Gold and silver - those supposed pillars of calm - did not simply wobble. They collapsed spectacularly. The "hedge" became the headline. When everyone crowds into the same safe idea, it stops being safe.

If you simply removed the last trading session of the month, silver would have been up 64% for the month - not 19.1%. Silver plunged more than 27% in a single session after a massive surge: prices had tripled in five months. It was a hangover after a binge. The grey metal fell so violently that Dow Jones Market Data says Friday's 31% slump marked the biggest one-day percentage drop since March 27, 1980. At one point early Monday, the most-active March silver contract was still down more than 5% before recovering to around $78.79 an ounce, after closing Friday around $78.53.

What happened? Reports pointed to Chinese speculators exiting en masse. In plain English: the people who were most aggressively in the trade decided they no longer wanted to be in the trade. The downward violence began spreading into industrial metals. Copper slipped back below $13,000.

The story of 2026 so far may be that the most complacent bets of the start of the year are now being unwound. And Asia, always a little more honest about momentum, is where you can see it first. South Korea - an archetype of overheating - took a beating, with the KOSPI down 5.2%. Hong Kong fell 3%. Japan, Australia, and Taiwan held up better, down around 1%. India barely moved - down 0.1%, continuing its habit of being only weakly correlated with the rest of global finance.

If the metals collapse was the week's headline, the AI wobble was the week's plot. For months, companies tied to artificial intelligence have been treated like they're guaranteed to go up. However, doubts about the viability of the current AI development model keep returning like a bad smell. Microsoft got hit with a rare slump, and by Friday it had notched its worst week since March 2020 after cloud revenue disappointed - exactly the kind of signal that makes investors suddenly ask: Are we spending too much for too little?

Memory chipmakers - market darlings in recent weeks thanks to a supply-demand imbalance - abruptly fell back. And then came Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, who again played the role of the sector's firefighter on duty. During a visit to Taiwan, he tried to reassure the industry, sweeping away rumors that he was cooling on a massive investment in OpenAI - specifically an apparent commitment to invest $100 billion.

But if this was meant to restart the engine, it didn't quite work. Judging by the mood in Asia, the message landed with a thud. Meanwhile, Oracle helped sour sentiment further by announcing it would seek to raise $50 billion this year through a mix of equity and credit - explicitly to fund its AI infrastructure buildout. This is the kind of headline that used to inspire awe, but now inspire doubts.

Reuters captured the shift bluntly: market reaction to tech results has shown a narrowing tolerance for costly capital-spending plans unless companies can show accelerating growth.

This week will be a referendum. A quarter of large U.S. companies and a fifth of their European peers are reporting. Palantir, Walt Disney, AMD, Alphabet, Eli Lilly, Novartis, BNP Paribas, and Amazon are all up. Earnings can compound the fear - or puncture it.

And the market is already placing bets. Nvidia and Tesla slid in premarket trading, along with Meta and Alphabet. Microsoft and Amazon were also lower.

U.S. companies are beating expectations in their customary proportions. European companies are struggling more.So why does everything feel unstable? Because the market's doubts aren't coming from corporate profits. They're coming from American politics. The biggest political shock to markets is Donald Trump's decision to nominate Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve when Jerome Powell's term ends in May. Investors don't know what to do with Warsh. That's the problem.

He has recently aligned with Trump's desire to see interest rates cut. But he used to be viewed as a fairly orthodox central banker, something Wall Street hasn't forgotten. Jefferies notes that Warsh's previous speeches suggest he will favor reducing the Fed's balance sheet over coming years. The same analysis suggests he could also favor less accommodative policy if inflation looks entrenched.

Meanwhile, tensions regarding the U.S. immigration police have triggered yet another administrative shutdown. The Speaker of the House is aiming to end the partial shutdown by Tuesday. Democrats and Republicans could agree on a rapid exit, possibly by tomorrow. But the conditional remains appropriate, because political media are highlighting the fault lines inside both parties about what should come next.

Oil joined the broader commodities selloff. Brent crude futures dropped nearly 5% after Trump said he believed Iran was negotiating seriously with the U.S. to avoid a crisis. At the same time, OPEC+ decided to maintain oil production for March despite Iran-linked fears.

In Europe, the focus turns to central banks. The ECB and the Bank of England are expected to hold rates Thursday, matching the Federal Reserve's latest decision, as they weigh the effects of a weaker U.S. dollar and an influx of cheap Chinese imports. Eurozone inflation ended the year slightly below the ECB's 2% target, and growth in 2025 was stronger than expected.

