3. Will Countries Increase Reserves Post Open of Strait?
A Rush to Stockpile Oil Will Keep Prices Higher for Longer
Countries will build larger emergency crude reserves to reduce their vulnerability to future energy shocks By Carol Ryan
But governments scarred by recent experience will want more than a return to normal. Many analysts think stockpiles will eventually settle higher than they were before the war, as countries will want a larger cushion against future energy shocks.
“Importing governments are asking one question, ‘What do we do to make sure this never happens again,’” says Kevin Book, co-founder of ClearView Energy Partners. By Carol Ryan
WSJ
4. Google -15% Correction
StockCharts
5. Historical Fact on Softbank …-99% in Internet Bubble
Perplexity
6. These Were the Key Sticking Points in Iran Talks …Some Still in Play Post Preliminary Deal
7. Copper New Highs…Data Center Demand
Apollo
8. Ryanair Diverts One Flight Per Day Due to Drunk/Disorderly
Perplexity
9. Some Philly teachers say they’re pressured to pass students who rarely come to class or do work-Phila Inquirer
Teachers said it’s an open secret that it’s nearly impossible to fail a student in Philly public schools, and administrators encourage teachers to pass students ahead to the next grade level.
Philadelphia School District teachers say they cannot fail students, even those who do little to no work and skip class.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Philadelphia School District students receive report cards on Thursday, the last day of the 2025-26 school year.
But it’s an open secret that in many schools, it is nearly impossible to fail a student, according to interviews with two dozen teachers from schools across the city who say the district is making them give passing grades.
Many teachers said they passed students who did little or no work, did not understand concepts being taught, or did not show up to class much. Most of the teachers interviewed requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
“There’s a bunch of kids in my class that have F’s in reading, and I’m probably going to pass them — I’ll bump it up to a D and call it a day,” one middle-grades teacher at a K-8 school said. “I don’t know of anyone who’s been able to keep anyone back, and we’re just setting kids up for failure.”
On paper, Philadelphia students can fail courses, or be retained in a grade, so long as they are offered appropriate interventions and supports. Officially, the district, according to its policy, “is committed to excellence in student accomplishments and recognizes the contribution of a district wide promotion policy moving all schools to models of achievement.”
But many teachers said that they were discouraged or forbidden by their principals from flunking students, or that they have given out failing grades that were overridden. Others said failing students was permitted if justified, but the administrative burden to rationalize failure, even for students who did not show up to school, is onerous or impossible.
All of the teachers who spoke with The Inquirersaid they fear for the long-term implications for students who are passed along without the skills they needto advance — especially in a city where so many students cope with the effects of poverty and trauma and a majority of students do not meet grade-level standards on state testing.
Monique Braxton, district spokesperson, said the district’s policies “emphasize that student grades are meant to accurately reflect their academic performance and progress toward learning standards. Schools are required to provide and document appropriate interventions and progress monitoring when students encounter academic challenges. The district remains steadfast in its commitment to maintaining high expectations for students while ensuring they receive the necessary support to achieve success.”
When did it start?
The K-8 teacher, a veteran of district schools for three decades, said that at the beginning of her career, it was easier to give F’s or retain students who did not meet the learning standards. But, the teacher said, there has been a “subtle shift” since the early 2000s, the era of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
“When the pressure was on the schools to show promotions and graduation rates, and the district was so focused on showing data, it’s shifted grading, and now it’s a joke,” the teacher said.
Philadelphia changed its grading policy in 2017, setting a 50 out of 100 as teachers’ grading floor and making it easier to pass. The minimum score for a D, once a 64, was changed to a 60.
The rationale for the change, leaders said at the time, was standardizing grading procedures and preventing students from giving up if they perform poorly early in the year. Detractors of the policy shift said at the time they feared it would water down standards.
The K-8 teacher, and others interviewed, emphasized that most Philadelphia students are bright and capable. But those who do not try because of complicated home lives or other reasons can skate by, they said.
“We have a kid who’s done no work all year, and we’ve done everything, and they’re just going to push him forward,” the K-8 teacher said.
The teacher also works in the service industry, and said the effects of passing students who have not earned passing grades is evident in that workplace.
“We see people who don’t come to work on time, they can’t take orders, they can’t use a computer or figure things out, and this is why,” she said. “They’re not being held to standards for all their years in schools.”
Administrators sometimes change the grades themselves, the third teacher said.
In one instance, a student’s grade shot up with no explanation, the teacher said. “This student had a 50 yesterday. How did he have an 82 today? This was a student who didn’t turn in any additional work, and missed 63 of 84 classes,” the third teacher said.
The third teacher said another student who was moved on without doing the work admitted it.
“Even he was like, ‘Yeah, I didn’t deserve to pass, I don’t know how that happened. But I’m excited to graduate,’” the teacher said.
The third teacher underscored that while the practice could be making the district’s numbers look better, it is not serving students.
After graduation and not being held to standards, the teacher said, one former student “lost the first three jobs he had because he didn’t go to them. He had to learn that lesson in a much harder, more adult way, and he could have learned that in high school. I worry that when kids graduate and get into the workforce, it will impact the way they approach the goals they set for themselves and how they try to achieve those goals.”
