Bitcoin underperforms, gold holds ground after Trump says Venezuela will turn over up to $3B in oil

Donald Trump just put defense giants on notice. In a fiery Truth Social post, the president said he “will not permit” dividends or stock buybacks at defense firms unless they speed up weapons production, build new factories, and fix what he called “exorbitant and unjustifiable” executive compensation.

“Salaries, Stock Options, and every other form of Compensation are far too high for these Executives. Defense Companies are not producing our Great Military Equipment rapidly enough and, once produced, not maintaining it properly or quickly,” Trump wrote. “Longer term, this is good for both Executives and Shareholders, because it will be GREAT for our Country! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Shares of General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman each fell about 3% after the post.

Northrop Grumman spent $1.17 billion on buybacks and paid $964 million in dividends in the first nine months of 2025 alone.

Lockheed Martin went even bigger, spending $2.25 billion buying back shares and distributing $2.33 billion in dividends through late September.

Housing stocks tanked Wednesday after President Donald Trump said he’s taking immediate steps to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes, triggering selloff across real estate and construction names.

Blackstone dropped as much as 9.3% before recovering some ground. The firm has become one of the largest landlords in America, after scooping up 17,000 homes in a $6B deal for Home Partners of America in 2021, and another 38,000 through its $3.5B buyout of Tricon Residential just last year.

The fallout spread fast. American Homes 4 Rent plunged 11%, while Invitation Homes lost 10%. Construction-related names didn’t escape the selloff either; Builders FirstSource slid more than 5%.

The S&P 1500 Homebuilding Index dropped 2.3%, with 15 of its 18 members in the red. KB Home and DR Horton were among the biggest decliners, while Louisiana-Pacific, which supplies building materials, also fell more than 5%.

Venezuela may soon get its own ETF. Just days after former President Nicolás Maduro was handed over to the U.S., Teucrium filed paperwork for the Venezuela Exposure ETF, aiming to track the performance of companies with major exposure to the country of 30 million people.

The timing couldn’t be hotter. Venezuelan stocks have exploded since the weekend, with the IBC Index more than doubling from 2,082 to over 4,400, a 110% gain in under a week.

Wall Street abandoned Venezuela years ago. After reckless spending, oil crashes, and U.S. sanctions, the country defaulted on its debt in 2017, failing to repay bonds issued by both the government and PDVSA, its state-run oil giant. Fidelity and T. Rowe Price still hold a significant chunk of those defaulted bonds.

Now, with Maduro gone and a closer alignment with Washington, investors are betting on a fresh start. Some hope for a restructuring of Venezuela’s sovereign debt, others are eyeing its massive oil reserves.

Teucrium, best known for ETFs tied to wheat, soybeans, corn, and sugar, is the firm behind the new proposal. But it warned that tensions with the U.S. remain a key risk. In its filing, it wrote:

“The U.S. could also institute broader sanctions on Venezuela. These sanctions, or even the threat of further sanctions, may result in the decline of the value and liquidity of Venezuelan securities, a weakening of the bolivar or other adverse consequences.”

Wolfe Research cut ratings on JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, warning investors that the upside looks tapped out heading into next week’s bank earnings. Analyst Steven Chubak said both stocks have already priced in too much good news after a big 2025 rally across the sector.

JPMorgan was downgraded to “peerperform” from “outperform”, with Chubak noting the stock deserves a premium but “has little room to re-rate higher” and “earnings growth should lag peers.” Shares fell as much as 2% on Wednesday, after hitting a record the day before.

Bank of America got the same downgrade, with Chubak saying the net interest income boost is already baked in, and that 2026 expense estimates look too light. BofA shares fell 1.6% after also closing at a record on Tuesday.

The KBW Bank Index, which includes 24 major lenders, surged 29% last year and is still hovering near its peak in early 2026.

U.S. Bancorp and M&T Bank were also downgraded. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley stayed on Wolfe’s top picks list.

The big banks report earnings next week, kicking off Tuesday with JPMorgan and Bank of New York Mellon, followed by Citigroup, Wells Fargo, BofA, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

U.S. forces captured the M/V Bella 1, a Russia-flagged ship that’s been at the center of a dramatic sea chase across the Atlantic, marking a major escalation in the Biden-era blockade on sanctioned vessels heading to and from Venezuela.

U.S. European Command confirmed the seizure in a social media post, saying the ship was taken under a U.S. federal court warrant after being tracked by the Coast Guard. The ship had switched flags mid-ocean, painting the Russian tricolor on its hull and changing its name to the Marinera in a failed attempt to avoid capture.

The Bella 1 was sanctioned back in 2024 for transporting oil on behalf of a firm linked to Hezbollah, which the U.S. labels a terrorist organization.

The capture adds to already rising tensions with Russia, as Washington expands its clampdown on Venezuelan crude traffic just as Donald Trump’s oil deal with Venezuela unfolds.

Oil prices dropped again. Trump’s announcement that Venezuela will send up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. spooked energy markets with supply concerns. Brent crude and WTI both slipped, continuing a multi-day decline.

But refiner stocks jumped. Shares of Valero Energy surged 4% and Marathon Petroleum gained 2%, after reports from CNBC said Venezuelan oil sales to the U.S. will continue indefinitely, and that sanctions will be eased going forward.

Donald Trump unloaded on NATO in a fresh Truth Social post Wednesday morning, claiming he personally forced member nations to increase defense spending from 2% to 5% of GDP and shaming them for not paying their bills until he showed up.

He bragged that “everyone said that couldn’t be done”, but insisted he got it done anyway because “they are all my friends.”

Trump also claimed he “single-handedly ended 8 wars”, and lashed out at Norway for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize, even though in his words he “saved millions of lives.”

