There are times when one's interests might best be served by just sitting back and enjoying the show the elites, oligarchs, world leaders at the WEF and the mainstream media are presenting. This may be one of those times.
Just before noon on Wednesday, MarketWatch, that CBS scion of financial wisdom, offered the following headline:
Dow heads for best day in roughly two weeks after Trump's Davos speech
Hilariously, by the time the story became available - because MarketWatch is mostly subscribers only - the NASDAQ was heading toward negative territory and the Dow had given back a third of its gains and was headed even lower. U.S. president Trump's messaging to the assemblage at Davos was all pomp, pump, but little in the way of thump, so U.S. stock traders said, "dump." And that's what they did.
The whole issue over Greenland is a sideshow, somewhat like the Vulcan mind-meld operated by the kids in the class with the lowest math grades, a complete circus. Why Trump seems so intent on securing that immense island of mostly mile-thick ice for the United States may be little more than a parlor trick, designed to twist Europe further into a pretzel-knot from which there is no escape. It might be a masterstroke of Trump's 5D chess, but more likely it is a contorted method to feed Europe more nearly-American dollars in a swap for some equally worthless land and send the mission from Euroland back to home base wiht more money to buy U.S. weapons and give them to Ukraine to fight those nasty Russians.
The Greenland gambit isn't about setting up anti-missile defenses or rare earth elements or even securing shipping lanes. It's about money laundering to the lowest of the low, Europe, to be funneled back to U.S. arms manufacturers. In that regard, it's a rip-roaring success. From Wall Street's perspective, it means almost nothing. Anybody able to take away from Trump's meandering mind-numbing message at Davos anything at all must be hallucinating on very powerful drugs because there was no message other than USA, USA, USA, the usual chest-beating by the world's greatest ape in the jungle of politics.
It's all so tiring, though sometimes, it pays to sit back and enjoy the humor of people taking themselves very seriously. If one is able to just ignore the politicians, the bankers, the noisy mainstream media talking heads, and the stock market - an ambitious task, understand - life becomes much more pleasant and appealing. The biggest decisions might be what to have for lunch or what to do over the weekend.
World politics aside, where they should be, normal, actual thinking people don't really care what the greatest assembly of self-absorbed narcissists in the world really thinks about anything. The WEF has been holding these back-slapping parties for some 50-odd years and well, here we are. It's always the same talk about forming relationships, better understanding, dealing with issues. In the end, little changes, and so it will be with this confab. Lots of huff and puff, but no real stuff. Ya gets what ya pays for, as they say in Brooklyn.
Grinning from broadside ear-to-ear, around 1:00 pm ET, the Wall Street Journal posted the headline:
Stock Market Today: Dow Pares Gains After Trump Speech; Gold Extends Rally
along with a chart showing the three major indices down between 1.5% and 2.5% the past three sessions, up-to-the-minute on Tuesday.
Take that, you MarketWatch smarties.
In the end, though, MarketWatch got the last laugh when stocks jumped just before 2:30 pm ET after Trump announced the "concept of a deal" over Greenland, taking tariffs off the table, live on CNBC, telling Joe Kernan the deal is "forever", as in fairy tales, with Kernan sucking it right up. One can easily imagine that Howard Lutnik and all of Trump's pals made good money up and down all day. International geopolitics has become Peak Clown World. It's even better than the NFL.
Back in the marginal reality that is Wall Street, a bunch of companies reported fourth quarter results.
After the bell Wednesday, Pinnacle Financial (PNFP) missed revenue and EPS estimates and is trading lower by about two percent.
Kinder Morgan (KMI) beat, issued soft guidance and is down less than one percent pre-market. Thursday morning, Proctor & Gamble (PG) reported stronger EPS, but lower gross reveunes, citing soft consumer demand (mind you, in the world's "hottest" country). The stock is trending lower pre-market by one percent. P&G's core gross margin fell for the fifth quarter in a row, partly due to tariffs and investments in different pack sizes to appeal to consumers looking to save money. P&G is trading down from a March 2025 high of 176, at 146/share.
GE Aerospace (GE) is two percent lower after a good quarter, but with slowing revenue growth.
Abbott Labs (ABT) is being slammed in the pre-market, down more than six percent. The company reported earnings in line with expectations, but investors aren't buying its forecasts.
Miner Freeport McMoRan (FCX) is trending flat to lower in the pre-market. The stock is up more than 30% since late November on prospects for gold, silver and other ores. Thursday's move looks like profit-taking.
Another miner, NovaGold (NG), is down 1.5% prior to the opening bell. The company has reported a net loss six years running.
McCormick (MKC) is down more than six percent on EPS of $0.86 vs. analyst expectations of $0.88.
Despite all the red from companies reporting, stock futures are trending higher, supposedly goosed by President Trump announcing the framework of a forever concept deal on Greenland, or something like that. As usual, the headline fed to algos is a positive one, though devoid of detail.
Stock futures are all rising heading into the open. Dow futures: +229; NASDAQ futures, +250; S&P futures, +45.
At 8:30 am ET, the BEA released updated 3rd quarter U.S. GDP, showing the economy expanded at 4.4%. This second estimate follows the initial estimate of 4.3% growth.
The BEA will be releasing the latest PCE Index reading at 10:00 am ET. The last was from September, which showed the index at 2.8% annually. The newest figures will be for November and are expected to show a rise of 0.2% for the month and 2.8% on an annual basis. Inflation remains a threat, which will likely keep the federal funds rate level at next week's FOMC meeting.
Gold and silver got their required weekly beatings a bit earlier than normal (Wednesday instead of Friday), after both traded at fresh highs earlier. Gold traded as high as $4,875 on Wednesday and is currently leveling off around $4,825. Silver was as high as $95.71 and as low as $90.77, now having recovered to a range around $93-94 per ounce. Action in the spot market seems to be indicating shorts unwinding positions and solid fundamentals for both metals.
Looks like the markets are going to attempt to claw back the rest of what they lost on Tuesday.
At the Close, Wednesday, January 21, 2026:
Dow: 49,077.23, +588.64 (+1.21%)
NASDAQ: 23,224.82, +270.50 (+1.18%)
S&P 500: 6,875.62, +78.76 (+1.16%)
NYSE Composite: 22,726.50, +253.29 (+1.13%)
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