Action Comes Before Emotion: Waiting to feel motivated is a great way to become old while maintaining noble intentions.
Self-Esteem Is A Fraction: Your misery might not be caused by failure. It might be caused by the ludicrous fantasy version of yourself you’re carrying around.
Practice Difficulty Before Life Requires It: If I obey comfort every time it speaks, I’ll become the kind of person who needs a nap after opening a difficult envelope.
Being Wise Is Knowing What To Overlook: Not everything deserves your attention; the trick is remembering that your life does.
Automate The Routine So Your Mind Is Free For What Matters: Pick three things you decide every day that don’t deserve the cognitive load. Choose defaults so they’re no longer decisions.
Measure Effort, Not Just Outcomes: James isn’t saying, “outcomes don’t matter.” If a dentist removes the wrong tooth, I don’t want to hear he experienced tremendous inner growth during the procedure. Reality is still reality, despite the best efforts of people who use “manifest” as a verb. James is saying outcomes aren’t the measure of moral worth. Effort is.
Here’s the part that’s meant to make you uncomfortable, and then the part that’s meant to set you free, and they are the same part.
We’d like to be told we can think our way into a better life. But if thinking were enough, every anxious intellectual would be a saint. James says the opposite: act, and the self follows. You’re what you repeatedly attend to, what you do when nobody’s watching and no applause is coming. Your life isn’t waiting for your insight. It’s being built, right now, out of your actions.
Act before your mood supports it. Lower the denominator before it crushes you. Attend to what really deserves your attention. Automate the unimportant. Do hard things so comfort doesn’t become your master. Measure effort. You’re not waiting for a better self to arrive. You’re practicing one into existence.
You don’t have to become magnificent. Magnificence is unstable and difficult to park. James doesn’t promise that we can become new people overnight. Thank God. New people are exhausting. But he can return you to the only place change ever happens:
3. Cybersecurity ETF Broke Out to New Highs Before Last Weeks Pullback
StockCharts
4. Ethereum Down -70% From Highs….Testing 2023 Support
StockCharts
5. CPI Numbers Today …..5 Year Break-Even Inflation Rate 2.5%
FRED
6. Truflation Inflation Rate Below 2%
Truflation
7. China Debt Problems + Demographics Problems
Michael A. Arouet
8. The Majority of Americans Pick “The Lesser of Two Evils” When They Vote
Reuters
9. Should I Gamble or Dollar Cost Average into S&P? 95% of Online Sports Bettors Lose
Perplexity
10. Stress and Recovery Habits Success.com
Stress and Recovery Habits (53-65)
Stress is not the enemy. Unrecovered stress is. These habits are about building a resilience system that lets you handle pressure without letting it accumulate into something that breaks you.
53. Spend at least 20 minutes in nature every week. Research published in a 2025 meta-analysis found that even brief nature exposure—sitting outdoors for 20 to 30 minutes—significantly reduces salivary cortisol. Your brain on nature is measurably different from your brain in an office. Neuroscience confirms that natural environments restore the directed attention your work depletes.
54. Meditate or practice mindfulness for five minutes daily. You don’t need a 45-minute session. Consistent short practice—five minutes of breathing attention—meaningfully reduces cortisol, improves emotional regulation and lowers baseline anxiety over weeks. Meditation’s impact on focus and output is well-documented.
55. Practice box breathing before high-stakes moments. Inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. This technique activates the parasympathetic nervous system in under two minutes. Use it before difficult conversations, presentations or any moment where you need to be fully present and regulated.
56. Build white space into your schedule every week. Unscheduled time is not wasted time. It’s where integration happens; where your brain processes, connects and generates insights that can’t emerge during back-to-back calls. Protect at least two to three hours of unstructured time per week.
57. Set hard stops on your workday and defend them. Without a defined end to the workday, work expands. A hard stop—6 p.m., 7 p.m., whatever is realistic for your life—creates a container that forces prioritization and protects your recovery window.
58. Take all your vacation time. This sounds obvious. Almost no one does it. Burnout recovery research is consistent: Time fully away from work is not just a reward. It’s a biological necessity for sustained performance.
59. Name your stressors—don’t just feel them. Keep a brief stress log. Write down what’s generating anxiety each morning in two sentences. The act of naming reduces the amygdala response to stressors and prevents undifferentiated anxiety from building.
60. Have a transition ritual between work and personal time. A 10-minute walk, a specific playlist, a changed outfit—any consistent cue that signals the shift between roles helps your nervous system disengage from professional mode and engage with personal life.
61. Practice strategic incompetence once a week. Let one noncritical thing be imperfect. Send the good-enough email. Submit the 90% report. Perfectionism has a carrying cost, and practicing release in low-stakes situations builds the flexibility to tolerate imperfection in high ones.
62. Say no more often than feels comfortable. Every yes is a no to something else. High-performers who protect their capacity by declining low-leverage commitments aren’t being difficult. They’re being strategic. Practice declining with warmth and brevity.
