlighted easing pressures in the cocoa market that could produce “tailwinds” for candy and junk food companies:

Pockets of easing commodity pressure to aid earnings growth for some. While input cost inflation has meaningfully moderated for Staples at large over the past couple of years, certain pockets (e.g., cocoa, proteins) were still inflationary and weighed on earnings. As prices continue to come down meaningfully from peak levels, we would expect benefits from an easing cost environment to aid earnings growth. However, spot rates suggest aluminum will likely see the highest inflation in 2026. Moreover, oil/natural gas prices remain volatile owing to ongoing geopolitical tensions, which, along with pressure from tariffs, could further limit the extent of gross margin expansion ahead. Ultimately, we believe the input cost environment will be much more accommodative for our Staples universe next year, which along with an increased focus on productivity (as supply chains and service levels have normalized), should support continued margin expansion and reinvestments ahead. We highlight HSY as best placed to benefit from this dynamic, where we expect gross margin expansion to drive EPS growth in 2026. We also highlight potential tailwinds for MDLZ, HRL, and SFD.

Herzog noted where inflation and deflation trends linger in the commodity market this year:

Hershey versus cocoa futures (inverted)…

Conversations so far are that any price relief for chocolate at the supermarket won’t show up until the 2H26. We’re watching Hershey next year…

Herzog also told clients to buy nicotine, energy drink, candy, and beauty stocks heading into 2026 as a stronger consumer backdrop emerges.

Via The Cradle

The Israeli army carried out several attacks on south Lebanon on Sunay, hours after Beirut said that the disarmament of Hezbollah in the southern Litani River area is “days away” from completion. An Israeli drone struck a car in the southern town of Yater. Minutes later, Israel bombed a motorcycle around 300 meters away from the targeted car. 

The Israeli army said it “recently attacked another terrorist from the Hezbollah organization in the Yater area in southern Lebanon,” in a second statement following up on its announcement of the first strike. There were preliminary reports of casualties after the two drone strikes.

Israeli machine gun fire and artillery shelling also struck Kfar Shuba and the nearby Bastra Farm earlier on Sunday.

A day earlier, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam claimed in a statement that the first phase of disarming Hezbollah is nearly complete.

“Prime Minister Salam affirmed that the first phase of the weapons consolidation plan related to the area south of the Litani River is only days away from completion,” Salam’s office said on Saturday. 

“The state is ready to move on to the second phase – namely [confiscating weapons] north of the Litani River – based on the plan prepared by the Lebanese army pursuant to a mandate from the government,” it added.

The statement came after talks between Salam and Simon Karam, a former Lebanese ambassador to the US who Beirut recently appointed to hold direct talks with Israeli representatives – in violation of Lebanon’s laws and under heavy US pressure.

The Lebanese government has been vague about the direct talks, which have continued despite Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker and Amal Movement leader Nabih Berri saying recently that Beirut will not “negotiate under fire.”

So far, two direct meetings have been held as part of the ongoing discussions of the US-led ceasefire monitoring mechanism. Salam’s Saturday announcement about the weapons coincided with Israeli drone strikes on the towns of Blida and Taybeh. 

In the past two months, Israel has significantly escalated deadly strikes and other violations of the Lebanon ceasefire, claiming that Hezbollah has rearmed itself.

Dozens of Lebanese have been killed since the start of last month alone. Since the ceasefire deal went into effect in November 2024, over 300 people have been killed – including scores of civilians and children.

The Lebanese army has been dismantling Hezbollah’s infrastructure south of the Litani River in line with the ceasefire deal reached last year, saying it has completed 90 percent of the disarmament process in the southern Litani area.

Under US pressure, the Lebanese government adopted a decision in August for the resistance movement’s full disarmament by the end of this year. The Lebanese army was ordered to draft a disarmament plan, which has been kept confidential.

According to reports in recent months, Lebanon has backtracked on its commitment to full disarmament by year’s end – in favor of a phased approach that would continue into 2026.

But Israel has threatened to launch a new campaign against the country unless the resistance surrenders all its arms by the end of 2025. Hezbollah has rejected disarmament, saying it will eventually respond if Israel continues to violate the truce. 

President Donald Trump announced Dec. 19 that his administration has sold more than $1.3 billion worth of “Trump Gold Cards,” a new immigration program offering expedited residency to high-skilled foreign talent, with proceeds going toward paying down the national debt.

