News Recap • Week 2 2026

Check the news below and make sure to visit my latest Market Recap as well.

‍

Macro

• Wed The US services sector activity unexpectedly reaccelerated in December with the ISM index coming in at 54.4, well above the 52.3 forecast and 52.6 recorded in November. The data is the latest signal that the US economy is still on solid footing. (Reuters)
• Wed Gold surpassed US treasury bonds as the world’s largest foreign reserve asset when the total value of gold held by central banks approached $4 trillion. (NAI 500)
• Wed Private payrolls in the US rose 41,000 in December, slightly below expectations but a big improvement from the loss of 29,000 in November. (CNBC)
• Wed Donald Trump said he’s immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes in an attempt to make housing more affordable. Blackstone and other large real estate companies and renters fell on the news but recovered some of the losses by the end of the week. (CNBC)
• Thu The United States’ trade deficit was just $29.4 billion in October, down 39% from the prior month and hitting its lowest level since 2009. Lowering the trade deficit was one of the main goals behind Trump’s tariff policy. So far, it seems to be working. (CNBC)
• Thu Consumer prices in China rose 0.8% from a year earlier in December, the fastest pace since February 2023. Core CPI was up 1.2%. PPI was still deep in deflationary territory at -1.9% though, albeit slightly above expectations for a 2% decline and the 2.2% drop measured in November. (CNBC)
• Thu The Senate voted to block Trump from further military action in Venezuela. (CNBC)
• Fri US nonfarm payrolls rose 50,000 in December and fell short of the Dow Jones estimate for 73,000. At the same time, the number for November was revised down from 64,000 to 56,000 while the already-horrendous October count was slashed from a loss of 105,000 to 173,000! On the bright side, unemployment ticked lower from 4.5% to 4.4% while average hourly earnings rose faster than expected at 3.8% year-over-year. And investors did indeed seem to focus on the bright side, sending stocks higher and rate cut odds lower. (CNBC)
• Fri The US now has more job seekers than available jobs for the first time since before covid (and during the brief shutdown spike in early 2020). Ignoring that spike in unemployment, the 7.8 million job seekers is also the highest number in a decade. (Sherwood)
• Fri Donald Trump said he’s instructing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds in an effort to drive mortgage rates down and make housing more affordable for the American people. Even the announcement itself achieved some of that, causing mortgage rates to drop to a 3-year low of 5.99% before rebounding slightly. Mortgage lenders like Rocket Companies and UWM Holdings rallied on the news. (CNBC)
• Fri Donald Trump met with several US oil company executives on Friday to discuss plans for investing in Venezuela. He said that oil companies will spend at least $100 billion to rebuild the country’s energy sector with the US government providing security and protection. The companies themselves don’t seem to have committed to any agreement yet. (CNBC)

‍

Other

• Mon Novo Nordisk launched its Wegovy pill in the US with an opening offer of $149 per month. Its stock rallied 15.5% this week and has now surged more than 40% off the bottom in November. (Reuters)
• Mon Almost every new car sold in Norway last year was an EV. (Sherwood)
• Mon Nvidia announced the launch of its next-generation Vera Rubin superchip. (Yahoo Finance)
• Mon Nvidia also said it is working with robotaxi companies to have them use its AI chips and Drive AV software stack to power their fleets as soon as 2027. The announcements failed to boost Nvidia stock though. (CNBC)
• Mon Deutsche Bank stock traded above the company’s book value for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, although it closed the week slightly below. This comes after a 650% gain since the covid lows. (MEXC)
• Tue xAI raised $20 billion in new funding from investors including Nvidia and Cisco. (CNBC)
• Wed Trump said on Wednesday that he won’t permit defense companies to issue dividends or stock buybacks until they speed up production and improve maintenance of their military equipment. Large US defense companies unsurprisingly tumbled on the news, although the dip was short-lived… (CNBC)
• Wed A few hours after calling for defense companies to get their shit together, Trump announced on Truth Social that the US military budget for 2027 should be bumped from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion to keep the nation safe and build the “dream military” that the US has long been entitled to. Defense stocks recovered all of the previous day’s losses on Thursday and continued higher on Friday, closing out the week with strong gains. (CNBC)
• Wed AI startup Anthropic has signed a term sheet for a $10 billion funding round at $350 billion. (CNBC)
• Wed Warner Bros. Discovery once again rejected the offer from Paramount Skydance in favor of Netflix. (CNBC)
• Wed Alphabet’s market cap surpassed Apple’s for the first time since 2019 and closed the week just shy of $4 trillion. (CNBC)
• Wed Discord has reportedly made a confidential IPO filing with the SEC, aiming to go public in March with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan as its underwriters. The company hasn’t yet confirmed its plans. (TechCrunch)
• Thu Traffic to Google’s Gemini website increased 28% last month while traffic to ChatGPT fell 6%. ChatGPT still has a significant lead with 5.5 billion visits in December vs Gemini’s 1.7 billion, but the latter has been closing the gap fast over the past few months. (Sherwood)
• Thu Bank of America now officially recommends its clients to allocate up to 4% to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. (Yahoo Finance)
• Fri Amazon Pharmacy began offering Novo Nordisk’s weight loss pill through insurance plans as well as cash payments, a very positive move for the accessibility of Novo’s product. Shares of Novo rose 3% on Friday and logged its best week since August 2023 with a 15.5% gain. (Reuters)
• Fri Meta signed a series of nuclear energy deals with Vistra, Oklo, and TerraPower, totaling more than 6 gigawatts to power its AI data centers. Vistra and Oklo jumped 10% and 8% on Friday. (Yahoo Finance)
• Fri Rio Tinto is in talks to buy Glencore in a deal that would create the world’s largest mining company with a combined market cap of more than $200 billion. (Reuters)
• Sat Donald Trump called for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10%, saying consumers have been ripped off by credit card companies. It’s unclear how he plans on implementing such a rule. (Reuters)
• Sun Walmart and Alphabet announced a partnership that will allow shoppers to buy directly through Gemini. (Business Wire)

‍

Earnings

• Fri TSMC reported a 20.45% jump in Q4 revenue ahead of its full earnings report on January 15. The revenue growth beat expectations and sent shares higher by 1.77% on Friday. (Reuters)