Stocks are set to break a four-day losing streak as markets start the new year with a bang across global markets, boosted by the same drivers that dominated much of 2025.As of 8:00am ET, S&P 500 futures were 0.6% higher with Nasdaq 100 contracts rallying 1% outperforming on renewed optimism around artificial intelligence.Nvidia rose 1.6% in premarket trading to lead gains among the Magnificent Seven, which were all green in premarket trading. Trading is likely to remain much lighter than usual, with many market participants not returning to their desks until Monday. As BBG notes, the setup has a familiar feel: Europe is green across the board and on course for a record high, while Asian stocks already hit a record, driven by gains in AI and chipmakers. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index is up 0.1% while the Aussie dollar is the best G-10 performer, rising 0.3% against the greenback; the euro underperforms and falls 0.3%. Treasuries inch higher, pushing US 10-year yields down 1bp to 4.15%. European yield curves bear steepen. Silver and gold are resuming their march higher, and copper is extending gains as miners in Chile go on strike. Aluminum touched $3,000 a ton for the first time in more than three years on expectations of tighter supply. And the dollar, following its worst year in eight, remains lackluster. US economic calendar includes December final S&P Global US manufacturing PMI at 9:45am. No Fed speakers are scheduled.

In premarket trading,  Mag 7 stocks are all higher (Nvidia +1.6%, Tesla +1.3%, Alphabet +1.1%, Amazon +0.9%, Meta +0.6%, Apple +0.5%, Microsoft +0.4%)

• Shares in RH (RH) gain 4.4% and Wayfair (W) advances 2.4% after President Donald Trump delayed tariff increases on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities.
• ASML ADRs (ASML) gain 4.8% as Aletheia Capital double upgrades the chip equipment maker’s European shares to buy from sell due to investment expansions and capacity upgrades.
• Baidu ADRs (BIDU) jump 11% after the company submitted a proposal to Hong Kong’s exchange to list its artificial-intelligence chip unit Kunlunxin.
• NIO Inc. US-listed shares (NIO) rise 4.7% after the EV-maker reported deliveries for December that showed 33% growth month-over-month.
• Outlook Therapeutics (OTLK) falls 60% after the FDA issued a complete response letter to the ONS-5010/LYTENAVA (bevacizumab-vikg) biologics license application resubmission, indicating that it cannot approve the application in its present form for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration.
• Sable Offshore (SOC) jumps 19% after the company gets a go-ahead to restart a controversial California pipeline.
• Vertiv Holdings (VRT) gains 4.3% as Barclays upgrades the power equipment company to overweight from equal-weight, saying its shares currently offer a good entry point following recent volatility.
• China’s BYD met full-year sales targets and likely surpassed Tesla to become the world’s largest electric-vehicle maker in 2025. Its shares rallied 3.6% in Hong Kong. 

In other corporate news, First Brands founder Patrick James said he’d likely plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if compelled to answer questions from Jefferies at an upcoming deposition, citing a federal criminal investigation into the bankrupt auto parts supplier.

Friday’s upbeat mood is defying historic trends after the S&P 500 recorded declines on the first trading days of the previous three years. Since 1953, the S&P 500’s median change to kick off a new year has been a 0.3% drop, with gains less than half the time, according to a note by Bespoke Investment Group.

A strong debut in Hong Kong for chip designer Shanghai Biren Technology helped to set the buoyant tone early in the day. Baidu rallied after its AI chip unit confidentially filed for an IPO. Meanwhile, DeepSeek published a paper outlining a more efficient approach to developing AI. Tech and AI were among the dominant themes for stock investors in 2025, helping power the S&P 500 to a third year of double-digit gains. Forecasts signal more of the same for 2026 despite lingering wariness over already stretched valuations and fears that vast amounts of capital expenditure could fail to pay off.

“What we are seeing today is a continuation of the run higher in equities, with AI and tech again at the forefront,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade. “Traders are still in a buying mood, with many of the bullish themes from 2025 carrying forward into 2026.”

At Barclays, strategists are warning equity markets could get choppy as they enter 2026 at record highs that are “over reliant on AI success.” But the team still expects further gains this year, thanks to resilient corporate earnings and a favorable trade off between growth and monetary policy. 

“The first trading day has been an incredibly poor guide in recent times to how the rest of the year plays out,” wrote Deutsche Bank AG strategists including Henry Allen. In fact, “2022 saw an all-time high on the first day, before the index fell into a bear market and its worst year since 2008. Whatever happens today, we really shouldn’t overegg the day one moves.”

The strategists noted that several key themes apart from AI will shape markets in 2026, including new developments in US trade policies and specifically a Supreme Court case that will rule on the legality of levies. The Fed will be another major focus, with President Donald Trump expected to name a successor to Jerome Powell early in the year.

“The scope for further gains driven purely by valuation expansion in 2026 may be limited,” wrote Linh Tran, an analyst at XS.com. “Shocks related to interest rates, earnings, or policy could therefore trigger faster and more pronounced corrections than in earlier phases of the cycle.”

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 is up 0.4% and on course for a record close. Technology stocks are leading gains as they did in Asia after a fresh burst of optimism around artificial intelligence. Miners also outperform as metals rise across the board. The FTSE 100 earlier crossed 10,000 for the first time.  Here are some of the biggest movers on Friday:

• ASML shares gain as much as 3.9% in Amsterdam, the most since late November, as Aletheia Capital double upgrades the chip equipment maker to buy from sell and boosts its price target to a Street high due to investment expansions and capacity upgrades.
• Vestas gains as much as 4%, reaching the highest since June 2024, as JPMorgan says the firm is set to deliver orders above expectations in the fourth quarter, supporting view that fundamentals for the wind industry are improving.
• Munters shares gains as much as 11% after the Swedish industrial ventilation and cooling company received from the US its largest data center technologies order ever.
• Bumech shares jump as much as 26% after a Polish government pledge offering support and job guarantees helped to end a workers’ strike at the machinery firm’s Silesia mine.
• BE Semiconductor shares climb as much as 9.8%, the most since October, following a rally in Asian chipmakers and artificial intelligence-related stocks.
• BAT shares fall as much as 2.7% after its Indian subsidiary ITC dropped in response to the government’s move to sharply raise excise duty on cigarettes.

Asian equities also advanced, led by gains in tech-heavy markets such as Taiwan and South Korea, as most regional markets reopened after a holiday. Hong Kong stocks also moved higher. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index advanced 1.1%, marking its best start to the year since 2012. Tencent, Samsung Electronics and TSMC were among the biggest contributors to the benchmark’s advance. Equities in South Korea and Hong Kong each climbed more than 2%. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index gained more than 2.8%, posting its best start to a year since 2018. At the start of the year, investors rotated back into familiar leaders in artificial intelligence and technology, pushing the sector’s sub-index to a record high. Markets in Japan, mainland China, New Zealand and Thailand remained closed. Asian markets are edging higher today, but thin liquidity is exaggerating moves as many investors remain on the sidelines, Dilin Wu, a strategist at Pepperstone said. 

“We are seeing a continuation of the run higher in equities, with AI and tech again at the forefront,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade Global. “Asian indices delivered the goods in terms of gains in 2025, and there is reason to believe that this momentum will carry forward into the new year.”

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index is up 0.1% following its worst year in eight, while the Aussie dollar is the best G-10 performer, rising 0.3% against the greenback. The euro underperforms and falls 0.3%.

In rates, treasuries inch higher, pushing US 10-year yields down 1bp to 4.15%. US yields are richer by up to 2bp in intermediate sectors, steepening 5s30s spread by around 1bp on the day. 10-year is near 4.155% after peaking at 4.19% during London morning. European bonds lag Treasuries, with bunds and gilts cheaper by around 3bp and 3.5bp in the 10-year sector

In commodities, spot silver climbs 4% to above $74/oz while gold and most base metals are also green. Aluminum touched $3,000 a ton for the first time in more than three years on expectations of tighter supply. Oil, which suffered its steepest annual loss for five years in 2025, gave back early gains. This weekend, OPEC and its allies are expected to confirm plans to pause supply hikes. Oil traders are also watching developments in Venezuela, Ukraine and Iran. Trump says the US will “rescue” protesters if Iran shoots or kills them, according to a post on Truth Social.

Treasuries hold small gains, leaving yields slightly richer across the curve, after erasing declines that occurred during Asia session, when Australia’s bond market was hit as traders positioned for the possibility the Reserve Bank of Australia will raise rates to quell inflation. Scheduled events during Friday’s US session include only S&P Global US manufacturing PMI revision.

