Editor’s note: As market attention remains heavily concentrated on AI and high-growth technology stocks, this announcement highlights a quieter but notable shift toward defensive, income-generating equities. Drawing on recent market performance, the release points to McDonald’s and Coca-Cola as examples of established companies that have outperformed broader indices during recent volatility. With both firms reporting earnings this week, the commentary frames dividends and consumer resilience as key factors for investors, particularly in the UAE, who are increasingly focused on global diversification and portfolio balance amid uncertain macro conditions.

Key points

• McDonald’s shares are up 8% and Coca-Cola shares have gained 14% while the Nasdaq has turned negative.
• Both companies are positioned as defensive holdings supported by strong brands and consistent demand.
• Upcoming earnings reports are expected to provide insight into consumer and discretionary spending trends.
• Dividend growth remains a central theme, with decades-long records of consecutive increases.

Why this matters

The focus on dividend-paying, defensive stocks underscores a broader reassessment of risk as market volatility persists. For investors and portfolio builders, particularly in the UAE, the performance of established consumer brands offers a counterbalance to exposure in higher-growth and more volatile sectors such as AI and crypto. Earnings results from companies with global and regional footprints can also serve as practical indicators of consumer health, helping market participants gauge resilience across different economic environments.

What to watch next

• McDonald’s and Coca-Cola earnings results and management commentary this week.
• Updates on margins, pricing strategies, and consumer demand trends.
• Market reaction to dividend sustainability and forward guidance.

Disclosure: The content below is a press release provided by the company/PR representative. It is published for informational purposes.

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates – February 09, 2026: While global markets remain heavily focused on artificial intelligence and technology stocks, this enthusiasm has shifted attention away from steady performers that continue to offer reliability during uncertain times.
After a strong start to the year, the Nasdaq has turned negative, yet McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) shares have risen 8% and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) has gained 14%. Both companies have demonstrated resilience across multiple market cycles, supported by strong brand power and consistent demand.

“In volatile markets, dividend-paying stocks offer something precious: stability,” said Zavier Wong, Market Analyst at eToro. “These are mature, financially sound businesses that continue to reward shareholders even when markets pull back.”

For investors in the UAE, where diversification across global markets is a growing priority, defensive and income-generating stocks deserve renewed attention. While recent investor enthusiasm has largely centred on high-growth sectors such as AI and crypto, reliable dividend payers continue to play an important role in building balanced portfolios.

Both McDonald’s and Coca-Cola report earnings this week, offering valuable insight into the health of the consumer and discretionary spending trends.

For McDonald’s, investor focus will be on its ability to maintain margins while driving customer traffic, particularly as lower-income consumers scale back spending. Value-focused offerings have been key to sustaining demand. The company also maintains a significant presence across the Middle East, operating more than 2,000 locations in the region.

Coca-Cola, which controls around 45% of the global carbonated soft drink market and owns five of the world’s top ten beverage brands, including Sprite and Fanta, is expected to demonstrate continued resilience. Fourth-quarter revenue is forecast to grow by 5%, with margins remaining stable.

Both companies continue to offer defensive qualities in today’s volatile market environment. If earnings results confirm resilient demand, it reinforces the case for holding these stocks as stabilising positions. McDonald’s has increased its dividend for nearly 50 consecutive years, while Coca-Cola has done so for more than 60.

“They may not be the flashiest names in the market,” Wong added, “but in turbulent times, they’re the kind of stocks that help keep portfolios steady. Sometimes, boring is brilliant.”

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Over the past two years, the landscape for crypto derivatives has shifted dramatically. A significant contraction in the supply of ETF leveraged tokens has occurred across top-tier exchanges. Platforms that previously championed these products have initiated phased suspensions, halted subscriptions, or delisted leveraged pairs entirely throughout 2024 and 2025. However, the demand for leverage among traders has not vanished. It has simply been displaced.

In this environment of market retrenchment, Gate has taken a contrarian approach. Rather than withdrawing, Gate has doubled down, treating ETF leveraged tokens not as a niche add-on, but as a core product line. By prioritizing transparent mechanisms and a unified low-fee framework, Gate has transformed what was once a complex instrument into a scalable, user-friendly tactical tool.

Why Exchanges Are Leaving

In the context of crypto, ETFs generally refer to ETF Leveraged Tokens. These are tokenized instruments traded on the spot market that track perpetual futures positions, allowing users to gain leveraged exposure (e.g., 3x Long BTC) without managing margin or liquidation prices.

Despite their utility, these products are highly structured. Without robust risk controls and clear user education, they are susceptible to volatility decay in ranging markets. Consequently, major platforms have exited the space to minimize compliance risks and user disputes. For example, exchange no. 1. phased out leveraged token services in early 2024, eventually discontinuing support, and exchange no. 2. followed suit in late 2025, issuing batch delisting announcements for BTC and other major assets.

This industry wide reduction has created a vacuum. As comparable platforms shrink, product availability itself has become a scarce competitive advantage. Gate has stepped in to absorb this liquidity, offering a stable home for short-term leveraged trading demand.

Simplifying Leverage With Unified Fees

Gate’s ETF architecture is designed to map professional derivatives positions into a simple tokenized format. For the user, the experience mirrors spot trading, there is no need to monitor margin maintenance or fear sudden liquidation events.

