Good morning.
If you thought last week's market volatility was intense, buckle up.
Big news: Gold just cratered from $5,600 to $4,770 in a single session, and silver posted its biggest single-day drop since 1980, down 31%. Two words: Kevin Warsh.
Bigger news: The government partially shut down Saturday morning, Oracle and Nvidia are down 3% and 2% respectively…
And the US government released three million pages of the Epstein Files, but victims called it an “incomplete” release.
Today:
Metals market meltdown: gold and silver crater
Government shuts down as Congress misses deadline
The Epstein Files have been “incompletely” released
Nvidia and Oracle are scaring investors (different reasons)
More below.
This is not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.
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Good investing,
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📰 Market Headlines
Markets capped a volatile week lower as metals cratered and investors digested the Trump administration's Fed chair nomination.
The S&P 500 is down 0.9%, the Nasdaq dropped 1.5%, and the Dow slipped 0.5%, with gold plunging from a record $5,600 to $4,770 per ounce and silver posting its biggest single-day drop since 1980, down 31%.
Over the past 4 days, gold’s price fell 20% from $5,600 to almost $4,500. Meanwhile, silver fell an unbelievable 39% in the same timeframe from around $121 down to $74. The reasons are as follows:
Trump’s new Fed Chair pick Kevin Warsh is likely to prioritize the Fed’s independence from the White House, which means we probably won’t see many rate cuts or much quantitative easing (i.e. liquidity injected by the Fed).
The US Dollar has already been strengthened by 0.8% since the announcement of Warsh as Fed Chair. Gold and silver don’t like a strong Dollar; investors often choose them when their nation’s currency is weakening.
Gold and silver have also had an extraordinary run recently, and it makes sense for there to be a pullback like this at some point. For context, Gold was up 188% since 2022 and silver was up 717% since 2020.
Nvidia (NVDA) shares are down almost 2% on uncertainty about the company’s investment in OpenAI; namely whether the investment will be the full $100 billion that was announced last year. This unrest comes after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang allegedly criticized OpenAI in private for a “lack of discipline” in its business strategy, according to CNBC.
Since then, Huang has tried to clear the air by calling the initial WSJ report "nonsense," and saying Nvidia will invest "a great deal" in OpenAI's funding round.
The issue is that he didn’t say NVDA will invest the full $100 billion. He only said things like “It will be big. It will be our biggest investment ever.”
Investors are edgy about this likely because Huang also recently said that the announced investment was “non-binding and not finalized,” which doesn’t scream confidence.
Oracle (ORCL) is down 3% pre-market today on reports that it is apparently considering layoffs to free up cash flow and that it plans to fundraise between $45-50 billion this year. The new funds would go toward building the capacity to “meet contracted demand from its cloud customers,” which include Nvidia (NVDA), Meta (META), OpenAI, AMD (AMD), TikTok and xAI.
The market seems concerned about how expensive Oracle’s data center buildout strategy is; this feels similar to when ORCL dropped 11% last December just from lower-than-expected revenue numbers.
The Epstein Files were released this weekend, but victims and some politicians aren’t satisfied with the DOJ’s transparency level. Why? Because there are apparently six million total pages in the files, but only three million were released (and some images and documents had redacted sections). Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has stated that no more files will be shared with the public.
The government partially shut down Saturday morning after Congress missed the Jan. 30 deadline. Speaker Mike Johnson says he's "confident" the House will pass the Senate's amended spending package by Tuesday, though Democrats are withholding support until DHS reforms are finalized. Johnson's working with a one-vote majority that's about to shrink further.
Corporate earnings are coming in hot despite tariff uncertainty. With a third of S&P 500 companies reporting, the average net profit margin sits at 13.2%, on track for the highest since FactSet started tracking in 2009. Analysts expect margins to climb even higher through 2026, buoyed by AI investment and last year's tax cuts.
Several key companies report earnings this week, including two members of the Magnificent Seven:
Monday: Palantir (PLTR), Disney (DIS)
Tuesday: AMD (AMD), Super Micro Computer Inc (SMCI), PayPal (PYPL)
Wednesday: Alphabet (GOOG), Uber (UBER), Eli Lilly (LLY), Novo Nordisk (NVO)
Thursday: Amazon (AMZN), Strategy (MSTR), Reddit (RDDT), Iren (IREN)
Friday: Philip Morris International (PM), Under Armour (UA)
🤖 AI/Future/Tech News
Waymo is finalizing a $16 billion round at $110 billion valuation, with Alphabet providing three-fourths and Dragoneer, Sequoia, and DST joining.
Rabbit announced "project cyberdeck," a portable vibe-coding device, plus an update turning its R1 into an agentic computer controller.
🪙 Crypto
President Trump's Fed pick Kevin Warsh said Bitcoin "does not make me nervous" while pushing a wholesale digital dollar.
President Trump's crypto venture sold 49% to UAE firm Aryam for $500 million four days before the inauguration.
Six senators accused Deputy AG Todd Blanche of "glaring" conflict for halting DOJ crypto enforcement while holding $159,000+ in crypto.
🤫 Insider Trading
🎤 What do you think?
Is this the end of gold and silver's run?
🎤️ What you said last time
🧠 The Missing (Market) Links
Zuckerberg said AI lets one person do a team's work, though Meta's headcount grew 6% and hiring continues.
President Trump advisor Gary Cohn called the US a "K-shaped economy", with GDP at 5%, while working Americans "suffer" to pay bills.
Tariffs may have cost 19,000 jobs per month through August 2025, the Kansas City Fed found, raising unemployment by 0.1 percentage points.
Record-low snowpack hit Vail Resorts: Truist slashed its price target as Colorado and Utah seasons cratered.
K-pop and Netflix drove a 38% surge in Korean enrollment at US colleges, the top language growth, while overall enrollment fell 16%.
📜 Quote of the Day
Time is the friend of the wonderful business.
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