Bitcoin is on a firmer footing and holds just short of the $90k mark, with Ethereum also posting gains above $3k. 

The US economic calendar includes December final S&P Global US manufacturing PMI at 9:45am. No Fed speakers are scheduled. Tesla is expected to report that it delivered about 440,900 vehicles in the fourth quarter, down 11% from a year earlier.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 mini +0.6%
• Nasdaq 100 mini +1%
• Russell 2000 mini +0.7%
• Stoxx Europe 600 +0.4%
• DAX little changed
• CAC 40 +0.2%
• 10-year Treasury yield -1 basis point at 4.16%
• VIX -0.1 points at 14.83
• Bloomberg Dollar Index little changed at 1204.54
• euro -0.3% at $1.1716
• WTI crude little changed at $57.37/barrel

Top Overnight News

• Trump threatens Iran over protest crackdown as deadly unrest flares: RTRS
• Threat of California Billionaire Tax Draws Criticism From Ultrawealthy: WSJ
• The Next Class of Senators Won’t Be Able to Dodge the Social Security Crunch: WSJ
• European factory activity ends 2025 in deeper contraction: RTRS
• Tesla Closes Out Brutal Year in Europe With Sales Declines: BBG
• U.S. Slashes Proposed Tariffs on Italian Pasta: WSJ
• Russia says it can prove that Ukraine tried to strike Putin residence: RTRS
• The Condo Market Hasn’t Been This Bad in Over a Decade: WSJ
• Maduro suggests serious talks between Venezuela and US: RTRS
• Venezuelan Exiles Root for U.S. Military Action. Those Left Behind Oppose It: WSJ
• Bezos, Catz, Dell Cashed Out Billions as Top Insider Sellers of 2025: BBG
• Zelenskiy offers chief of staff post to military intelligence boss: RTRS
• Ozempic Users Actually Spend More Dining Out. Smart Restaurants Are Adapting; BBG
• China taxes condoms, contraceptive drugs in bid to spur birth rate: RTRS
• How Kraft Heinz Lost Its Lock on Mac and Cheese—and American Shoppers: WSJ
• China AI chipmaker Biren soars in Hong Kong debut as IPO wave builds: RTRS
• Oil steadies after biggest annual loss since 2020: RTRS

Trade/Tariffs

• US President Trump signed a New Year’s Eve proclamation titled “AMENDMENTS TO ADJUSTING IMPORTS OF TIMBER, LUMBER, AND THEIR DERIVATIVE PRODUCTS INTO THE UNITED STATES”. This included a delay in tariff increases on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, which keeps the tariff levels for the aforementioned goods at 25%, instead of raising it to 30% for upholstered furniture and 50% for kitchen cabinets and vanities, citing ongoing trade talks, according to Associated Press.
• Italy’s Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that the US sharply lowered the proposed duties on several Italian pasta makers from the additional 92% duty proposed in October, with the tariff for La Molisana set to 2.26% and for Garofalo set to 13.98%, while 11 other producers will face tariffs of 9.09%.
• US granted TSMC (2330 TT) an annual licence to import US chipmaking tools for its facilities in China’s Nanjing.
• China’s Ministry of Commerce called the EU’s carbon border tax unfair and discriminatory, while it vowed to take countermeasures to defend the country’s interests, according to a statement on Thursday cited by Bloomberg.
• China set quotas on beef imports as it seeks to protect domestic farmers and producers, in a blow to Brazil and other major shippers, including Australia and Argentina, while shipments exceeding the limits will be subject to a 55% duty, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
• India extended tariffs on steel imports for three years with import levies of 11%-12% proposed for some products, according to Bloomberg. It was also reported that India imposed anti-dumping duties of USD 60.89-130.66/ton on low-ash met coke imports for six months.

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

ASX 200 posted mild gains of 0.2% in quiet trade, with hefty losses in gold miners hampering the gains from Energy and Financials. KOSPI jumped about 2% to a fresh record high, helped by a roughly 6% rise in Samsung Electronics, after reports said customers praised its HBM (high memory bandwidth) chips. Hang Seng surged ~2.6%, with gains led by education stocks, while AI chip designer Shanghai Biren gained in excess of 100% following a HKD 5.58bln Hong Kong IPO, which was said to be heavily oversubscribed.

Top Asian News

• Chinese President Xi said in his annual New Year’s Eve speech that the year 2025 marked the completion of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan for economic and social development, while he added that they have pressed ahead with enterprise and fortitude, and overcome many difficulties and challenges. Xi added that they met the targets in the Plan and made solid advances on the new journey of Chinese modernisation, as well as noted that economic output has crossed thresholds one after another, and is expected to reach CNY 140tln for the year. Furthermore, he said their economic strength, scientific and technological abilities, defence capabilities, and composite national strength all reached new heights, while he also vowed to reunify China and Taiwan.
• China’s State Council said it studied measures for facilitating cross-border trade, while it will promote green and cross-border e-commerce. Furthermore, it will speed up the review and approval of breakthrough therapeutic drugs, as well as boost investment in water network projects.
• China’s industrial hubs are to lower power prices to support the economic recovery, with the eastern province of Jiangsu, which surrounds Shanghai, to cut rates by 17% vs 2025, while the southern province of Guangdong had recently announced to reduce power prices by 5%.
• Chinese automakers’ market share of Europe’s electric-vehicle market in November reached a record 12.8%, despite the cost of European Union tariffs, according to Bloomberg.
• South Korean President Lee plans to discuss economic ties and peace efforts in the Korean Peninsula during his upcoming summit talks with Chinese President Xi scheduled for early next week.
• Japanese PM Takaichi and US President Trump may hold talks, via telephone on Friday night at earliest, according to Kyodo News citing sources.

European bourses (STOXX 600 +0.6%) began the session around the unchanged mark before rising to session highs soon after the cash open, without a clear driver. Since, indices have dipped off best levels, paring some of the earlier upside. European sectors hold a positive bias, led by Basic Resources (+1.7%), Technology (+1.8%), and Energy (+1.7%). The former is supported by higher metal prices, with gains in gold and copper. On the downside, Food Beverage & Tobacco (-0.3%), Real Estate (-0.3%) and Construction (-0.1%) lag.

Top European News

• UK PM Starmer promised to “defeat the decline and division offered by others” in his new year message and insisted that people would feel a “positive change” in their lives in 2026, according to BBC.
• French President Macron called for unity, strength and hope during his New Year’s Eve address, while he pledged to work until the ‘last second’ of his mandate and guard the 2027 presidential election from foreign interference.

FX

• DXY resides closer to the upper end of a tight 98.14-98.42 in early European hours, following a rather subdued APAC session.
• In terms of today’s trade, price action has been relatively muted as volume returns to the market from the holiday period. AUD and NZD outperform amid the broader risk-on sentiment, with the AUD also underpinned by a rebound in gold amid a myriad of geopolitical factors, including US President Trump’s warning to Iran this morning that the US is “locked and loaded and ready” to rescue peaceful protesters if Iran opens fire on them. Elsewhere, JPY is flat in a narrow 156.77-157.00 intraday range. Meanwhile, EUR and GBP saw little immediate move from their respective final Manufacturing PMIs.
• 2025 recap: 2025 proved a tough year for the index, which saw its sharpest annual drop in eight years, whilst most majors rallied. The JPY saw gains of under 1% over 2025, in a year rattled by political instability, fiscal woes, BoJ hawkish bias and haven flows. Antipodeans saw the AUD climb nearly 8% over 2025 (best since 2020) and the NZD gained almost 3% to snap a three-year losing streak. The EUR was up 13.5% in 2025 and GBP +7.7% (both their strongest yearly gains since 2017).

Fixed Income

• A softer start for fixed benchmarks.
• Bunds and USTs lower by 20 and a tick, respectively. Specifics are fairly light aside from Final PMIs which, thus far, have not had any real impact. USTs in the red but at the upper-end of a 112-05 to 112-13 band. If a move into the green occurs, resistance factors at 112-25. A similar picture for Bunds, in the red but just off highs in 127.08-49 parameters. Resistance at 127.57 and 127.83.
• For Gilts, a softer open but the benchmark has since climbed off lows and is, as above, towards highs in 90.74-91.33 parameters. 91.37 would take Gilts back to unchanged on the day, thereafter resistance at 91.47.