A key differentiator is Gate’s approach to cost transparency. In derivatives trading, costs are often fragmented across funding rates, trading fees, and slippage. Gate consolidates these fragmented costs into a single, understandable metric known as the unified management fee. This flat 0.1% daily fee is entirely all-inclusive, covering everything from hedging costs and funding rates to potential trading friction.

By packaging costs at the product level, Gate shifts the complexity from the user to the platform. The user gets a predictable cost structure, while the platform leverages professional expertise to manage execution and hedging.

Transparency in Mechanics

The sustainability of leveraged tokens relies on explainability. Two critical variables define these products: the Net Asset Value (NAV) and Rebalancing Rules.

The sustainability of leveraged tokens relies on explainability. Unlike competitors that often operated these mechanisms as “black boxes,” Gate provides explicit parameter disclosures. This includes specific leverage fluctuation ranges where rebalancing is not triggered, which significantly reduces frictional costs in choppy markets.

For instance, Gate ensures position stability by avoiding rebalancing for 3x Long tokens as long as leverage stays between 2.25x and 4.125x, while the 3x Short variant maintains a range of 1.5x to 5.25x. Similarly, for 5x tokens, no adjustments are triggered unless the leverage moves outside the 3.5x to 7x boundary. These technical parameters are vital for professional traders as they minimize the “decay” often associated with these products during range-bound price action.

Scale by the Numbers

Gate’s ecosystem is expanding. According to Gate’s 2025 annual report, the “Scale Effect” of their ETF product line is evident in the platform’s ability to support 244 different ETF leveraged tokens throughout the year. This robust supply served a cumulative user base of over 200,000 traders, driving average daily trading volumes into the hundreds of millions of dollars. This growth is supported by continuous technical iterations, including the launch of multidimensional data dashboards, rebalancing history displays, and specialized educational modules designed to reduce the learning curve for new participants.

The platform’s success is not merely a result of being one of the last providers standing, but rather a reflection of its commitment to product depth. Gate continues to broaden its asset coverage, ensuring that users can access leveraged exposure across a diverse range of emerging and established tokens. Looking ahead, Gate plans to build on this momentum by introducing sophisticated new formats, such as portfolio ETFs and low-leverage inverse ETFs. By retaining technical complexity at the platform level while delivering operational certainty to the user, Gate is positioning itself to capture an even larger share of the short-term leveraged trading market.

Conclusion

The industry wide contraction of leveraged tokens was not a failure of the concept, but a failure of execution regarding transparency and education. Gate has succeeded where others retreated by systematizing the product.

By offering clear disclosures, a unified 0.1% daily fee, and a spot-like user experience, Gate has built a sustainable ecosystem that preserves the utility of leverage while mitigating its complexity. As the market matures, Gate’s ETF offering stands as a testament to the value of explainable, transparent financial engineering.

Disclaimer: Investing in the cryptocurrency market involves high risk. Users are advised to conduct independent research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products before making any investment decisions. Gate is not liable for any losses or damages resulting from such investment activities.

Binance added another $300 million worth of Bitcoin to its emergency reserves on Monday, continuing its experiment with a Bitcoin-backed protection fund as markets remain under pressure.

Binance bought another 4,225 Bitcoin (BTC) worth $300 million for its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) wallet, which holds its emergency reserves, according to blockchain data platform Arkham.

The acquisition lifts the fund’s Bitcoin holdings to more than $720 million at current prices.

“We’re continuing to acquire #Bitcoin for the SAFU fund, aiming to complete conversion of the fund within 30 days of our original announcement,” Binance wrote in a Monday X post.

While the acquisition is a sign of confidence in Bitcoin by the world’s largest exchange, it also exposes Binance’s emergency fund to downside volatility of Bitcoin’s price swings, which could reduce the fund’s total value.

Related: Bitcoin dips to $60K, TRM Labs becomes crypto unicorn: Finance Redefined

Binance first announced shifting $1 billion of its user protection fund into Bitcoin on Jan. 30, framing it as an expression of its conviction in Bitcoin’s long-term prospects as the leading crypto asset.

Binance said it would rebalance the fund back up to $1 billion if the market volatility drove its value below $800 million.

Related: BitMine nears $7B in unrealized losses as Ether downturn pressures treasury firms

Fragile sentiment weighs on markets

Binance’s fund conversion occurs amid a wider crypto market correction, which saw Bitcoin’s price sink to $59,930 on Friday, a price level last seen in October 2024 before the re-election of US President Donald Trump, according to TradingView.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin investor sentiment remains “fragile,” threatening more downside in the absence of positive market catalysts, Hina Sattar Joshi, director for digital assets at liquidity and data solutions platform TP ICAP, told Cointelegraph.

“Sentiment is currently very fragile, with investors anchoring themselves to the traditional four-year Bitcoin cycle, in which Bitcoin’s price historically follows a recurring pattern of ‘boom and bust.’”

The industry’s best traders by returns, tracked as “smart money,” also continue betting on more crypto market downside.

Smart money traders added $7.38 million worth of leveraged short positions and were net short on Bitcoin for a cumulative $109 million, according to crypto intelligence platform Nansen.

Smart money traders were betting on the price decline of most of the leading cryptocurrencies, except Avalanche (AVAX), which had $7.38 million in cumulative long positions.

Magazine: If the crypto bull run is ending… it’s time to buy a Ferrari — Crypto Kid