US: White House Press Briefing Underway Shortly

US President Donald Trump has concluded a White House event for 'Angel Families' without taking questions from reporters. The president has no other public events in his schedule today. Two Oval Office policy meetings will take place behind closed doors.

• The president gave a short preview of tomorrow's 'State of the Union' address to Congress during his remarks, “It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.”
• Trump has been relatively quiet on tariffs today. He has issued two short statements on Truth Social. One downplaying the need to seek Congressional approval to ratify tariffs and a second warning countries that 'play games with the supreme court decision,' will be "met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to."
• Bloomberg confirmed a short time ago that US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will travel to Geneva this week for a third round of indirect nuclear talks with Iran. The meeting could be the last chance to find a diplomatic offramp to prevent US military action in the coming days.
• According to Axios, there may be scope for a deal, despite the seemingly incomparable negotiating positions. A senior US official told the outlet over the weekend that the Trump administration is prepared to consider a proposal that allows Iran "token" nuclear enrichment if it leaves no possible path to a bomb.

Italy has announced it will be looking to sell the following at its auction this Thursday, February 26:

• E2.25-2.75bln of the 2.85% Feb-31 BTP (ISIN: IT0005671273)
• E3.25-3.75bln of the 3.45% Feb-36 BTP (ISIN: IT0005676504)
• E2.0-2.5bln of the 0.80% Apr-35 CCTeu (ISIN: IT0005680753)

The Dallas Fed's Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey showed a modest uptick in the general business activity gauge in February, to 0.2 from -1.2 to mark a 7-month high, with production marking "an above-average pace of output expansion."

• This was a positive development, but was even more impressive when converting the subindices to national manufacturing ISM PMI weights: on this basis per MNI's calculations this was the strongest report since mid-2022 (around 55), after January's marked the 2nd highest since mid-2022. This reflected continued strength in New Orders, Production, Employment, Delivery Times, and Inventories.
• On another positive note, prices paid moderated to 31.7 from 37.1 for a 13-month low, while prices received receded slightly (17.9 after 18.5). 6-month ahead metrics ticked up but remained within recent months' historically elevated ranges.
• Tuesday's Richmond Fed reading and Kansas City's on Thursday will round out the month's regional Fed readings ahead of the ISM Manufacturing report for February out on March 2. Empire (strong) and Philly (weak) were mixed on the ISM-equivalent front.