Commodities

• WTI and Brent trades slightly lower, with prices towards the lower ends of USD 57.08-57.93/bbl and USD 60.51-61.38/bbl, respectively. Focus for the complex lies more on oversupply risks as opposed to any geopolitical risks from the above, with traders also setting sights on this weekend’s OPEC+ confab. OPEC+ is expected to reaffirm its production pause through Q1, maintaining the halt to further supply increases, according to Bloomberg sources. The stance reflects concerns over a looming global oversupply backdrop, with crude prices sharply lower over 2025 and forecasters warning of a potential glut in 2026. Delegates indicate little appetite to resume hikes at this stage, according to reports. Recent Saudi–UAE geopolitical tensions have generated headlines, but are widely viewed as noise rather than a threat to OPEC unity, with no expectation that they will spill over into production policy.
• Spot Gold kicked off 2026 on the front foot, with spot prices currently +1.5% intraday towards the upper end of a 4,326.28-4,397.84/oz range at the time of writing. The yellow metal printed a record high at ~USD 4,550/oz on Dec 26th before declining in the subsequent three sessions to a USD 4,274.03/oz trough on 31st Dec, with a near-USD 250/oz drop seen on Dec 29th.
• Geopolitical updates have kept the precious metals complex underpinned, with US President Trump’s warning to Iran this morning that the US is “locked and loaded and ready” to rescue peaceful protesters if Iran opens fire on them. Further, tensions flared between OPEC members Saudi Arabia and the UAE, primarily due to an open military and diplomatic confrontation in Yemen, with the two nations now actively backing rival factions and engaging in direct hostilities. In terms of Russia-Ukraine, Ukrainian President Zelensky said they are 10% away from a deal to end the war with Russia, but not at any cost, according to The Independent. That being said, Ukrainian authorities in Zaporizhzhia on the morning of January 2nd noted over 700 Russian attacks on the territory of the province.
• North Sea Buzzard oil field recommenced production on 1st January 2026, according to CNOOC.
• Rail line in Australia used by Glencore (GLEN LN) requires a significant repair job.

Geopolitics: Ukraine

• Ukrainian President Zelensky said they are 10% away from a deal to end the war with Russia but not ‘at any cost’, according to The Independent. Zelensky also announced that a meeting with national security advisors “focused on peace” will be held on January 3rd, and there will be meeting with the military chiefs of general staff on January 5th where the main issue is security guarantees for Ukraine, while he said there will be a meeting with European leaders and the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing on January 6th.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky denied allegations made by Russia that Ukraine launched a drone attack on one of Russian President Putin’s residences last Sunday, and accused Moscow of trying to derail peace talks. Furthermore, Russia recently handed over to the US what it claimed was proof of the attempted strike on Putin’s residence, although it was separately reported that US officials determined that the Russian allegation that Ukraine targeted Putin in a drone strike is false, according to WSJ.
• Ukraine’s military said on Thursday that it struck Russia’s Ilsky oil refinery and the Almetevskaya oil preparation facility, while Ukraine also announced that a Russian drone attack damaged power infrastructure, according to Reuters.
• Russian-installed governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region said at least 24 were killed and over 50 were injured from a Ukrainian drone strike on a hotel and cafe during New Year celebrations, according to Reuters.
• US envoy Witkoff said on Wednesday that he held a “productive call” with European allies on the next steps in the peace process, while he said they “also spent time on the prosperity package for Ukraine – how to continue defining, refining and advancing these concepts, so Ukraine can be successful, resilient and truly thrive once the war is over”.
• Ukrainian authorities in Zaporizhzhia on January 2nd noted of over 700 Russian attacks on the territory of the province “in the past hours”, according to Al Jazeera.

Geopolitics: Middle East

• US President Trump posted “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”.
• Israeli Defence Minister Katz urged the IDF to be ready for a potential ‘Oct.7-style’ mass attack on West Bank settlements and called for the reestablishment of northern West Bank military bases which were evacuated as part of a US-backed deal, according to Times of Israel.
• Iran’s defence export agency offered to sell ballistic missiles, drones and other advanced weapons systems to foreign governments in exchange for cryptocurrency and barter, according to FT.
• UAE announced on Tuesday that it was pulling out its remaining forces in Yemen, after Saudi Arabia bombed the Yemeni port city of Mukalla following accusations that two ships from the UAE had delivered weapons and combat vehicles to separatist forces. It was separately reported that Yemen’s government imposed restrictions on flights between Yemen and the UAE to mitigate the ongoing escalation in the country, according to a Saudi source cited by Reuters.

Geopolitics: Others

• US Treasury Department announced new sanctions related to Venezuela, targeting crude oil tankers.
• Russia requested that the US stop pursuing an oil tanker identified as Bella 1, which was headed to Venezuela and was fleeing the US Coast Guard in the Atlantic Ocean, according to The New York Times on Thursday.
• Taiwanese President Lai vowed to defend the nation’s sovereignty in his New Year’s speech days after China fired dozens rockets towards the island and deployed warships and aircraft near Taiwan as part of military drills and a show of force, while he stated that 2026 is a very critical year for Taiwan and that they must stand shoulder to shoulder with democratic countries.
• China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Lai’s New Year’s address was riddled with ‘falsehoods and reckless assertions, hostility and malice’, while it was also reported that China’s Defence Ministry said the PLA’s drills are completely justified and necessary.

US Event calendar

• 9:45 am: Dec F S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing PMI, est. 51.8, prior 51.8

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Happy new year and hope you all had a relaxing break. We’ll shortly look at what’s coming up in 2026, but as we usually do at the new year, we’ve just released our review looking at how markets fared in 2025. It was a strong year overall thanks to continued economic growth, optimism around AI, and more central bank rate cuts. So that meant global equities, bonds, credit and EM assets all advanced for the most part. However, those headline gains masked huge volatility, particularly in April when the Liberation Day tariff announcements sparked the 5th biggest two-day slump for the S&P 500 since WWII. Meanwhile, Germany’s fiscal stimulus announcement in March saw the biggest daily jump for the 10yr bund yield since German reunification in 1990. See the full review here for more details on the year just gone.

In terms of the last week-and-a-half whilst we’ve been away, it’s been a story of two halves for markets. Just before Christmas, the S&P 500 moved up to record highs on both Dec 23 and Dec 24, aided by some very strong US data. That included the Q3 GDP print, which was delayed because of the government shutdown, and showed the US economy grew at an annualised pace of +4.3% (vs. +3.3% expected). That was the fastest quarterly growth in two years, and the so-called “core GDP” measure of real final sales to private domestic purchasers was up by a robust +3.0% as well. So that led to a lot of optimism about the economy’s momentum into next year, and the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow measure for Q4 currently stands at +3.0%.

However, after Christmas the tone became more negative, with the S&P 500 posting four consecutive declines that’s left the index -1.25% beneath its Christmas Eve record. So that took a bit of the shine off the full-year performance, with the index ending the year up +16.4% (and +17.9% in total return terms), falling short of the gains above +20% seen in 2023 and 2024. Meanwhile, there’s been some huge volatility in precious metals, with silver prices up +10.30% on Dec 26, marking their biggest daily jump since September 2008 in the week of Lehman Brothers’ collapse. And after the weekend, they then slumped by -9.00% on Dec 29, the biggest loss since 2020, before there were further swings of more than 5% each way on Dec 30 and Dec 31. That caps off a huge surge in precious metals prices over 2025, with both gold and silver experiencing their strongest annual gains since 1979, up +65% and +148% respectively.

This morning in Asia, markets have got 2026 off to a decent start in the places they’ve reopened. For instance, the KOSPI (+1.87%) is currently on track for a record high, whilst the Hang Seng (+2.18%) has also surged. Moreover, US equity futures are pointing to a strong start as well, with those on the S&P 500 (+0.43%) and the NADAQ 100 (+0.65%) both higher this morning. However, we shouldn’t extrapolate too far, as the first trading day has been an incredibly poor guide in recent times to how the rest of the year plays out. Indeed, 2023-25 each started with a negative session for the S&P 500, before the index then saw a double-digit annual gain. By contrast, 2022 saw an all-time high on the first day, before the index fell into a bear market and its worst year since 2008. So whatever happens today, we really shouldn’t overegg the day one moves.

When it comes to the year ahead, several themes will be high up the agenda for markets in 2026. First, there are still lots of tariff developments yet to come, most notably with the US Supreme Court case, who are set to rule on the legality of the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). As a reminder, roughly half of the tariff increases under Trump have used IEEPA authority, and the legal challenges so far have been successful in the lower courts, but were appealed by the Trump administration. So we’re now awaiting the ruling from the Supreme Court. Our US economists think there’s a reasonable possibility the IEEPA powers are struck down, but they also expect that if they are, then the administration would pursue other legal avenues to impose its tariff policies. For instance, the sectoral tariffs under section 232 (e.g. to steel and aluminium) aren’t covered by this court challenge. Or another option could be Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which permits temporary 15% tariffs for 150 days. So there are several options the Trump administration still have.

