Your morning briefing, the business news you need in just 15 minutes.

On today's podcast:

(1) US officials have renewed the threat of possible military action against Iran after President Trump suggested the country's regime may have averted strikes by pledging not to execute protesters. America's envoy to the UN warned that 'all options are on the table' and that President Trump is a man of action.

(2) Heightened US-Iran rhetoric comes as Bloomberg Economics has found that Donald Trump is following through on a greater share of his threats in his second term as President. As Bloomberg's chief geo-economics analyst Jennifer Welch puts it, the shift suggests "Tehran shouldn't bet on TACO", referring to a popular investor shorthand for 'Trump Always Chickens Out'.

(3) President Donald Trump accepted Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize medal at a White House meeting on Thursday as she tries to get back in his good graces while the future of her country is being shaped by the US.

(4) Wall Street’s five giant banks reported a record $134 billion of trading revenue from last year and an upswing in dealmaking. Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer Ted Pick started summing up his outlook after Wall Street’s banner year for trading with four words: “The setup is ideal.”

(5) China is pulling the plug on a key advantage held by high-frequency traders, removing servers dedicated to those firms out of local exchanges’ data centers, according to people familiar with the matter.

(6) The dramatic sacking of a senior Conservative and his defection hours later to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK all-but ended the chances of any deal to unite the British right, confirming the next general election as the most widely contested in decades.

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