He said Russia and China “have zero fear of NATO” without U.S. backing, and insisted that only the “DJT Rebuilt U.S.A.” still commands global respect. The post ended with another “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” signature.

Markets barely flinched. The S&P 500 rose 0.1%, while the Nasdaq gained 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had earlier climbed more than 150 points to a fresh intraday record, reversed course and was last down 88 points, or 0.2%, as the rally faded midday.

China’s central bank just made it 14 months in a row. The People’s Bank of China added 30,000 troy ounces of gold in December, taking total official purchases since November 2024 to about 1.35 million ounces, or roughly 42 tons.

That extended what’s become one of the longest sustained gold-buying streaks by any central bank in recent history.

Gold prices had a wild ride in December, breaking records before settling lower, but the metal still notched its strongest annual performance since 1979.

The rally was powered by official-sector buying, fears of currency debasement, and a broader flight from sovereign bonds into assets that don’t carry counterparty risk.

Central banks nearly matched their entire early-2025 gold haul in the last few months of the year alone, according to a World Gold Council report published Tuesday. China’s actual demand may be even higher, as Goldman Sachs estimated the PBOC added 15 tons in September, far above the 1 ton officially reported.

Meanwhile, Japan’s 30-year government bond yield spiked to 3.52%, a new all-time high. That’s fueling louder whispers about whether something in the global financial system is gonna crack soon.

In the U.S., Treasury yields edged lower early Wednesday as investors braced for job openings and employment data at 10 a.m. ET. The 10-year note dipped to 4.144%, down 3.5 basis points.

The 30-year yield fell to 4.827%, and the 2-year yield slipped to 3.461%. Short-term yields ticked up slightly, with the 1-month Treasury at 3.619% and the 1-year at 3.498%.

Bitcoin sank below $92,000, last seen trading at $91,800, extending losses from earlier in the day. Price weakness followed backlash from China, where officials called Donald Trump’s demand for Venezuelan oil a “serious violation of international law” and slammed the decision as “a typical act of bullying.”

Oil markets slid too. Brent crude dropped 35 cents to $60.35 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate fell 52 cents to $56.61, as traders priced in ample supply and stayed cautious ahead of potential investment shifts.

The White House confirmed that Trump will meet with top U.S. oil executives on Friday to discuss major investments in Venezuela’s oil sector. Invited guests include reps from Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Exxon Mobil, alongside other industry players.

Chevron remains the only U.S. company still active in Venezuela, while ConocoPhillips and Exxon had their assets seized under former President Hugo Chávez nearly two decades ago.

Two senior officials, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are expected to lead outreach to the oil industry ahead of the meeting.

Qualcomm is holding talks with Samsung Electronics to produce 2-nanometre chips, according to CEO Cristiano Amon, who spoke with Korea Economic Daily on Wednesday.

Amon said Qualcomm has already completed design work and is now in discussions with Samsung first, ahead of other foundry candidates, for commercial manufacturing using the cutting-edge 2nm process.

If finalized, the move would be a major shift in Qualcomm’s supply chain strategy, especially as the industry eyes the 2nm node as the next big leap in chip power and efficiency.

Meanwhile in South Korea, Hyundai Motor stock shot up 14.9%, hitting a record high and easily outpacing the KOSPI’s 1.2% gain, driven by speculation of a deeper partnership with Nvidia.

While Hyundai unveiled plans at CES to deploy Atlas humanoid robots in its factories, Kiwoom Securities analyst Shin Yoon-chul said that alone doesn’t justify the surge. He pointed out that production is only expected to hit 30,000 units by 2028, and that the Atlas shown in Vegas was just a static mock-up.

Bitcoin opened weak on Wednesday, slipping $400 to $92,800, down 0.43%, with traders watching geopolitical headlines instead of jumping into risk. Futures volume over the past 24 hours hit $100.96 billion, but spot volume stayed sluggish at just $8.22 billion.

Open interest across major venues hovered at $60.98 billion, holding flat as bulls failed to show up. The total market cap sat just under $1.85 trillion.

Bitcoin spot ETFs posted a net outflow of $243 million on January 6, with nearly every fund in the red except BlackRock’s IBIT, which bucked the trend with a net inflow. It was the only Bitcoin ETF to see positive flows that day.

BlackRock clients bought $231.89 million in Bitcoin and $197.7 million in Ethereum, showing where the money’s actually going despite the sector’s rough trading session.

Ethereum ETFs brought in $115 million, marking their third straight day of inflows, while Solana spot ETFs added $9.22 million,.

Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg called it: “Spot bitcoin ETFs are coming into 2026 like a lion”, pointing to a whopping $1.2 billion in combined inflows over just two days.

Meanwhile, gold pulled back after a strong three-day run. Bullion held near $4,470 an ounce, still up more than 4% over the past few sessions, but traders clearly started looking past global tensions and toward this week’s U.S. economic data.

The White House didn’t help ease any nerves. President Donald Trump said Venezuela will send between 30 and 50 million barrels of crude oil to the U.S., estimating the sale could fetch as much as $3 billion.

The oil will be sold at market price, not discounted. Trump’s remarks came just days after the U.S. launched an attack on Venezuela.

Despite the backdrop, equity futures barely blinked. Dow futures added 28 points, or less than 0.1%, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures flat after both indexes closed at fresh highs on Tuesday.

Silver fell 2.2%, but it’s still up 12% on the year, mostly thanks to Chinese retail buying. Platinum dropped 4.2%, and palladium slid 2.9%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index ticked up 0.1%.

Prediction markets got a jolt. Traders on Kalshi cranked up bets that Trump will “take back the Panama Canal” before 2029. Odds jumped to over 35%, up from below 30% just days ago.

A separate bet on whether the U.S. would take control of any part of Greenland spiked to 38% midday Tuesday, up 8 points in a week.