Aside from the court case, there are also a couple of other 2026 trade deadlines. One is the scheduled review of the USMCA agreement, six years after it first came into force in July 2020. The other is the US-China trade truce, which was extended by a year after the meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi back in October. So as it stands, the current US tariff reduction on China only runs until November 10, 2026. Nevertheless, there have been a few tariff reductions in recent weeks, particularly as concerns about affordability have risen up the agenda. So we’ve already seen exemptions for products like coffee and beef, and it was also announced on New Years’ Eve that higher tariffs planned on Jan 1 for upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets were being delayed by a year until Jan 1 2027. Remember as well that the midterm elections are happening in November, so the political incentive to keep inflation down will rise as they approach.

Second, another key theme for 2026 will be the Federal Reserve, and Trump said on Monday that there’d be an announcement on Chair Powell’s replacement in “January sometime”. For reference, Powell’s term as Chair concludes in May, so the new Chair would be in place by the June FOMC decision, and futures are pricing in another 57bps of rate cuts by the December meeting. In terms of who the new Chair will be, the Polymarket odds continue to have NEC Director Kevin Hassett as the frontrunner (42%), followed by former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh (33%) and current Governor Christoper Waller (15%). Otherwise, the Supreme Court are also set to hear arguments on January 21 about President Trump’s attempt to remove Governor Lisa Cook from the Fed’s Board of Governors. So it’s a big year ahead for the Fed.

Third, we’ve got lots happening on the fiscal side in 2026, as we’ll see the fiscal impulse from the German stimulus, as well as from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the United States. All this comes at an interesting time, as 2025 saw periodic market flareups over loose fiscal policy, with sovereign bonds repeatedly seeing large losses before recovering again. That happened in May around the time of the US credit rating downgrade by Moody’s, which pushed the 30yr Treasury yield above 5%. And it was a similar story in Europe too, with a sharp selloff for UK gilts last summer when the government U-turned on welfare cuts, alongside losses for French OATs after PM Bayrou left office and new PM Lecornu resigned after 26 days, before he was reappointed again. So bond markets have been jittery across the board, and last year even saw the biggest jump for Japan’s 10yr yield since 1994 as the BoJ kept hiking rates and the new government under PM Sanae Takaichi announced a further stimulus package.

Fourth, on the political side we have a few elections to look out for. The biggest we know about is probably the US midterm elections, although they’re not until November 3. That will see the full House of Representatives up for election, along with a third of the Senate, and currently on Polymarket, the Democrats are the 81% favourites to retake the House. That would be in keeping with the historic pattern (link here), whereby the incumbent President’s party tend to lose House seats in the midterm votes. Meanwhile in the Senate, the Republicans are 66% favourites on Polymarket to keep control. However, the new Congress doesn’t come into office until January 2027, so in policy terms, that’s more of a story for next year.

Here in the UK, we also have a large set of local elections on May 7, which will be one of the most important midterm electoral tests for the political parties. Although that won’t change the government, PM Starmer’s position has been under increasing pressure, so these elections will be a crucial benchmark for whether he might face a challenge from within the Labour Party. Then in France, the presidential election isn’t until April 2027, but we know that 2026 will be the year that campaigning begins in earnest, with candidates announcing, so we’ll get a much better sense of the state of that race. And over in Japan, a general election isn’t due until 2028, but speculation has been rising about a potential snap election given PM Sanae Takaichi’s approval ratings.

Finally of course, it’s not a single event, but ongoing developments around AI will be critical for the path of markets in 2026. After all, as Jim has written previously, the concentration of the Mag 7 group in US equities means that global markets are incredibly sensitive to their performance. And we shouldn’t forget that AI developments have already led to big reactions in 2025, with the NASDAQ down over -3% on the day that markets reacted to DeepSeek’s new AI model last January. So any loss of momentum or signs that a bubble is bursting risk unwinding the positive wealth effects we’ve seen, as well as the wider surge in capital expenditures that’s helped to support growth.

Looking at the day ahead, there’s not much happening, but data releases include the December manufacturing PMIs from the US and Europe, along with the Euro Area M3 money supply for November.

President Trump has just become the first sitting US President to explicitly warn that the United States stands ready to directly intervene in Iran if Tehran authorities begin killing peaceful protesters, as he wrote Friday that Washington “will come to their rescue”.

In a brief early morning post on Truth Social, he wrote: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” He gave no further details what course of action this might take, but it’s a pretty clear and provocative message to Iranian leadership – or comes very close to saying something akin to the ‘Ayatollah must go’.

Trump’s full message is as follows: “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did respond in very short fashion, with a senior aide from his office saying Trump should “be careful” if he intervened, warning of unleashing more chaos in the region.

“Trump should know that US interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests,” Khamenei adviser Ali Larijani stated.

The economic protests which have been raging since Sunday, and have spread from the marketplaces to the universities, have turned deadly. International monitors and media have said six have been killed.

However, Iranian officials are saying at least one of these deaths and many among the injured are security forces. The slain officer was said to be a member of the Basij – a paramilitary force linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). In several locales Basij members have been observed supporting local police forces, as is typical whenever major anti-government protests flare up.

🇮🇷| Unprecedented: Iranians from cities where riots took place last night, have come in protest AGAINST the rioters

Iranians from Hamedan, Kavar, and other cities have come en masse to denounce and condemn the behaviour of rioters.

They condemn vandalism, destruction of… pic.twitter.com/AYAAbDhohv

— Arya – آریا (@AryJeay) January 2, 2026

Newsweek reviews of the violence so far in the country of over 90 million people:

• Deaths were reported in Lordegan, Kuhdasht, and Isfahan, though casualty figures vary between state media and rights groups.
• The Revolutionary Guards said one member of its Basij paramilitary unit was killed in Kuhdasht, with 13 others wounded.
• Rights group Hengaw identified the man as a protester, contradicting official claims.
• Demonstrations spread to Marvdasht in Fars province, while arrests were reported in Kermanshah, Khuzestan, and Hamedan.

Most of the protest deaths have come in the West of the country, and mounting casualties from the unrest has been confirmed in Iranian state media – though few details have been given in some instances on whether these are police or protesters.

The initial response from leadership in Tehran:

With the statements by Israeli officials and @realDonaldTrump, what has been going on behind the scenes is now clear. We distinguish between the stance of the protesting shopkeepers and the actions of disruptive actors, and Trump should know that U.S. interference in this… pic.twitter.com/uu9R20KFFv

— Ali Larijani | علی لاریجانی (@alilarijani_ir) January 2, 2026

Trump in openly siding with the protests may have just done one of two things: either he has just supercharged the protests and will given people in the streets motivation to provoke security forces even more – after some government buildings have already been broken into, or else his words serve to quash the protests fairly quickly.

After all, Iranian authorities have already warned against outside interference and meddling, at a moment they are eager to brand rioting youth in the streets as Israeli or American agents. But now they can be branded by officials as doing to bidding of Washington and of President Trump. The people in the streets are unlikely to want to be branded as in America’s corner, given it’s been the US all along decimating their economy through years of brutal sanctions.

Signs of pro-government and nationalistic ‘counter-protests’ have emerged:

Huge crowds are marching toward the resting place of General Soleimani in Kerman to mark the sixth anniversary of his martyrdom.

Follow: https://t.co/mLGcUTSA3Q pic.twitter.com/Y6hFmpdqZC

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) January 2, 2026

It should also been questioned whether the United States actually cares about the ‘Iranian people’. Did Washington actually care about Syrians while fueling a decade-long plus proxy war by arming the hardline jihadi anti-Assad insurgency? Definitely not.

Iran’s military responds:

Iran’s Defence Minister dismissed Trump’s remarks, saying Tehran would retaliate decisively against any attack and insisting its military strength has grown since the last 12-day conflict.

“If any threat targets our country, we will respond with full force. Without hesitation,”… pic.twitter.com/12SeqoWQSe

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) January 2, 2026

Also, Speaker of Iran’s Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf has said that “all American centers and forces across the entire region would be legitimate targets” in response to any potential US “adventurism.”

Trump’s new words just added heavy fuel to the fire, and this portends possibly the same Syria playbook applied to Iran.

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times,

As additional investigators surge to fraud-plagued Minnesota, federal agents have already arrested 500 illegal immigrants and probed 1,000 immigration-fraud cases during the past two months, a Homeland Security official estimated.

Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary, gave those updated figures Dec. 30 during an interview with the Charlie Kirk Show.

Fraud was substantiated in about half of the immigration-fraud investigations, she said, and many of the arrested illegal immigrants were from Somalia.

