Jobless Claims Near 5-Year Lows; Trade Deficit Widens Despite Tariffs; Ebay, Deere, Walmart Lead Earnings Parade as Futures Slip on Iran Fears

Wednesday was another one of those magical melt-up days on Wall Street that everybody has become so very used to witnessing, it's almost a crying shame if stocks don't go up for any particular reason. All indices started the session in the red, quickly popped to the positive and managed to hold onto about half of the session's gains.

These simplistic algorithmic gains don't hide the facts of a stumbling U.S. economy based mostly on shoddy, continually-revised--lower government data, like Non-farm Payrolls, CPI and GDP, the latter of which we'll get an advance look at tomorrow morning.

For today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the U.S. trade balance (goods and services deficit) was $70.3 billion in December, up $17.3 billion from $53.0 billion in November, revised. The U.S. continues to insist on importing more than it exports. This is not surprising at all, even despite Trump's tariffs. For 2025, the goods and services deficit decreased $2.1 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Yep, those tariffs have made a huge impact.

Americans have been running trade deficits for the past 30 years, with no end in sight. Tariffs only make imports more expensive. USA-USA-USA! Hell, yeah!

Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing rose to 16.3 in February, up from 12.6 a month ago.

Initial Jobless Claims came in at 209,000, down sharply from last week's estimate of 229K, and close to the lowest in five years. Despite AI causing significant workforce reductions, the number is not at all surprising, given that there are fewer U.S. jobs to being with, ergo, fewer people to let go.

After the close on Wednesday, a few more companies reported 4th quarter results.

eBay (EBAY) - strong quarter, stock up 6% pre-market
Doordash (DASH) - missed estimates, shares up 9% (go fig
ure) Kinross (KGC) - strong beat, top and bottom, stock flat (go figure
again!) Carvana (CVNA) - unimpressive 4Q, clouded guidance, stock down 7%

Thursday, before the bell, more reports:
First Magestic (AG) - earnings, revenue beat, dividend boost, up 3%
John Deere (DE) - solid guidance, shares up 6%
Walmart (WMT) - stable earnings, cautious guidance; stock up 1.5%
Wayfair (W) - sales pop, narrows loss, up 12%
Yeti (YETI) - earnings in line, tariff issues send stock down 7%

Stock futures are sliding on fears of U.S. attack on Iron over weekend; oil futures up for same reason. Gold continues to test $5,000. Silver advanced overnight to as high as $78.60.

General conditions are still quite shaky

At the Close, Wednesday, February 18, 2026:
Dow: 49,662.66, +129.47 (+0.26%)
NASDAQ: 22,753.63, +175.25 (+0.78%)
S&P 500: 6,881.31, +38.09 (+0.56%)
NYSE Composite: 23,387.49, +86.71 (+0.37%)