Wall Street Roundup: Is Everything Priced In But Normalcy?

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America vs. Venezuela (0:25). Memory, storage stocks soar; AI trade moving to different sectors (3:30). Jobs data this week just fine (6:15). Roblox’s longer-term decline (10:00). Thoughts on the market in 2026 (14:00).

Transcript

Rena Sherbill: Brian Stewart, our Director of News at Seeking Alpha, our first Wall Street roundup of 2026. Welcome back.

Brian Stewart: Yeah, great to be here.

Rena Sherbill: It’s great to have you. It’s great to be talking again. What have you got for us? The world is on stage performing for us all in comedy and drama and horror. What do you got for us?

Brian Stewart: Well, if we’re to talk about the world stage, I think we have to start with Venezuela over the weekend going into this week. US captured Maduro. The stock market, generally positive response. Several sectors saw gains. You saw gains in oil sector oil services.

The only exception there really a glaring exception was the Canadian oil stocks. Canadian oil sands competes with Venezuela for the heavy crude. So if there’s going to be more Venezuelan oil on the market, that’s bad for the oil sands, lower prices there.

At a certain point, that drilling becomes uneconomical if oil prices get too low. So there were some concerns in that little pocket. But otherwise, oil stocks, the prospects of more production in Venezuela move those higher, defense stocks higher both on the idea of broader geopolitical tensions driving those stocks, but also the idea that companies like Halliburton (HAL) are going to contracts to build out the infrastructure in Venezuela.

Obviously, we’ll have to see how that goes. We’re still at stage one of that process. There’s going to be a multi-year process.

But I think the interesting impact stock market wise was that the idea of a military action in Venezuela, kind of a ratcheting up of international tensions, a lot of American allies pushing back against the idea that we would jump into Venezuela. The stock market basically shrugged those off.

So the idea that there’d be, that we’re moving into say a more dangerous world or that things are gonna get more troublesome as we kind of move forward, even with the kind of tough talk coming from the Trump administration about other countries, Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, even that didn’t really phase the stock market that much.

Rena Sherbill: Have you ever seen a time like this where, like, seems everything is priced in except for normalcy, quote unquote?

Brian Stewart: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I like the idea of everything priced in but normalcy.

I think we had for a while the Taco Trade, the Trump always chickens out trade. That’s obviously a negative way to frame that, but you could frame it in the sense that the Trump administration has proven itself to be extremely pragmatic. So even when it takes an aggressive step, the administration kind of looks around, sees what the reaction is and will adjust in real time to that.

So I think that is the main thing that’s priced in is the idea that, I just don’t think people take seriously that the worst case scenario, which is often the thing that Trump says, I’m going to do this terrible thing, this thing that is terrible for the economy or whatever. and I think people just sort of assume that that’s rhetoric and that’ll be sort of figured out over the course of the process.

But there are things that don’t seem to be completely priced in. So for instance, if we could just get back to stocks, memory and storage stocks without much of a catalyst jumped over the past week.

So you saw Sandisk (SNDK) up 36% in the past week. It’s up 10% today as we started taping up 71 % in the past month. Meanwhile, Micron (MU) was one of the best performing stocks, major larger cap stocks of 2025 is up 6 % in the past week, up 36 % in the past month, past year, just looking at the 2025 performance up 230%.

So I think this signifies just sort of the AI trade kind of moving around. Like you think about like a game board, like it’s just sort of, you know, moving to where the opportunity is.

And right now there’s just this feeling that there’s going to be a dearth of the memory and storage chips. And so these products are going to be in high demand and so you’re seeing these stocks respond in kind

Rena Sherbill: Any other stocks you would add to that conversation or tech wise or sector wise that you’re seeing move?

Brian Stewart: Yeah, just terms of the AI trade moving around to different sectors, saw Oklo (OKLO) is up today. It got a deal after Meta (META) signed three major nuclear power agreements.

Basically, the companies are building out these huge data centers need power. These are huge power using facilities and the current grid, can’t just plug in your data center into the normal grid and just start, you you blow that out. So these companies are looking for alternative power solutions and Oklo is an example of one.

Vistra is another one. The ticker that is (VST). So you’re seeing that as people reason out like what’s going to be necessary to do what these AI, these huge hyperscalers are promising.

We talked about last year, we were talking about a lot about Caterpillar (CAT), Caterpillar is up again this week, getting a boost from the idea that they’re going to have to buy equipment to build these data centers. And now you have to have power to build these data centers, to power these data centers.

So I think you’re still kind of in the shovel and pickaxe part of the trade, but I feel like people, like it’s dawning on people sort of in real time, like, we’re going to need power for this. And so you see these stocks respond when that happens.

Rena Sherbill: I’ve been talking to people that are in the job market and people that are kind of recruited by those data storage firms. And it’s a bonanza. It’s a bonanza. I can tell you some companies do have money and some companies don’t. And I can tell you in that sector, there’s a lot of money as we all see being moved around there. So definitely interesting to see how that will play out.

And then speaking of like the labor situation, what would you say about the jobs data we saw this week?

Brian Stewart: I recently went to the doctor for the first time in a while and they took my blood pressure and I asked, so how does it look? And the nurse was like, it’s fine. And I think that’s sort of like how the jobs data looks now. It’s certainly not as egregious as it could be.

Last month’s jobs data, we saw the unemployment rate spike to 4.6%. This time we saw it hold back to 4.4%. So you kind of see a reversal of that. Some of that is the labor participation rate went down.

So you see people coming out of the workforce. So this could be people who have been looking for jobs for a while have now kind of just given up, gone back to school, um, have kind of settled into being housewives or house husbands or whatever is happening there, maybe just decided that, okay, I guess I’m retired now, those kinds of things happen.

Meanwhile, jobs, you saw an increase of 50,000 jobs in December. It’s a little down from November. We saw 56,000. It’s, it’s around expectations. Expectations were 55,000 going to this, but 5,000 either way isn’t really a meaningful amount.

I think it’ll be interesting to see the revisions for this. November’s was revised down from just over 60,000 to the 56,000 it was. That’s been a trend for the jobs data is you’ll get a number, then you’ll see it revised lower. and so this is right around just sort of stagnant job market. I think it was kind of interesting.

The anecdote you were talking about, where people in the mining sector and things like that are finding jobs. Meanwhile, we see the tech companies laying off people.

The story for 20 years was if you want to get a good job, learn to code. Now it’s going to be all the people who learned how to code are going to have to become construction workers to build the data centers that put them out of business. So I don’t know.

It’s a very interesting time for the economy. Inflation is still kind of high. got the CPI coming out next week and we’re really, we’ve been wait and see for a while.

Just looking at kind of like the market response to the latest jobs data we see there’s now a 95 % chance that rates will hold steady at the next Fed meeting, is coming at the end of this month. It was 83 % last week. So you basically see people kind of locking into the consensus that rates are going to kind of hold steady.

The jobs data kind of played into the idea that, okay, the labor market’s not great, but it’s also doesn’t seem to be collapsing. So maybe that gives the Fed a little bit more runway to hold rates steady. They don’t have to slash them aggressively to generate hiring. So like I said, it’s been wait and see, and it looks like it’s going to stick to the wait and see for a while.

Rena Sherbill: Yeah, definitely interesting to see how this plays out to your point about the coders, you know, perhaps now having to become construction workers and then building a certain kind of world and perhaps more. Now they’re having to build a concrete tangible, perhaps they’ll be involved with that.

I remember reading an article like more than a decade ago, or perhaps just about a decade ago in the New Yorker about AI and they were saying how at the end, humans will have robots putting bags over their head and we’re going to be laughing and saying, isn’t this ironic?

And I think a lot of people are right now wondering if they are the architects of their own demise as AI comes chugging along and probably replacing a lot of what we see. But also there’s still so much yet that we don’t know. There’s a lot of fear, of course, because of that uncertainty. But also I think the call is for patience as we see how the world evolves.

And one stock I wanted to mention as we watch the world evolve, and we were talking about stocks that have been on the rise, but a stock that has been on the decline has been Roblox (RBLX). And that was a stock that was like on fire, you know, in recent years. Anything to say about that and how that may speak to kind of the trends that we’re seeing play out?

Brian Stewart: I actually think that’s kind of tangentially related to the kind of fear that robots will put bags over our heads kind of situation.

So Roblox is down about 10 % in the past week. This is part of a longer term decline. It’s been falling since its last earnings report in late October. It’s down about 45 % since then. The latest catalyst is it’s now going to require age verification for chat.

The fear is just, this is going to kind of slow down, iit makes it more difficult for people to sort of participate in. Roblox is an online video game platform. The reason they’re doing this though, is there’s been a lot of pushback against the company. For a while it’s had the reputation as kind of a wild west. It’s a series of video games that appeal to kids. Like my daughter used to play Roblox all the time when she was a kid, but it’s also gotten kind of a reputation as a place where the groomers and other despicable people can kind of slip into the chats of the kids who are on the platform.

So there’s been lawsuits filed by different states. There’s been a lot of pushback publicly for it. And so they’re putting in these age verification for the chat just to sort of eliminate or at least tamp down this problem that they’ve been having. I think it points to just every time we kind of roll into a new technological era, there’s kind of an utopian view of what it’ll look like, but then the worst parts of humanity. I mean, you can kind of see this online and like a place like Twitter or whatever kind of surfaces, not only the good, but also the bad.