Somalis dominate the list of nearly 100 people federally charged in various schemes to defraud the government, authorities have said.

McLaughlin gave additional details in a Dec. 30 Fox News interview. She said “hundreds” of investigators were on the ground in Minnesota.

They were knocking on doors of day care centers, health care centers, and “other organizations that take taxpayer dollars,” she said.

“These suspected perpetrators are really trying to cover their tracks,” McLaughlin said. She accused the suspects of “trying to whitewash” their operations to appear to be “legitimate” businesses, but they are shams, McLaughlin said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ramped up its operations in Minnesota in recent months, well before a media firestorm erupted over widespread Somali childcare fraud.

YouTuber Nick Shirley gained nearly 132 million views after he posted a Dec. 26 video saying he uncovered over $110 million in alleged fraud in a single day.

The video shows Shirley visiting day care centers that appeared to have no children present, yet these sites had received large payments from a federal childcare program run through the state of Minnesota.

Federal officials have since cut off funding to that program in Minnesota, and are demanding more solid documentation from day care providers nationwide.

ICE has frequently encountered resistance and protesters in Minnesota, which is considered a “sanctuary” state that shields illegal immigrants.

And Minneapolis, the state’s largest city, recently beefed up a local law forbidding any city employees from cooperating with ICE or other federal immigration agents.

In a Dec. 30 statement posted to X, ICE accused Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of having “stoked nonstop riots and attacks against our officers.”

The Epoch Times sought comment from Walz and Frey on Dec. 31 and received no immediate reply.

Todd Lyons, ICE acting director, responding to criticism of recent ICE actions, told news reporters on Dec. 30, “If sanctuary cities would change their policies, and turn these violent criminal aliens over to us … instead of releasing them into the public, we would not have to go out to the communities and do this.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

German Twitch streamer Kunshikitty set out on New Year’s Eve to demonstrate that the streets of Cologne are safe for women, streaming live to her audience. Instead, the broadcast captured two separate attacks on camera, forcing her to end the stream in distress.

The incident, which quickly went viral, underscores the ongoing public safety crisis in Germany, a decade after the infamous 2015 New Year’s Eve mass assaults in the same city.

In footage shared widely on social media, Kunshikitty, dressed in a bright pink outfit, is seen navigating crowded streets during celebrations. Fireworks explode in the background as groups of men approach her aggressively. 

? JUST IN: Leftists are proven wrong again as a woman tries walking through 3rd world migrant-infested New Year’s Eve in Germany, and gets ATTACKED by Islamic men MULTIPLE times

“Ow, ow!!”

This is what importing Islam looks like.

No more nice things.pic.twitter.com/5ELLbNTP6o

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 1, 2026

One clip shows her being targeted with thrown objects, while another depicts physical harassment that leaves her visibly shaken.

This event revives haunting memories of the 2015–16 New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne, where over 1,200 women reported being groped, robbed, or raped by groups of men, predominantly asylum seekers and migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. 

Much focus today on the grooming gangs in the UK but it’s also the 9th anniversary of the attempted cover-up of the 2015/2016 NYE Mass-Sexual Assaults in Cologne.

1200 women were sexually assaulted, raped or robbed in front of the Cologne Cathedral by nearly 2000 migrants ? pic.twitter.com/aqyXionGoh

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 1, 2025

Police reports at the time described organized mobs encircling victims in “taharrush gamea” tactics, a term for collective harassment imported from some Arab countries.

The fallout from those attacks exposed deep flaws in Germany’s open-door migration policy under Angela Merkel, which saw over a million migrants enter the country in 2015 alone. 

The trend overwhelmed integration efforts and fueled a spike in crime, with official data later confirming disproportionate involvement of foreign nationals in violent offenses.

The situation has only worsened, with government figures revealing 135,668 crimes by Syrian suspects alone between 2015 and 2024. Violent crimes, including rapes and assaults, hit record highs in 2024, with 12,512 incidents involving Syrians.

Similar patterns plague other Western European nations. In Sweden, no-go zones in migrant-heavy areas have become notorious for gang violence and sexual assaults. 

France grapples with riots and knife attacks in cities like Paris, while the UK faces grooming gangs and street crime linked to unchecked immigration. 

Mass migration has reshaped demographics, straining resources and eroding cultural cohesion, all while globalist leaders prioritize open borders over citizen safety.

In many parts of Western Europe, New Year’s Eve has turned into a night when migrant gangs use fireworks to attack police, firefighters, ambulance drivers and regular civilians.

Cities like Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Berlin are turned into war zones. pic.twitter.com/O3UCEIN6Pq

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 1, 2026

AfD politicians like Alice Weidel have slammed the current government for its “failure in migration and security policy,” pointing out that more than half of German women no longer feel safe in public spaces. 

Calls for mass deportations grow louder, yet, incidents like Kunshikitty’s stream highlight how denial persists among some, even as evidence mounts. The streamer’s ordeal isn’t isolated; recent arrests of Syrian suspects in gang rapes and arsons show the persistent threat.

As Europe rings in 2026, the message is clear: Ignoring the consequences of mass migration invites more chaos. It’s time for leaders to prioritize deportations, secure borders, and restore safety before more lives are shattered. The alternative is an entire continent forever altered, where even a simple walk on New Year’s Eve becomes a gamble.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean, designed to disrupt and dismantle Venezuelan oil flows to Asia in order to choke off the Maduro regime’s primary revenue stream and induce regime instability in Caracas, is now moving full steam ahead, as confirmed by the latest crude oil export data.

Bloomberg cites new internal data from Petróleos de Venezuela showing that oil production in the Orinoco Belt (which accounts for nearly two-thirds of Venezuela’s oil output) plunged by about 498,000 barrels per day on Monday, down roughly 25% over the past two weeks.

In recent weeks, Trump’s gunboat diplomacy has ramped up with multiple seizures of dark fleet tankers, offshore blockades, and sanctions against additional tankers that haul Venezuelan crude to China. The aim is to suppress Maduro’s cash flows, since more than 95% of the country’s revenue depends on oil sales.

“While military options still exist, the focus is to first use economic pressure by enforcing sanctions to reach the outcome the White House is looking (for),” a U.S. official told Reuters last week, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration is enforcing a two-month “quarantine” of Venezuelan oil, which may indicate the time needed to create immense financial pressure on Maduro and could lead to regime instability. If Caracas falls, Cuba would likely follow quickly.

Related:

• White House Orders Venezuelan Oil “Quarantine” As Gunboat Diplomacy Drives Dark Fleet Tanker Into Atlantic

• New Trump-Xi Showdown Approaches As Chinese Tankers Press Ahead To Venezuela Despite Blockade

• Crew Paints Russian Flag On Iran-Linked Tanker To Avoid US Seizure

• Trump Blockade Leaves $1 Billion Of Venezuelan Crude Stranded On Tankers

• CIA Drone Carried Out First Known Land Strike On Venezuela

China condemned Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean as illegal “unilateral bullying.” In response, Beijing aired a simulated war scenario on state television set in the Caribbean region.

Via The Cradle

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said Israel’s recognition of Somaliland was “unexpected and strange,” warning that the move carries implications for Palestinians in Gaza, in comments to Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

Speaking from Istanbul, Turkiye, he outlined Somalia’s concerns and said Israel’s decision was abrupt and destabilizing. Mohamud said that Somaliland has pursued its secessionist claim for decades without international recognition, noting that “no one country in the world has recognized it,” while Somalia has sought reunification “in a peaceful manner,” making Israel’s move, after 34 years, “very unexpected and strange.”

According to Mohamud, Somali intelligence indicates Somaliland accepted three Israeli conditions in exchange for recognition. He listed them as the resettlement of Palestinians, an Israeli military base on the Gulf of Aden coast, and accession to the Abraham Accords.

In a speech delivered on December 28, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Ansarallah, said that any Israeli footprint in Somaliland would be treated as a legitimate “military target” by the Yemeni Armed Forces.

Mohamud said there is already “a certain level” of Israeli presence in Somaliland, describing the recognition as the public normalization of what had been happening covertly, adding that Israel’s presence “is not for peace,” and warned of plans to forcibly displace Palestinians to Somalia.

Mohamud also pointed to Israel’s interest in controlling strategic waterways linking the Red Sea, the Gulf, and the Gulf of Aden, as part of a wider Israeli push across West Asia and the Mediterranean.

A 20-point plan issued by Donald Trump ahead of a Gaza ceasefire said “no one will be forced to leave Gaza,” while allowing voluntary departure and return.

