Real Vision: Finance & Investing · Real Vision Podcast Network

Trading the Markets: February 18, 2026

·26 min·2 clips

Rackspace Technology skyrockets 240% after announcing a partnership with Palantir for AI work.

Stocks get the first word. The host starts with markets sliding from the highs and then chopping sideways, with the Nasdaq treated as the pressure point to watch. Crypto, for now, is stuck in place. The read is pretty simple: digital assets probably keep grinding until conditions actually turn. Liquidity still matters. The guest does not buy the idea that one event, even policy clarity, flips the whole market by itself. The pieces have to stack up. Better liquidity, clearer rules, and a friendlier backdrop all need to show up before the broader shift has much force. Hyperliquid stays in view. Even after leveling off, it is described as holding support and still looking appealing to the speaker. The reason is practical. It lets traders handle commodity perpetuals on-chain, including views on gold and futures, without leaving crypto infrastructure. PAX Gold gets the stronger case. Gold is described as having bottomed and likely staying firm, with the speaker expecting it to beat Bitcoin for now. Wintermute then comes in as part of the plumbing story. Its planned OTC desk for tokenized gold products is treated as another step toward deeper liquidity for larger holders. That depth matters. Tokenized gold becomes more useful if investors can hedge inside crypto rails instead of stepping back into the traditional system. One stat carries a lot here: on-chain gold trading volume reportedly topped the five biggest gold ETFs combined in Q4. If people can trade gold around the clock on crypto rails instead of waiting for ETF market hours, this part of the market has room to keep growing.

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