- Pip Munch
- Posts
- 📉 "No New Wars"
📉 "No New Wars"

Want to compete against traders around the world? Lark Funding’s January Competition just changed the game. Get a FREE shot at winning a $100K evaluation. 100 winners. 14 days. Your move.
Register now (free) → larkchallenge.com

☕️ GM Munchers! Weekend plans: brunch, relaxation, maybe a movie. Actual weekend: monitoring a military invasion while explaining to my wife why oil prices matter more than our dinner reservations. She's thrilled.
On today’s menu:
📉 Trump Attacks Venezuela
🚗 Tesla's Delivery Day Disaster
✈️ Airlines, Salesforce & MicroStrategy
🤑 Some War Insider Trading?
😬 Countries Don’t Want US Dollars Anymore
Friday’s numbers:
S&P 500 | 6,858 | +0.19% |
Nasdaq | 23,235 | -0.02% |
Dow Jones | 48,382 | +0.66% |
Bitcoin | $90,025 | +0.07% |
BREAKING NEWS
📉 Trump Attacks Venezuela
Before most Americans finished their first cup of coffee Saturday morning, the US executed a "large-scale strike" on Venezuela, captured President Maduro and his wife, and had them on a plane to Miami faster than you can say "regime change."
The charges? Multiple criminal counts waiting in US courts. The precedent? Trump just became the first US president in history to attack seven countries in a single year—despite campaigning on "no new wars."
The irony isn't lost on us. But let's skip the political theater and focus on what actually matters: How does this affect your portfolio?

🛢️ The Oil Play: It's Always About the Money
Here's the angle Wall Street's already pricing in: Venezuela holds the world's largest oil reserves—300 billion barrels.
For context, that's more than Saudi Arabia. More than Russia. More than every OPEC nation except... well, nobody. They're #1.
And the US just announced they'll be "controlling the country for now." Translation? America just acquired the world's largest oil reserves through military force instead of negotiation.
Short-Term (Next 1-3 Months):
Oil prices are already at multi-month lows. This invasion injects a "war premium" spike—markets hate uncertainty more than they hate actual war. Expect volatility as traders figure out whether this escalates into something bigger or fizzles out like most geopolitical drama.
Long-Term (12-18 Months):
If the US installs a pro-American transitional government and lifts sanctions, Venezuelan oil floods the global market. That's bearish for oil prices. Dramatically bearish.
Trump's been screaming about $2/gallon gas since day one of his campaign. Turns out invading oil-rich nations is one way to achieve that goal.

🍁 The Sleeper Trade: Short the Canadian Dollar

Here's the angle nobody's talking about yet but should be: What happens to Canada's economy when the US controls the world's largest oil supply?
Canada's economy is heavily—heavily—dependent on oil exports to the US. It's their primary export, their economic backbone, their entire fiscal strategy.
But if the US now has Venezuela's 300 billion barrels at its disposal, why look north to Canada for oil? The answer: they won't. Or at least, not nearly as much.
The CAD Thesis:
US demand for Canadian oil craters
Canadian trade surplus evaporates
CAD weakens against USD (potentially violently)
Canadian equities tied to energy get crushed
We're watching USD/CAD closely. This could be a multi-month trend that catches the market flat-footed while everyone's distracted by oil volatility.

🎯 The Munch Take: Bearish Oil, Bearish CAD, Bullish Chaos
Our read on the situation:
The attack was swift and decisive. Maduro's already in custody. We don't expect escalation—this wasn't the opening salvo of World War III, it was a targeted regime change operation executed with overwhelming force.
Our trades:
Bearish on oil long-term: If Venezuelan supply comes online in 12-18 months, crude gets crushed. We're not shorting yet (war premium could spike first), but we're watching for entry points.
Watching CAD weakness: This could be a structural shift in North American energy dynamics. If the US stops buying Canadian oil, the loonie's in trouble. We're exploring ways to play this (currency pairs, Canadian energy stock shorts, etc.).
What we're NOT doing: Panic-selling everything because a headline scared us. Markets price in chaos faster than you think. By Monday open, this could already be baked in.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Most Prop Firms Stop Paying When You're Losing. We Don't.

Lark's 1-Step Career Program pays you up to $1,000 monthly even during drawdowns. Hit 3 profitable days of 0.5% and stay above -3.5%—that's it.
January Promo: Get your first payout and we'll give you a free account of the same size. Automatically. No extra cost.
One payout = instant second evaluation. Scale faster. Pay less.
7% max drawdown. Free retry. TradingView included. AI journal. Fast payouts. 24/7 support.
Build consistency while getting paid to learn. Most firms make you start over. We help you scale.
BIG PICTURE
🚗 Tesla's Delivery Day Disaster: When the EV King Loses His Crown

Tesla reported 418,227 Q4 deliveries—missing Wall Street's 426,000 target and marking a 16% nosedive from last year. Full-year 2025? Down 8.6% to 1.64 million vehicles while China's BYD crowned itself the new EV champion at 2.26 million units.
The stock's response? Down 10% in five days, because apparently missing delivery targets while your CEO calls for abolishing the European Union isn't a winning combo.

The irony? While Tesla bleeds market share, prediction markets are pricing Elon Musk as the odds-on favorite to become Earth's first trillionaire in 2026. Nothing says "efficiency" like tanking your company's deliveries while collecting a $1 trillion pay package shareholders approved in November.
The culprits: Trump axed the $7,500 EV tax credit early. European consumers staged a backlash over Musk's political theatrics. Competition intensified globally.
The Munch Take: Elon might hit trillionaire status, but Tesla's winning the EV war isn’t a guarantee. Trade accordingly.
MARKET OVERVIEW
🍿 Tasty Movers & Shakers
☀️ $AAL / Airlines – American, Southwest, and JetBlue cancelled hundreds of Caribbean flights after the Venezuela strike. Won't hurt their stock prices, but your beach vacation just became a staycation. The market doesn't care about your Mai Tai plans.
📉 $CRM – Salesforce dropped 4% to kick off 2026 for absolutely no reason except "market rotation into chips." When you're branded as an AI software company, you get treated like a mood ring—sensitive to every shift in risk appetite. Welcome to 2026, where narratives matter more than fundamentals.
😭 $MSTR – MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin is our entire personality" strategy is aging like milk in the sun. Down 66% over six months ($457 → $152), with a 76% chance of getting delisted from the MSCI index. Turns out leveraging your entire company into a volatile asset has consequences. Who knew?
🚀 $MU – Micron Technology ripped 10% Friday and is up 250% over the past year. The catalyst? Analyst Mark Li raised his price target to $330. That's it. One guy with a spreadsheet moved a $150 billion company. Markets are totally rational and not at all vibes-based.
💻️ $MSFT – Microsoft closed down 2.21% after Brazil opened an antitrust probe into their cloud licensing practices. We don't know what "cloud licensing violations" means either, but apparently the market hates it. When in doubt, sell first and Google later.
🚀 Pre-Market Fuel
What do you think of today's edition? |
Share Pip Munch
Chances are you have some trading friends. Why don’t you be a pal, share Pip Munch and earn some goodies for it?
You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving The Trading Plan That Helped Me Pass 4 $100,000 FTMO Challenges.
Or copy and paste this link to others: https://pipmunch.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER