Global stocks muted on 1st day of Q4 earnings season as Trump DOJ opens criminal investigation into Fed’s Powell

Monday’s session has turned into a full-blown “Sell America” trade, with investors dumping U.S. assets.

JPMorgan’s trading desk flagged the “Sell America” trend early, pointing to Fed interference concerns as the key reason traders are shifting exposure. While the bank still sees a tactically bullish setup for stocks overall, it warned that Powell’s legal cloud adds too much uncertainty in the short term.

That dynamic showed up clearly in the global divergence. The iShares MSCI ACWI ex US ETF (ACWX) rose 0.8%, outperforming U.S. benchmarks and underlining how much of the volatility is concentrated in American assets right now.

Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, one of Trump’s top economic advisers, tried to strike a gentler tone. Speaking on Squawk Box, Hassett called Powell a “good person,” but stopped short of defending him outright.

“Right now, we’ve got a building that’s got like, dramatic cost overruns and plans for the buildings that look inconsistent with the testimony, but again, I’m not a Justice Department person. I hope everything turns out okay for Jay,” he said.

Gold just hit a new all-time high of $4,620/oz, now up 73% year-over-year, as silver also made a new record of $85/oz. Across markets, dip buyers came roaring back.

The S&P 500 turned green, erasing earlier losses, and is now less than 30 points away from breaking 7,000 for the first time ever.

The buying wasn’t limited to metals or equities. Risk-on flows hit everything, as investors shrugged off the Powell-DOJ drama and piled back into assets across the board.

On the corporate front, Alphabet just joined the $4 trillion club, after shares popped 1% on news that Apple picked Google’s Gemini model as the backbone for its next-gen Siri and AI ecosystem.

That deal pushed Alphabet into the same league as Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple, though only Alphabet is currently sitting above the line.

Nvidia and Microsoft first crossed $4 trillion in July, but both have since slipped. Apple cracked it in October, but has also dropped back. Alphabet’s rise has been relentless; shares soared 65% in 2025, its best performance since 2009 when it doubled post-crisis.