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- 📉 Trump De-Escalates
📉 Trump De-Escalates
Pip Munch
January 16, 2026
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☕️ GM Munchers! It's Friday which means I'm practicing my "yeah, totally green this week" face in the mirror before my wife asks why I've been stress-eating coffee grounds straight from the bag.
On today’s menu:
📉 Iran De-Escalates & Taiwan Helps Stocks
⏰ Trump Wants Greenland (Seriously)
🚀 This Stock Is Crazy (873% In 6 Months)
🥇The Best Instant Funding Program In The Industry?
😬 This Government Official Just Sold $755K of Stocks
Yesterday’s numbers:
S&P 500 | 6,944 | +0.26% |
Nasdaq | 23,530 | +0.25% |
Dow Jones | 49,149 | +0.60% |
Bitcoin | $95,350 | -1.62% |
BREAKING NEWS
📉 Trump Hits Pause on Iran (For Now)
Late Wednesday night, everyone went to bed wondering if we'd wake up to breaking news about missiles flying toward Iran. Instead, Trump surprised everyone by saying he doesn't want war and won't launch an attack.
The market's reaction? Tech stocks absolutely ripped. It's like when your wife says "we need to talk" and it turns out she just wants to know where you put the remote—pure relief.
Oil prices tanked on the news because apparently even crude gets tired of geopolitical drama. But before you get comfortable, prediction markets are still pricing in a 55% chance of US strikes by June 30th and a 43% chance of Iran's Supreme Leader being out by September.
The Munch Take: This is classic can-kicking. War fears got priced out temporarily, which means tech can breathe for a minute. But keep those stop losses ready—geopolitical landmines don't disappear just because we're not looking at them. Risk-on for now, but with one eye open.
🥳 Taiwan Deal Sends Chips Soaring
In a plot twist nobody saw coming, Trump slashed Taiwan's tariffs from 20% to 15%, and Taiwan responded by committing $250 billion to US chipmaking. That's not a typo—billion with a B.
The winner? Nvidia rocketed up 3% before settling around 2% by close. The entire semiconductor sector caught a bid because suddenly the chip shortage narrative has a happy ending.
Why this matters: Taiwan makes basically all the advanced chips the world runs on. Getting them to build fabs on US soil is like convincing your favorite restaurant to open a location in your kitchen. It's infrastructure, national security, and market catalyst all rolled into one.
The Munch Take: This is genuinely bullish for semiconductors. Not just short-term rally bullish, but multi-year tailwind bullish. If you're holding $NVDA or related plays, this is your confirmation bias delivered gift-wrapped.
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CRYPTO
❌ Coinbase Says "Thanks, But No Thanks" to Crypto Bill
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong looked at the Senate Banking Committee's new crypto framework and basically said "we'd rather have nothing than this garbage."
The irony? Armstrong has been begging for clear regulations forever. But the proposed bill apparently includes government backdoors to your financial records, DeFi prohibitions, and amendments that would kill stablecoin rewards while letting banks ban competition.
The stock? Down over 6% yesterday. Our position from $180? Still holding strong.
The Munch Take: Armstrong would rather fight for better legislation than accept a bad framework. That's either principled or reckless depending on how this plays out. Either way, crypto volatility remains the gift that keeps giving for traders.
MARKET OVERVIEW
🍿 Tasty Movers & Shakers
🎧️ $SPOT Spotify just announced they're jacking up subscription prices from $11.99 to $12.99—a full dollar increase for the privilege of shuffling the same playlist you've been listening to since 2019. This marks their second price hike since June 2024, because apparently nothing is sacred anymore. The stock responded by dropping 4%, which is Wall Street's way of saying "read the room, guys."
🚀 $SNDK Looking for a stock that makes you question every life decision? SanDisk is up 873% in the last six months. Not 87%. Not 187%. Eight hundred and seventy-three percent. I spent that same timeframe buying a 32GB memory card instead of the stock. If I'd made the other choice, I'd be writing this from a yacht instead of my kitchen table with instant coffee.
😥 $INTC Turns out the easiest investing strategy of 2025 was just copying Trump's homework. If you bought Intel the day Trump disclosed his position, you'd be sitting on a casual 97% gain. No technical analysis required—just presidential portfolio stalking.
💰️ $VZ Verizon is offering customers a generous $20 credit for the massive wireless outage that crippled the nation. That's cute. They clearly haven't calculated what they owe me for not being able to login to TradingView and close my full margin trade during the chaos. Forget $20—they owe me a new trading account and possibly therapy.
$AMZN Amazon's Luxury Retail Nightmare: In December 2024, Amazon dropped $475 million into Saks to help them acquire Neiman Marcus. Plot twist: Saks is now filing for bankruptcy, and Amazon is begging a federal judge to reject the filing because Saks allegedly "burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year" while failing to honor their agreement. Translation? Amazon just learned the expensive lesson that investing in luxury retail is like lighting money on fire, except less entertaining. This one's getting spicy.
POLITICS
⏰ Trump Wants Greenland (Seriously)
The White House confirmed they're establishing a working group for "technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland." Not discussions about climate or fishing rights—acquisition. As in buying it.
Prediction markets give this a 21% chance of happening in 2026. Odds of a US invasion? 12%.
The Munch Take: This sounds insane until you remember Greenland has rare earth minerals, Arctic shipping routes, and strategic military positioning. If this escalates beyond talk, defense contractors and rare earth plays could move fast. It's a sleeper catalyst nobody's pricing in yet—which means you should be.
🚀 Pre-Market Fuel
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