63. Audit your digital consumption quarterly. Pull your screen time data. Review which apps you’re using and whether they’re producing or consuming energy. Most people are surprised and then change something.
64. Limit news consumption to one defined window per day. Staying informed is legitimate. Passive, constant exposure to often distressing news is physiologically stressful in ways that compound. Set a time—15 to 20 minutes in the morning or evening—and close the tab when it’s done.
65. Monitor your heart rate variability (HRV) over time. HRV—the variation in time between heartbeats—is one of the best physiological markers of stress load and recovery. Modern wearables track it automatically. Watching your HRV trend down over several days before a burnout event is the kind of early signal that gives you a window to act.
Tech vs. SPX. “US large cap Tech recently outperformed the S&P 500 by +6 standard deviations over the prior 50 days. No other rally since 2015 comes anywhere close. Prior periods of lesser but still statistically significant outperformance suggest further gains, even with Friday’s selloff…”
@datatrekmb
2. Space Related Stocks Run Up to Space X IPO……UFO Space ETF -20% Correction Back to 50 Day
StockCharts
3. Space Frenzy Hitting China
Dave Lutz Jones Trading SpaceX’s $75 billion initial public offering (IPO) is fuelling a frenzy among investors in Asia for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and supply chain partners linked to Elon Musk’s rocket company that are likely to benefit from the blockbuster deal. Shares of several European companies, including French satellite operator Eutelsat, German satellite maker OHB and Luxembourg-based SES, have posted double-digit gains in 2026.
4. Margin Debt in China Skyrocketing
The Kobeissi Letter
5. IPO Proceeds of Big 3
Prof G Media
6. The Stock Market Constantly Renewing Itself
Meb Faber
7. Employees Taking Home Lowest % of Corporate GDP Since 1948
Zack Goldberg Jefferies–Schwab shows employee compensation as a % of corporate GDP has fallen to ~54%, the lowest since records began in 1948. Since 2001, employee compensation as a % of corporate GDP has declined -10 points. Over the same period, the corporate profits proportion of GDP has doubled. Workers are keeping less of what they produce than at any point in history.
8. 1200 School Districts Lawsuits Against Big Tech
Google
9. Home Markets Where Sellers Outnumber Buyers
Miami, Florida is the strongest buyer’s market in America with home sellers outnumbering homebuyers by 148%.
REDFIN Blog
10. Movement Habits Success.com
Movement Habits (14-26)
You don’t need a marathon training program. You need consistent, varied movement woven into your week. A comprehensive umbrella review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2025 confirmed that regular exercise improves general cognition, memory and executive function in both healthy individuals and those with clinical conditions. The dose threshold is lower than most people think.
14. Move before 10 a.m. when you can. Timing matters. Morning exercise optimizes circadian rhythms, stabilizes cortisol and primes your brain for focused work later. Research has found that people who exercised more than usual on a given day performed better on memory tests the following day.
15. Take a daily walk—even if it’s just 15 minutes. Walking is underrated as a performance input. It increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for decision-making and focus. Bonus: Do it outside, and you stack two habits at once.
16. Aim for 150 minutes of moderate activity per week. This is the WHO’s threshold for meaningful health benefits. Broken into five 30-minute sessions, it’s less daunting than it sounds.
17. Add resistance training at least twice per week. Muscle mass is a metabolic reserve. Strength training also improves mood, sleep quality and insulin sensitivity, all of which feed back into cognitive performance.
18. Take a movement break every 90 minutes. Extended sitting degrades circulation, focus and metabolic function. Set a timer. Stand, stretch or walk to the kitchen. Two minutes is enough to reset.
19. Make one weekly workout social. Accountability dramatically improves exercise adherence. A training partner, fitness class or group run removes the daily opt-in decision and adds relational energy on top of physical.
20. Exercise outside at least once a week. The combination of movement and natural environments produces stress reduction effects greater than either alone (see the nature exposure habits below for the research on why this works).
21. Stop counting exercise as a reward for productivity. The most common mistake high-performers make with fitness is treating it as a bonus, something they do if the day goes well. Protect it like a meeting. It is not an optional recovery. It is the input that makes output possible.
22. Track your steps as a floor, not a goal. Fewer than 4,000 steps per day is associated with meaningfully worse health outcomes; 7,000 to 8,000 is a more realistic and effective target for most non-athletes. You likely don’t need 10,000.
23. Don’t use travel as an excuse to stop. Build a minimal-equipment workout routine you can do anywhere: bodyweight circuits, hotel gym standards or walking routes in unfamiliar cities. Consistency across contexts is what separates habits from hobbies.
24. Stretch for five minutes when you wake up. Not for flexibility. For activation. Light movement in the morning increases circulation, reduces cortisol and signals the body to shift from rest to alert mode.
25. Pick at least one physical activity you genuinely enjoy. Discipline is not unlimited. The habits that last are the ones that have some intrinsic pull. If you hate running, stop insisting running is your habit. Find what you’ll actually do.
26. Do something physically challenging at least once a month. A hike, a race, a new class, a sport. Novel physical challenges train the brain’s adaptive capacity and break you out of habituation—the point where comfort becomes stagnation.
