{"id":136524,"date":"2026-02-19T07:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T07:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=136524"},"modified":"2026-02-19T07:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T07:26:12","slug":"morning-update-thursday-19-february-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=136524","title":{"rendered":"Morning Update &#8211; Thursday, 19 February 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Asia-Pacific markets are mostly higher in thin holiday trade, with parts of the region still closed for Lunar New Year. South Korea is leading the move\u200a\u2014\u200athe <strong>KOSPI is up about 3% and setting a fresh record high<\/strong>, while Japan\u2019s <strong>Nikkei is higher by around 0.7%<\/strong>. Australia also joined the risk-on tone, with the <strong>ASX 200 up about 0.9% and hitting a new intraday record<\/strong>.\u00a0\ud83d\udcc8<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddfa Australia\u2019s labour data kept the Aussie dollar supported: <strong>employment rose by 17.8k in January<\/strong>, the <strong>unemployment rate held at 4.1%<\/strong>, and <strong>hours worked increased by 0.6%<\/strong>. The details suggest demand remains resilient, which keeps the RBA rate outlook firmly in focus.\u00a0\ud83d\udcb5<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 Wall Street closed higher overnight, led by tech: the <strong>S&amp;P 500 finished at 6,881.31 (+0.56%)<\/strong>, the <strong>Nasdaq at 22,753.64 (+0.78%)<\/strong>, and the <strong>Dow at 49,662.66 (+0.26%)<\/strong>. Markets are still digesting the Fed\u2019s latest messaging, with traders sensitive to any \u201chigher for longer\u201d implications. \ud83c\udfdb\ufe0f<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udee2\ufe0f Geopolitics remain the key wildcard. Oil is holding near recent highs on US-Iran tension headlines, with <strong>Brent around $70.5<\/strong> and <strong>WTI around $65.4<\/strong>. Gold is steady near <strong>$5,000\/oz<\/strong> as safe-haven demand stays in the background. \ud83d\udfe1<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcc5 <strong>Today\u2019s focus (US):<\/strong> Trade Balance (Dec), Weekly Jobless Claims, and crude oil inventories later in the\u00a0day.<\/p>\n<p>Trade smart and stay tuned with NordFX!\u00a0\ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/coinmonks\/morning-update-thursday-19-february-2026-4d8078a45ece\">\ud83c\udf0f Morning Update &#8211; Thursday, 19 February 2026<\/a> was originally published in <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/coinmonks\">Coinmonks<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asia-Pacific markets are mostly higher in thin holiday trade, with parts of the region still closed for Lunar New Year. South Korea is leading the move\u200a\u2014\u200athe KOSPI is up about 3% and setting a fresh record high, while Japan\u2019s Nikkei is higher by around 0.7%. Australia also joined the risk-on tone, with the ASX 200 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":136525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/136525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}