However, Mohamud said Israel has continued to explore displacement options, citing reports of mysterious flights to South Africa.

Israeli Channel 12 reported in February 2025 that Morocco, Puntland, and Somaliland were being considered under Trump’s plan to forcibly relocate Palestinians expelled from Gaza, as he reiterated his intent for the US to take “ownership” of the strip while seeking political incentives tied to recognition and strategic influence.

The Somali leader gave a joint news conference with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, both of them warning that the recognition could destabilize the Horn of Africa. Israel’s move was rejected by most members of the UN Security Council at an emergency meeting in New York.

The US was the sole member defending Israel, while stressing that its own position on Somaliland remained unchanged. Israel formally recognized Somaliland on December 26, becoming the first country to do so since the region declared independence in 1991, a move announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and framed as part of cooperation “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords.”

🇸🇴🇮🇱 ISRAEL–SOMALILAND DEAL? SOMALIA’S PRESIDENT CLAIMS SECRET ACCORD ON PALESTINIAN RESETTLEMENT, MILITARY BASE & ABRAHAM ACCORDS

Tensions are escalating in the Horn of Africa after Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made explosive claims about covert agreements between… pic.twitter.com/lziXHUHlYh

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 31, 2025

The decision triggered swift regional condemnation, with Somalia rejecting it outright and Egypt, Turkiye, and Djibouti warning of destabilizing consequences for the Horn of Africa. 

The recognition followed months of reports linking Somaliland to US-Israeli discussions on Palestinian resettlement from Gaza and potential military access near the Red Sea, claims that both Somali and Somaliland authorities had previously denied.

Authored by Mathew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

It’s that time of year again to put everything somehow together.

But looking back on the knowns of 2025 as we prepare for the inevitable unknowns of 2026, there is little need for the wringing of hands.

Preparation vs. Timing

This is because the more things change, the more they stay the same. And toward this end, we do know this much: Unprecedented and unsustainable debt has made the global financial system, its paper currencies and its bloated markets a bug looking for a wind-shield.

In short, and as history confirms, there is no avoiding the gravity of debt nor the ripple effects of its appalling misuse.  

Mouse-clicked trillions to monetize debts just means slow but consistent currency destruction. Timing the same is not nearly as important as preparing for it, and the walls are narrowing/closing in on a broken monetary model.

Equally known is the fact that policy makers in such a desperate yet now mathematically obvious setting of their own making will do what they have always done throughout history.

That is, as conditions worsen, they will become increasingly desperate (perhaps even militant) to employ their favorite tools of manipulation, dishonesty and non-accountability for the fatal corners in which they’ve placed us and our debased paper currencies.

In the end, and as usual, the man on the street will pay for the sins of the clowns in power who have made the currencies by which they measure their wealth little more than melting ice-cubes.

Precious metal owners, of course, have seen this pattern recognition well ahead of the crowds. The historical, banking, and currency risks attendant to all slowly dying monetary systems means one thing: Real money will have more power than paper money. Or as I stated elsewhere: Rock now beats paper.

Looking Back

We saw 2025 begin with much fanfare out of DC to cut spending and impose a series of emergency measures (from gold-revaluation and tariff headlines to USAID and The GENIUS Act) out of the White House to make a clearly broken America great again.

“Our Currency, Your Problem.”

Critical to this laudable goal was the “External Revenue Service” and a wave of tariff measures designed to make the rest of the world pay for the overspending of a nation who for decades arrogantly maintained that an “our currency, your problem” policy would never end.

That is, after America waffled from a promised gold-backed dollar in 1944 to a welched fiat-dollar in 1971, it then conveniently imposed a petrodollar in 1973 to force global demand of an otherwise inflationary dollar before legally (and equally conveniently) price fixing the dollar’s only honest antagonists – gold and silver – on the COMEX exchange in 1974.

As owners of the world reserve currency, the U.S. could compel decades of demand for its dollar through oil, while simultaneously knee-capping precious metals on the New York COMEX and then export American inflation globally with impunity.

Or so we thought.

But with debt levels at $38T (unlike $250B in 1971) and a debt/GDP ratio at 124% (unlike 38% in 1971), the U.S. and its weaponized dollar is clearly not the same hegemon today that it was when John Connolly made the famous claim, “Our currency, your problem.”

In short, the U.S. went too far, and the world knows it.

Our Currency, Our Problem

When, for example, the U.S. attempted its Liberation Day tariffs in April of 2025, markets tanked. But far more importantly, no one showed up at Uncle Sam’s Treasury auction to buy his unloved IOUs.

Not very, well… liberating.

In other words, and thanks to decades of debt-addiction, inflation-exporting and the fatally short-sighted (stupid) idea of weaponizing the dollar in 2022, DC was forced to accept the inevitable yet now present karmic reality that “our currency is now OUR problem.”

Or stated even more simply, no one wants, trusts or fears the indebted and debased USD as they did in decades prior.

This IS a problem for DC…The U.S. is simply too much in debt to be all-powerful. 2025 and 2026 were and will be a much different world than 1944 or 1971. The US, in short, is not what it once was, and nor are its dollars or IOUs.

Who Wants an IOU from a Broke(n) Issuer?

Since the USA outsourced the American dream and manufacturing to China and the WTO circa 2001, it has lived essentially on debt and the assumption that the world, from Tokyo and Riyadh to Moscow and Shanghai, would always buy its IOU’s and hence its dollar.

By April of 2025, however, we learned this assumption was not only arrogant – it was false.

As U.S. markets plunged and crickets chirped at the April Treasury Auction, DC was forced to immediately retreat on its strong-armed tariff policy in order to restore calm on the NASDAQ as well as renew interest in its less-loved UST and USD.

Anywhere But the USA?

Around the same time as the DXY and dollar were cratering in 2025, the ABUSA—or “anywhere but the USA”—trade kicked into gear, as an already openly de-dollarizing BRICS+ wave was joined by booming stock markets in the UK, Japan and emerging markets, all of whom outperformed the US composites.

Even European stocks, suffering under genuine recessionary indicators from angry French farmers to Volkswagen shutdowns, rose 36% in dollar terms, including dividends, nearly doubling the S&P’s 19% in 2025.

AI Will Save Us?

Meanwhile, US markets pretended that AI, which had gone from expensive to just ridiculous, would somehow save us from, well, I guess humans themselves.

AI (whose prices vastly outpace revenues) accounted for 80% of US market gains in 2025. NVDA, at the center of a circular financing bubble in which concentrated tech names were investing over $350B in AI data centers, and pricing in what they assumed would be $2T in annual revenues which have yet to arrive.

A Ticking Credit Time Bomb

This dangerous AI spend/bubble is funded primarily in off-balance sheet debt via private credit pools and other SPVs, the magnitude of which screams of credit risk.

Speaking of private credit, this market of bad loans to an entirely unknown class of largely subprime borrowers now churning between hedge funds, private equity pirates, and VC supermen is literally screaming of default risk ahead.

Tapped-out borrowers in these hidden pools are paying their interest payments in “equity” rather than actual dollars.

No wonder Jeffery Gundlach sees private credit pools as the new weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, longer-sighted players like Michael Burry are short AI, and that value-driven “oracle from Omaha,” Warren Buffett, is sitting on over $380B in cash, the largest such defensive move in Berkshire Hathaway’s history.

Sadly, such credit risk is not merely a US market embarrassment. The global shadow-banking system is a $250T bubble providing increasingly defaulting credit outside an already sick, yet at least “quasi-regulated” banking system.

Instead, this “shadow lending system,” which has no capital requirements/security, also has zero depositor insurance or central bank access and is ticking like a time-bomb beyond our so-called financial “headlines.”

The Markets Will Save Us?

But hey, at least US markets (CAPE at 39.5 by October and 30% of its market-cap held by 10 companies) are still double-digit positive heading into 2026. Something must be strong in the USA despite the worst private labor data since 2008.

But sadly, the real wind beneath the US markets is not as clean or strong as the current numbers suggest.

Rigged Game

In fact, 2025 saw $1.3T of stock buy-backs—i.e. insiders (led by Apple and Google) buying their own shares to artificially increase share prices and “fudge up” Earnings per Share data by reducing share volume.

In essence, this once-illegal practice of artificial market manipulation boils down to executive insiders voting themselves a raise (they are paid on share prices). As Buffett himself observed: “This is deception, not talent.”

Meanwhile, these same C-suiters have also been quietly selling their other shares at market highs to cash out before a crash.

In such a totally rigged game, it sure is good to be on the inside.

For the rest us market outsiders, however, chasing these inflated market highs is an entirely personal choice.