In remarks to the press, Trump said that sales had exceeded $1.3 billion and described the Gold Card as a “green card on steroids.”

He said the option would allow companies to retain graduates from elite institutions, such as Harvard and Wharton, who might otherwise have to go back to their native countries upon graduation.

“They graduate from the top schools,” Trump said. “These people want to hire them. Now you’re able to buy a card and you’re able to keep people in the country.”

Trump highlighted how his immigration policy focuses on securing top talent and curbing illegal immigration.

“Under the Biden administration, 25 million people came in, and they came from prisons and mental institutions, and they were drug dealers and all sorts of people came in that shouldn’t be here. They came from the jails,” he said.

As Kimberly Hayek details below for The Epoch Times, the Gold Card allows businesses to purchase the visas for foreign workers, enabling them to stay indefinitely with work rights. The visa costs $1 million in the form of a donation to the U.S. federal government.

The program, which has been challenged legally, began accepting applications on Dec. 10.

Trump launched the Gold Card in September with an executive order and instituted a $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applicants. The H1B fee exempts current holders and renewals, according to the White House.

Trump first proposed the Gold Card visas in February, floating a $5 million price tag for residency and a path to citizenship.

“Wealthy people will be coming into our country,” he said when he proposed the program. The administration launched a dedicated website in June.

When launching the immigration Gold Card program, Trump said it would “reduce our taxes greatly and hopefully bring some great people into our country.”

Payments go straight to the U.S. Treasury. Howard Lutnick, secretary of commerce, was instrumental in launching the program, he said.

Twenty states, however, filed a lawsuit against the $100,000 H-1B fee, arguing it goes beyond executive authority.

Meanwhile, proponents say the program fixes longstanding issues with the H1-B lottery system.

Via Remix News,

The German government is signaling times of austerity are ahead for Germans, with German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) even saying there could be years of belt-tightening.

Klingbeil, a member of the far left SPD, is preparing the German public for a period of financial hardship, even as the country spends at least €50 billion a year on migrants, including for their housing, education, security, and integration. In addition, tens of billions have already headed to Ukraine, with another €19 billion directly from Germany planned.

Speaking on the ZDF program “Das Jahr 2025,” the SPD chairman warned of “very challenging years” ahead, stating that citizens would “also have to be asked to do something.”

„Jeder wird spüren, dass wir sparen“ – Klingbeil kündigt harte Einschnitte für die Deutschen an.

Aber erst mal 181,5 Milliarden Euro für die gesichert korrupte Ukraine … https://t.co/bV6cOAQALg pic.twitter.com/VPhOzwnpw9

— spaceloop23 🗽 (@spaceloop23) December 18, 2025

“Everyone will feel that we are saving,” Klingbeil explained, emphasizing the necessity of cuts.

However, he pushed back against the narrative that the nation is facing fiscal ruin.

“We are not broke. The country is not on the brink of collapse,” the finance minister stated, rejecting the impression of impending financial failure.

According to Klingbeil, while the nation’s problems are solvable, they will come with consequences. He highlighted a funding gap of €60 billion for 2028 alone, which cannot be closed without making serious cuts that people will notice.

Klingbeil’s announcement comes at a time when German municipalities across the country are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Many officials are also complaining that the historic debt package the government passed, which totals €1 trillion, will not fill the holes in the budget.

Last month, Essen’s Mayor Thomas Kufen (CDU), who is also a member of the CDU federal executive board, sounded the alarm, saying: “Almost every German city is now on the verge of bankruptcy.”

In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, only 10 out of 396 cities and municipalities can present a balanced budget, and these alarming figures from Germany’s largest federal state can be applied to the “entire country,” he said.

Mayor Kufen stressed that the crisis is universal, affecting municipalities regardless of their location: 

“What’s new is that all cities have their backs against the wall,” he told Bild newspaper.

He warned that “budget freezes would now have to be imposed everywhere,” including in many cities previously considered wealthy.

Although Klingbeil did not provide specific details on the planned measures, he announced that a complete package would be presented at a later date by the party leaders of the CDU, CSU, and SPD. He stressed that these measures must be designed fairly: “The goal is that everyone contributes their part and not just one group.”

Not just the federal government, but also at the ground level in cities, budget cuts are being made, and they are expected to get worse, all while cities like Berlin are spending record amounts on migrant accommodations. A new report shows Berlin spent nearly €1 billion last year, all while making deep budget cuts in areas such as culture, education and transport.