And so you need moderators, you need maybe down the line regulation. And I think when you’re looking at AI, I think that kind of points to the idea that, you know, all these sort of technological advancements are going to require some sort of social response and whether that’s more self-regulation, which is what Roblox is trying to put into play here or whether it’s going to come from government regulation, which is what being sued by the States is sort of the corollary there.

So, I don’t know, as we move forward, I think that as AI builds, like you said, a new world, a world that is going to be functioning differently than what we, and the assumptions that we had about what was a good job and what was the right course of education.

Like those are all going to be sort of challenged and how we respond is going – whether the companies are going to take steps to kind of mitigate the worst aspects of it or whether eventually there’s going to be kind of a public response, we’ll have to see as we move forward.

Rena Sherbill: Change is the only constant. Remember that. What do you got for us next week?

Brian Stewart: Next week, as I said, we got the CPI coming out early in the week. Again, mostly kind of looking to the Fed, whether or not they can kind of stand on that knife’s edge between the economy looking a little shaky, but inflation is still being higher than we’d hope.

So that’ll just be sort of a data point in that direction. Meanwhile, the earnings season is going to start to move forward. The financials are going to be the theme next week.

We have Citi (C), we have Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Goldman Sachs (GS), all reporting. Elsewhere, Delta Airlines (DAL), the first airline of this earnings cycle is coming out. So that’s always kind of a good indication of the economy just because if people are traveling, people are spending money on vacations and things like that, it kind of indicates strong consumer spending.

Meanwhile, just another kind of economic indicator type earnings report. We have JB Hunt (JBHT) reporting next week as well. It’s a trucking firm. Again, it just kind of points to just overall economic activity. If you’re looking for more signs of what the economy is doing.

Rena Sherbill: And then I guess just because we’re the first episode of the New Year, anything to say about the market in general this coming year, anything that you’re particularly focused on or thinking about or anything to give to investors for this coming year?

Brian Stewart: 2025, just like 2024 was the story of AI. The market’s been on a pretty hot streak the last several years.

I think 2026 is kind of a prove it year, there’s a lot of commentary going into this year, whether AI is a bubble or not, what the next steps were. A lot of these companies, if you look at the Seeking Alpha quant grades for a lot of the popular companies that we’re talking about, like valuation grades, it’s F F F F.

By traditional metrics, these stocks have gone well beyond what you’d expect in terms of valuation. And the question just becomes, is it just different this time? The market priced in correctly a sea change in exactly what we can expect from these companies.

So I think that’s something to look for. I think that debate’s going to keep going. Like even if stocks keep going up, there’s still going to, if you believe it’s a bubble, every step higher is just more proof that it’s a bubble, right? So those voices aren’t going to go away.

There’s not a point where someone’s like, yeah, now I’m convinced. Like it’s up another 10%. So now it’s not a bubble. I think that’s going to be the dominant debate, at least in the tech space.

And then, I think just look to external events. I think, opening the year with the raid on Venezuela is just evidence that things can kind of come out of nowhere. It’s the world we live in over the last several years with Russia and the Gaza situation, it has just become more violent seeming in geopolitical terms.

So look for, how does China respond to these kinds of things? Are we going to finally get a peace resolution in Ukraine? Those kind of factors are in there. And then obviously the midterms coming in November. By the middle of the year, there’s going to be a lot of politics going back and forth.

And to the extent that it affects the stock market, I don’t know if on a day-to-day basis we’re going to see much movement, even the actual election itself. I don’t know if that’s going to, like you said, the market’s pretty good at pricing these things in ahead of time.

I think it’s going to be responsive to whatever those political wins are going to be in a more gentle way. I don’t expect a huge political related crash or anything like that, but it’s going to set the tone for how things are going to look in the second half of the Trump administration and who knows what’s going to happen in 2028 and beyond.

I think 2026 might just be a pivot, for that kind of who knows beyond. I think that’s the big takeaway is, I think the future seems much more hazy than maybe three, four years ago.

Rena Sherbill: Yes, yes, yes.

To the point about valuation and how it’s a difficult thing to ascertain these days, I just had a fantastic conversation for those interested with Julian Lin on our Investing Experts Podcast. He’s a valuation guy and he gets into how he figures out valuation when it’s a bit confusing and sus. So I would recommend people listen to that. It’s a deep dive on (IIPR), the cannabis REIT, but he gets into some good stuff about valuation for those interested.

Brian, we are off next week. I’m on vacation, but we will talk to everybody and each other in a couple of weeks. Talk to you then. Appreciate this very thoughtful conversation.

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