Europe

• Oil lifts stocks off lows, yen and low-risk debt in favor (Reuters)
• Yes, this agaim: Oil gains after Russia says open to talking with OPEC (Reuters)
• More forecasts: Oil Prices Could Jump 50% by the End of 2016 (BBG)
• New Risks for Trump After Iowa Loss (WSJ)
• Yuan Gap Widens Again as Depreciation Bets Swamp PBOC Fightback (BBG)
• Germany Struggles to Assess Security Threats Ahead of Carnival Season (WSJ)
• Marco Rubio becomes early hope for mainstream U.S. Republicans (Reuters)

Here’s a terrific meditation by English writer Niall Gooch, who has been thinking about the Benedict Option, and the way Britain’s surfeit of old churches can be part of it. Excerpts:

While the biggest news of the night had nothing to do with either oil or China, all that mattered to US equity futures trading also was oil and China, and since WTI managed to rebound modestly from their biggest 2-day drop in years, continuing the trend of unprecedented, HFT-driven volatility which has far surpassed that of equities and is shown in the chart below...

The US military faces five “big challenges,” Ash Carter told the Economic Club of Washington on Tuesday.

Those challenges are: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and ISIS.

So essentially, the exact same “challenges” Washington has been trotting out for years to justify hundreds upon hundreds of billions in defense spending, only with one CIA pet project gone horribly awry added to the list.

Year-to-date, BofAML's Baraby Martin notes that the market narrative has swung wildly. "US recession...", “global recession...", "China devaluation...", "commodity bust..." and "energy defaults..." have all been blamed as the major drivers of risk assets thus far in ‘16. The bearish concoction has left markets way down from their January levels. In credit, investment-grade spreads widened 16bp last month, and high-yield 36bp – the worst start to the year since 2008.