Wall Street Roundup: Is everything priced in but normalcy?
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What insights are shared about the situation in Venezuela?
Brian Stewart, our director of news at Seeking Alpha, our first Wall Street Roundup of 2026. Welcome back.
Yeah, great to be here.
It's great to have you. It's great to be talking again. What have you got for us? The world is on stage performing for us all in comedy and drama and horror. What do you got for us?
Well, if we're gonna talk about the world stage, I think we have to start with Venezuela. Over the weekend going into this week, US captured Maduro. The stock market, generally positive response. Several sectors saw gains, you saw gains in. Oil sector, oil services, the only exception there really, a glaring exception was the Canadian oil stocks. The Canadian oil sands competes with Venezuela for the heavy crude. So if there's going to be more Venezuelan oil on the market, that's bad for the oil sands, lower prices there.
How are memory and storage stocks performing in the market?
I mean, at a certain point, that kind of drilling becomes uneconomical if oil prices get too low. So there were some concerns in that little pocket. But otherwise, oil stocks, the prospects of more production in Venezuela move those higher. Defense stocks higher, both on the idea. of broader geopolitical tensions driving those stocks, but also the idea that companies like Halliburton are going to get contracts to build out the infrastructure in Venezuela. Obviously, we'll have to see how that goes. We're sort of still at stage one of that process, which is going to be a multi-year process. But I think the interesting impact, stock market-wise, was that the idea of a military action in Venezuela, kind of a ratcheting up of international tensions, a lot of
American allies pushing back against the idea that we would jump into Venezuela. The stock market basically shrugged those off. So the idea that there'd be that we're moving into, say, a more dangerous world or that things are going to get more troublesome as we kind of move forward, even with the kind of tough talk coming from the Trump administration about other countries, Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, even that didn't really faze the stock market that much.
Have you ever seen a time like this where it seems everything is priced in except for normalcy, quote unquote?
Yeah, that's really interesting. I like the idea of everything priced in but normalcy.
What does the recent jobs data indicate about the economy?
I think there's sort of a... We had for a while the taco trade, the Trump always chickens out trade. That's obviously kind of a negative way to frame that, but you could frame it in the sense that the Trump administration has proven itself to be extremely pragmatic. So even when it takes an aggressive step... The administration kind of looks around, sees what the reaction is, and will adjust in real time to that. So I think that is the main thing that's priced in, is the idea that I just don't think people take seriously that the worst case scenario, which is often the thing that Trump says, I'm going to do this terrible thing, this thing that is terrible for the economy or whatever. And I think...
people just sort of assume that that's rhetoric and that'll be sort of figured out over the course of the the process but there are things that that don't seem to be completely priced in so for instance um if we could just get back to the stocks you know um memory and storage stocks without much of a catalyst jumped over the past week um so you saw sandisk up 36% in the past week. It's up 10% today as we started taping, up 71% in the past month. Meanwhile, Micron, which was one of the best performing stocks, major, larger cap stocks of 2025 is up 6% in the past week, up 36% in the past month, past year, just looking at the 2025 performance up 230%. So I think this signifies just sort of The AI trade kind of moving around, like you think about like a game board, like it's just sort of, you know, moving to where the opportunity is.
And right now there's just this feeling that there's going to be a dearth of the memory and storage chips. And so these products are going to be in high demand. And so you're seeing these stocks respond in kind.
Any other stocks you would add to that conversation or tech-wise or sector-wise that you're seeing move?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What insights are shared about the situation in Venezuela?
0:11–1:07
2
How are memory and storage stocks performing in the market?
1:07–2:36
3
What does the recent jobs data indicate about the economy?
2:36–5:07
4
Why is Roblox experiencing a long-term decline?
5:07–6:49
5
What predictions are made for the market in 2026?
6:49–8:15
6
How is the AI trade shifting across different sectors?
8:15–10:14
7
What factors are influencing the current labor market?
10:14–12:36
8
What are the implications of geopolitical tensions on market pricing?
12:36–17:55