Given that Pavlovian markets are entirely Fed-driven, so long as QE liquidity is mouse-clicked at the Eccles Building and rates are artificially compressed, a dovish Fed typically means this Frankenstein bubble can stumble, arms stretched forward, to even more frothy highs.

Looking Ahead

This brings us to the Fed in 2026. Will or can it tow the White House’s line to further rate cutting and more QE? The likely answer is yes, and not because of politics, but because of basic survival.

The Fed’s Real Mandate & Problem

The Fed’s real mandate is bond market stability, not inflation, which is an open lie, and not employment, which is equally so. Given that the post-2022, weaponized USD is openly unloved and untrusted, someone has to buy Uncle Sam’s debt, and that won’t be China or Japan.

Japan has been dumping USTs to support its own broken credit markets and Yen, and China, well… it has been walking away from USTs (in favor of gold) in a staggering manner. Its FX reserves were once 40% USTs; by 2025, that figure had fallen to less than 1%:

Given the fact that less UST demand means lower bond prices and hence rising bond yields, Uncle Sam is in deep trouble heading into 2026.

Rising bond yields are an absolute terror to bankrupt debtors like the US, because it means the interest expense on its debt, already over $1T/year, gets even harder to repay.

The Bond Market’s Real Power

For this reason, DC needs to keep yields and rates down. The Fed has thus been pushing rates down in 2025, but as we also saw in 2001, yields still climbed despite the Fed’s rate cuts, a terrifying confirmation that the Fed’s tools are breaking down as the bond market, rather than Powell, takes the wheel.

In 2025, 70% of Uncle Sam’s IOUs were short-duration bonds, which need to be paid back soon. This will be entirely unsustainable going into 2026 unless Powell breaks out bazooka money printing and becomes a perma-buyer of our own debt with mouse-clicked dollars.

This should be a tailwind for precious metals.

Temporary QE – What a Joke

The “temporary QE” Powell announced in December of 2025 is as much of a joke as the “transitory inflation” he announced in 2022.

Instead, we can rationally expect that this temporary QE will become structural QE in 2026, and that the Fed’s balance sheet will expand massively, which could bring the DXY and dollar further south and hence the dollar’s percentage of global reserves even lower.

This, too, should be a tailwind for precious metals.

The Dollar—Weaker or Stronger in 2026?

Some, however, predict a “last-dance” for the dollar, and I have debated this issue for years with Brent Johnson and more recently with Henrik Zeberg. Their case for the strong dollar has obvious merits, and I won’t unpack all the details of our divergences here.

No hegemonic currency gives up easily or overnight. Ultimately, a DXY at 110 has a set-up. I don’t, however, see it anywhere near 130, 140 or 150 as the milkshake theory suggests.

Gold’s Endgame: More Important than Timing

Regardless of this dollar debate, however, the end-game for gold and silver is agreed by all—it’s merely the timing where the mugs-game of predicting and debating the dollar’s direction takes form.

That is, and regardless of the Dollar’s relative strength or weaknesses to other currencies in 2026, and regardless of the desperate move to create dollar-demand via a 2025 stable coin ruse, all paper currencies are losing purchasing power in absolute terms when measured against real money—namely gold.

And that, ladies & gentleman, explains a 2025 in which gold and silver broke more all-time-highs than Trump tweets in a typical day.

Golden Light-House Cutting Through the Fog

Wondering what to do about gold in 2026 is no mystery for those who own gold as a wealth preservation and store-of-value asset as opposed to a speculation trade.

Trading precious metals, of course, requires precise timing. (I know a few who actually do it well.) Preserving long-term wealth in precious metals, however, only requires common sense.

Egon von Greyerz has been making the case for gold for decades, while many “gold experts” were popping up on YouTube screens in 2025, only to capture an obvious price move. Where were they when gold was outperforming markets for the last 25 years?

But none of this really matters, because all-time-high gold and silver prices measured in paper currencies is almost comical, akin to measuring your weight on a broken scale.

For decades in general, and for 2025 in particular, we have tracked the obvious tailwinds for real money like gold in a setting of dying paper currencies like the dollar. There’s always a new headline or event to explain.

But the jig was up long ago. The bigger picture, which Egon saw decades ago, was always right before us.

Since 1971, when the US insulted the world and its Constitution by taking away a gold standard, all the major currencies have lost more than 95% of their purchasing power when measured against gold.

The more recent evidence of this accelerating and now undeniable trend toward gold and silver has been almost too obvious, from a rising, BRICS-lead de-dollarization trend, unprecedented central bank gold-stacking and a COMEX meltdown this year, to the BIS’s Tier-1 gold status confirmation and the year-end desperation to artificially repress the silver price by systems terrified of what rising metals says about their dying currencies.

In short, a world soaked in over $300T in debt is, as Thomas Gresham warned centuries ago, naturally moving from bad (paper) money to real (gold/silver) money as a superior strategic reserve asset and store of value.

For those who understand the advantages of saving in real money and spending in fiat money, sitting around and speculating about the future price of gold and silver in dollars or euros, or trying to time its “peak-price” or potential retracements, is missing the far bigger picture.

Yes, gold can and will have pull-backs—but from what price? And yes, metal-poor exchanges can continue to try (with less and less effect) to manipulate the physical metals with paper contracts and leverage, but the end-game will never change.

That is, paper money will continue to be debased to monetize the debts of nations led by financial midgets, which means gold and silver will continue their secular rise.

This is not a bull market in precious metals, but simply a fatal turning point for paper currencies globally.

This explains why central banks to commercial banks are trying to get as much gold as possible today in preparation for the Uh-Oh’s happening now and tomorrow in a system tilting towards a reckoning of historical magnitude.

This, folks, is not sensationalism. This is history 101.

In this context, I will not make price targets in gold or silver for 2026. I never have in years prior, and never will in years to come.

But every day of every year, we have consistently said that these metals will rise materially in the years to come. This never meant in a straight line, but always in a longer-term direction north.

The more speculators worry about timing an entry or exit in metals rather than preserving their wealth in them, the more they risk missing that inflection point wherein real money like gold, with its infinite duration and fixed supply, simply becomes too rare and too expensive for most investors to meaningfully acquire.

Thus, if you are looking to trade in gold or silver, watch the tape, and best of luck to you.

But if you are looking to preserve a portion of your generational wealth in real rather than paper wealth, watch history—not just of yesterday, but the very history you are living in right now.

Authored by Sundance via The Last Refuge,

I don’t care if you support Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or the Easter Bunny, any American who doesn’t realize the tenuous future of our union, after reviewing the information within this testimony, is going to forever live in a collapsed dystopian nightmare, if they vote for any political representative who supports it.

The House Judiciary Committee has released the [VIDEO] and [TRANSCRIPT] of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s deposition.  What is outlined within it is alarming in the extreme.  I strongly urge anyone with any platform to review the details and quickly highlight the content therein.  There is no time to waste.

Jack Smith appeared before the committee with three personal lawyers to support him.  The content of the deposition is chilling in the extreme.  While many will focus on the granular details of the testimony, I wish to highlight one of the more alarming aspects to the bigger picture.

The predicate for Jack Smith to prosecute President Trump for his efforts to “interfere in the 2020 election”, and thereby “challenge all democratic norms”, essentially boils down to Jack Smith accusing President Trump of participating in a fraud when he challenged the outcome of the 2020 election.

To get beyond President Trump’s first amendment right to free speech, Jack Smith claims Trump knowingly understood that Joe Biden had won the election; President Trump was told by senior Republican advisors that Biden had legitimately won the 2020 election; President Trump rejected the reality of the “truthful information” presented to him, and instead chose to launch a psychological operation against the American people, i.e. “fraud.”

It is the charge of “fraud” which underpins the entirety of the case against Donald Trump, as pursued by Jack Smith.   The charge itself is predicated on definitions of what constitutes truthful information, and within that subset of predicate you begin to realize just how important it is to professional leftists that they control information.

The case was dropped after the results of the November 2024 election, won by President Trump.  However, if President Trump had not won that election, the prosecution would have continued.

Jack Smith notes in his testimony, in the most Machiavellian way, that his primary prosecution approach was to present “Republican” witnesses like Mike Pence, who Smith cunningly said he could not discuss as he was restricted from revealing grand jury testimony.

Smith was prepared to present witness testimony from Pence and other political “Republicans” who told President Trump that Joe Biden had legitimately won the election, and Trump needed to concede.  This testimony then forms the baseline for the definition of “truthful information” that Trump rejected out of a malice mindset to continue clinging to power.