However, Klingbeil is also calling on his own party to embrace change. He argued that the SPD must be prepared to overcome the status quo, noting that the perception of weakness had recently harmed the party.

“Social democracy is successful when it leads change and not just accompanies it,” he stated.

The announced austerity measures and the government’s fiscal management have drawn sharp rebuke from the opposition, particularly the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel strongly condemned the government’s course, characterizing the coalition’s fiscal policy as a “Black-Red debt orgy at the expense of Germany’s future.” 

The AfD parliamentary group has further described Klingbeil’s budgetary drafts as “catastrophic for Germany,” arguing that the government’s approach places undue burdens on citizens while failing to address structural issues. Critics from the party have repeatedly emphasized that “the money is not reaching the people” and have warned against what they view as the mismanagement of public funds.

Read more here…

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via VictoreHanson.com,

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece.

But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets—what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.

The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model.

For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable from Christianity.

From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara, there were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress, and science—until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD.

Populations declined. Cities eroded. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws crumbled.

In place of the old Roman provinces arose tribal chieftains and fiefdoms.

Whereas once Roman law had protected even rural people in remote areas, during the Dark Ages, walls and stone were the only means of keeping safe.

Finally, at the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex world of Graeco-Roman civilization gradually reemerged.

The slow rebirth was later energized by the humanists and scientists of the Renaissance, Reformation, and eventually the 200-year European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.

But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?

Historians cite several causes of societal collapse—and today they are hauntingly familiar.

Like people, societies age. Complacency sets in.

The hard work and sacrifice that built the West also creates wealth and leisure. Such affluence is taken for granted by later generations. What created success is eventually ignored—or even mocked.

Expenditures and consumption outpace income, production, and investment.

Child-rearing, traditional values, strong defense, love of country, religiosity, meritocracy, and empirical education fade away.

The middle class of autonomous citizens disappear. Society bifurcates between a few lords and many peasants.

Tribalism—the pre-civilizational bonds based on race, religion, or shared appearance—remerge.

National government fragments into regional and ethnic enclaves.

Borders disappear. Mass migrations are unchecked. The age-old bane of anti-Semitism reappears.

The currency inflates, losing its value and confidence. General crassness in behavior, speech, dress, and ethics replaces prior norms.

Transportation, communications, and infrastructure all decline.

The end is near when the necessary medicine is seen as worse than the disease.

Such was life around 450 AD in Western Europe.

The contemporary West might raise similar red flags.

Fertility has dived well below 2.0 in almost every Western country.

Public debt is nearing unsustainable levels. The dollar and euro have lost much of their purchasing power.

It is more common in universities to damn than honor the gifts of the Western intellectual past.

Yet, the reading and analytical skills of average Westerners, and Americans in particular, steadily decline.

Can the general population even operate or comprehend the ever-more sophisticated machines and infrastructure that an elite group of engineers and scientists creates?

The citizen loses confidence in an often corrupt elite, who neither will protect their nations’ borders nor spend sufficient money on collective defense.

The cures are scorned.

Do we dare address spiraling deficits, unsustainable debt, and corrupt bureaucracies and entitlements?

Even mention of reform is smeared as “greedy,” “racist,” “cruel,” or even “fascist” and “Nazi.”

In our times, relativism replaces absolute values in the eerie replay of the latter Roman Empire.

Critical legal theory claims crimes are not really crimes.

Critical race theory postulates that all of society is guilty of insidious bias, demanding reparations in cash and preferences in admission and hiring.

Salad-bowl tribalism replaces assimilation, acculturation, and integration of the old melting pot.

Despite a far wealthier, far more leisured, and far more scientific contemporary America, was it safer to walk in New York or take the subway in 1960 than now?

Are high school students better at math now or 70 years ago?

Are movies and television more entertaining and ennobling in 1940 or now?

Are nuclear, two-parent families the norm currently or in 1955?

We are blessed to live longer and healthier lives than ever—even as the larger society around us seems to teeter.

Yet, the West historically is uniquely self-introspective and self-critical.

Reform and Renaissance historically are more common than descents back into the Dark Ages.

But the medicine for decline requires unity, honesty, courage, and action—virtues now in short supply on social media, amid popular culture, and among the political class.