U.S. stock futures sank early today, spooked by concerns that AI excitement has outrun fundamentals and rattled by the commodity rout. The VIX climbed to near a two-week high. Crypto-linked stocks slid too.

Today's economic highlights:

On the agenda today: RatingDog Manufacturing PMI in China; Nationwide Housing Prices MoM and YoY in the United Kingdom; Retail Sales YoY and MoM in Germany; Retail Sales YoY and procure.ch Manufacturing PMI in Switzerland; HCOB Manufacturing PMI in Spain and Italy; S&P Global Manufacturing PMI in Canada; in the United States, ISM Manufacturing Employment, ISM Manufacturing PMI, and Fed Bostic Speech. See the full calendar here.

  • Dollar index: 96,955
  • Gold: $4,721
  • Crude Oil (BRENT): $65.93 (WTI) $61.87
  • United States 10 years: 4.23%
  • BITCOIN: $77,879

In corporate news:

  • Bob Iger plans to step down as CEO of Walt Disney before the end of his term, according to the WSJ. Bloomberg believes that Josh D'Amaro, president of the theme parks division, will be appointed to take over. The company beat quarterly revenue and earnings forecasts, boosted by strong theme park and streaming performance.
  • Oracle plans to raise $45-$50 billion in 2026 through equity and debt issuance to enhance cloud capacity.
  • Air India grounded a Boeing Dreamliner after a pilot reported a fuel control switch issue linked to an ongoing safety investigation.
  • Uber is in talks with France's URSSAF after reports the agency wants drivers reclassified as employees, potentially exposing the company to billions in back payments and penalties.
  • Aptiv reported a sharp drop in quarterly profit due to a much higher tax expense and issued first-quarter earnings guidance below market expectations.
  • Tyson Foods beat quarterly profit estimates as strong chicken demand offset heavy losses in its beef business and rising cattle costs.
  • Marathon Petroleum remains in labor negotiations with the United Steelworkers, with the union neither accepting nor rejecting a proposed 15% pay increase over four years.
  • Woodward raised its quarterly dividend by 14% to $0.32 per share.
  • Revvity beat fourth-quarter results and forecast 2026 revenue and profit above estimates, driven by strong diagnostics demand.
  • Fifth Third Bancorp completed its merger with Comerica, creating the ninth-largest U.S. bank.
  • Devon Energy and Coterra Energy agreed to a $58 billion all-stock merger to form one of the largest independent U.S. shale producers.
  • Venture Global awarded Worley an engineering and construction contract for Phase 2 of its CP2 LNG project in Louisiana.
  • Tesla showed mixed January sales in Europe, with strong growth in Spain and Sweden but sharp declines in France and Norway, underscoring uneven regional demand.
  • Ford Motor faces an expanded U.S. safety probe covering about 1.3 million F-150 pickups over reports of unexpected transmission downshifts.
  • Saks Global is ending its e-commerce partnership with Amazon, winding down the “Saks on Amazon” storefront amid its bankruptcy process.

Analyst Recommendations:

  • Apple Inc.: CTBC Securities Investment Service Co LTD upgrades to buy from add with a price target raised from USD 300 to USD 311.
  • Autodesk, Inc.: JP Morgan upgrades to overweight from neutral with a target price of USD 319.
  • Best Buy Co., Inc.: JP Morgan downgrades to neutral from overweight and reduces the target price from USD 99 to USD 76.
  • Chevron Corporation: HSBC downgrades to hold from buy and raises the target price from USD 169 to USD 180.
  • Humana Inc.: Morgan Stanley downgrades to underweight from equalwt with a price target reduced from USD 262 to USD 174.
  • International Paper Company: UBS downgrades to neutral from buy and reduces the target price from USD 51 to USD 44.
  • Prosperity Bancshares, Inc.: Barclays downgrades to underweight from equalweight and reduces the target price from USD 75 to USD 68.
  • Ptc Inc.: JP Morgan downgrades to underweight from neutral and reduces the target price from USD 205 to USD 162.
  • Resmed, Inc.: Morgans Financial Limited upgrades to buy from accumulate with a price target raised from USD 47.04 to USD 47.73.
  • Caterpillar Inc.: Haitong International Research Ltd maintains its outperform recommendation and raises the target price from USD 443.53 to USD 660.10.
  • Monday.com Ltd.: UBS maintains its neutral recommendation and reduces the target price from USD 200 to USD 140.
  • Paypal Holdings, Inc.: Arete Research maintains its neutral recommendation and reduces the target price from USD 81 to USD 64.
  • Transocean Ltd.: Arctic Securities maintains its buy recommendation and raises the target price from USD 3.50 to USD 5.50.