In essence, Smith defines what is “truth” (Biden won), then outlines how that truthful information was delivered and how President Trump dismissed it. Therefore, President Trump’s “mens-rea”, or state of mind, was one of promoting an intentional falsehood.  According to the Lawfare approach selected by Smith, this mindset is the predicate that blocks President Trump from using his First Amendment right to speech as a defense.

Intentional fraud is not allowed under the protections of “free speech.”   Jack Smith wanted to prove that President Trump was engaged in intentional fraud, and wanted to prove his mindset therein through the use of Republican political voices who delivered information to President Trump.

Jack Smith sought to define “truth”, and then counter the free speech defense by mob agreement on what constitutes the “truth.”  Under this predicate, President Trump was being prosecuted for a thought crime, and Jack Smith sought to legally prove he knew his thoughts.

The only way Jack Smith could prove fraud would be to prove that President Trump believed the information about Joe Biden winning the election.  Smith sought to prove Trump’s belief by presenting Republican voices who told President Trump he lost.

Whether you like or dislike President Trump, the issue here is alarming when contemplated.

A man tells you a chicken is a frog, you laugh.  The man then brings 15 of your family members to tell you a chicken is a frog. You reject the absurdity of the premise, but the man brings forth hundreds more people to tell you the chicken is a frog, and if you do not accept that Chickens are Frogs, you will be defined as mentally impaired, institutionalized and become a ward of the state.

[Insert any similar metaphor needed, including “what is a woman.”]

When we consider the current state of sociological, societal or government manipulation of information, and/or the need for government to control information (mis-dis-mal-information) as an overlay, you can quickly see where this type of legal predicate can take us.  Bizarro world becomes a dystopian nightmare.

Yes, it is also clear that Leftists, inside that closed-door committee hearing, are intending to impeach President Trump on these grounds if they successfully win the 2026 midterm election.  However, that is not the critical takeaway from this deposition.   Instead, the critical takeaway is how the Lawfare construct can be twisted and manipulated to create the legal means to the leftist ends.

Stop the Division! 

We cannot allow these communist, Marxist and leftist-minded control agents get back into power.

It’s not about Trump.  It’s about us.

A history professor who taught at Harvard University for 40 years wrote a scathing letter slamming the Ivy League institution over its “exclusion of white males.” 

Professor James Hankins wrote in a piece titled “Whit I’m Leaving Harvard” that his decision to retire “was not a sudden one,” and that he’d made up his mind in 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and George Floyd riots – both of which dramatically changed Harvard’s graduate admissions process.

“In reviewing graduate student applicants in the fall of 2020 I came across an outstanding prospect who was a perfect fit for our program. In past years this candidate would have risen immediately to the top of the applicant pool,” he wrote. “In 2021, however, I was told informally by a member of the admissions committee that ‘that’ (meaning admitting a white male) was ‘not happening this year,” 

Hankins said that in another instance, a white male student who he described as “literally the best” at Harvard – and who won the prize for graduating senior with the best overall academic record – was also rejected from the school’s graduate program because “He too was a white male.”

“I called around to friends at several universities to find out why on earth he had been rejected,” Hankins continued. “Everywhere it was the same story: Graduate admissions committees around the country had been following the same unspoken protocol as ours.”

“The one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female.“

The deal was an even playing field, not extremely tilted in the other direction.

They broke the deal.

Therefore, there is no deal. https://t.co/ZDraFvZbYl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2025

Hankins gave his last lecture at the school two weeks ago, after finishing out a four-year retirement contract he signed in 2021 which has now expired. 

Hankins called Harvard’s COVID restrictions “tyrannous invasions of private life” – as professors were forced to lecture in masks and give seminars on Zoom. 

On top of that – he decried Harvard’s dropping their “two-book standard” of requiring staff to have published two books to prove their expertise in a subject area, blaming “feminist activists” 

“The two-book standard would be shelved in the late 1990s when we were under increasing pressure to hire more women faculty,” he wrote, adding “Feminist activists, at Harvard as elsewhere, were demanding that half of all new appointments be women. That, they claimed, was what liberal standards of equality required.“

Hankins wrote that women previously made up less than 10% of PhDs in the history department – however “equality required that standards be lowered.”

“Feminists denied vociferously that this was happening,” he continued, adding “The real problem, they said, was the inability of men properly to value female scholarship.”

“Soon the department was promoting an ever higher percentage of junior faculty,” he wrote. “The dynamic was similar to Congress voting to restrain its own spending.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Former New York Times reporter and Howard University professor Nikole Hannah-Jones has long been controversial as a writer who expressly rejects objectivity and neutrality in journalism. That was most evident in her “1619 Project,” which was ridiculed by historians and law professors in claiming that slavery was the driving force behind American independence. Nevertheless, the project was awarded the Pulitzer Prize despite glaring historical errors. Yet, this month, Hannah-Jones is back on the pages of the New York Times again rewriting history. This time, she is praising cop-killer and 1960s revolutionary Assata Shakur.

Hannah-Jones has been a lightning rod in her writings, from declaring “all journalism is activism” to spreading conspiracy theories against the police.

Yet, mainstream media, including the Times, has run interference for Hannah-Jones, including the dean of the University of North Carolina trying to shut down criticism by reminding a reporter that they must all defend Hannah-Jones.

Hannah-Jones’s latest project of historical revision is a sorrowful memorial to Shakur, which shows the same disregard for facts in favor of a preferred narrative.

Born JoAnne Deborah Byron (and later adopting the names of Joanne Chesimard and Shakur), the violent revolutionary was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army.

In 1977, she killed New Jersey police officer Werner Foerster, 34, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran who left behind a widow and a young son.

She later escaped prison and fled to Cuba, where she died earlier this year. In 2005, she was declared a domestic terrorist. In 2013, the Obama Administration put her on the most wanted list.

You would know little of that from the New York Times column. After all, all journalism is activism, according to Hannah-Jones, and, if the facts do not fit the narrative, the facts have to go.

In her column, Hannah-Jones seems to dismiss the conviction as the result of an “all-white” jury. What is omitted is that Shakur had a long and violent criminal record. She was previously shot in the stomach during what was believed to be a drug-connected crime at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan. 

She was sought in other crimes, including a 1971 bank robbery. When asked, Shakur later shrugged off such crimes as a type of racial reparations: “There were expropriations, there were bank robberies.”

Police car after grenade attack

She was also linked to a grenade attack that injured two police officers after being identified by witnesses. In 1972, she was identified by Monsignor John Powis as one of the suspects in the armed robbery at Our Lady of the Presentation Church in Brownsville, Brooklyn. During the robbery, the priest was told “We usually just blow the heads off White men.”

She was also tied to the murder and ambushing of police officers for years before she was stopped on May 2, 1973 on the New Jersey turnpike by State Trooper James Harper who was backed up by Trooper Werner Foerster in a second patrol vehicle. The resulting shootout left Harper wounded and Foerster dead.

Her trials spanned a variety of charges ranging from bank robbery to kidnapping to attempted murder, and other felonies. However, while there were acquittals and a mistrial (due to a pregnancy) on different charges, she was ultimately convicted of murder before her escape.

Yet, the Times and Hannah-Jones brush over that history to gush about Shakur and the effort to shield her, even describing the criminal network as akin to the famed system used to free slaves before the Civil War: “Shakur had been hidden in the United States for several years by a sort of Underground Railroad.”

The Times column bewails how “freedom came with shattering costs for her and her family.” Not a single line of sentiment for the widow and son that her victim left behind in New Jersey, let alone the other victims in murders and attacks that she was connected to as part of the Black Liberation Army.

Of course, such sentiment is not allowed for true victims.

For example, Hannah-Jones was again published by the New York Times, warning in a column that memorials to Charlie Kirk are “dangerous.”

Hannah-Jones has also chastised other writers for covering shoplifting stories because “this is how you legitimize the carceral state.”

Yet, the New York Times is still actively involved in projects to rewrite history with Hannah-Jones. This is the same newspaper that barred columns from Senator Tom Cotton for arguing for the deployment of National Guard troops to quell violent riots, but published columns by “Beijing’s enforcer” in Hong Kong and a University of Rhode Island professor who previously defended the murder of a conservative protester.

It is the same newspaper that forced out a variety of editors who published opposing viewpoints or challenged biased coverage and journalistic activism.

The Times column ends with a line that is breathtaking in its ahistorical and amoral message: “Shakur, who saw herself as an escaped slave, died free.”

A convicted murderer and wanted terrorist died in one of the most blood-soaked, repressive regimes in the world . . . but Hannah-Jones and the New York Times want everyone to know that she “died free.”

That is comforting. As for Werner Foerster, he just died and was not mentioned once by name in the Times column.