Oil prices inched up on Monday as investors weighed whether political upheaval in OPEC member Venezuela would disrupt shipments. Feifei Cui-paoluzzo | Moment | Getty Images Oil prices inched up Monday as investors weighed whether political upheaval in OPEC member Venezuela would disrupt shipments after U.S. President Donald Trump seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in a well supplied marke...
Oil prices inched up on Monday as investors weighed whether political upheaval in OPEC member Venezuela would disrupt shipments. Feifei Cui-paoluzzo | Moment | Getty Images Oil prices inched up Monday as investors weighed whether political upheaval in OPEC member Venezuela would disrupt shipments after U.S. President Donald Trump seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in a well supplied market. Brent crude futures rose 17 cents to $60.92 a barrel by 0024 GMT, paring earlier losses, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $57.43 a barrel, up 11 cents. The United States snatched Maduro from Caracas at the weekend. Trump said Washington would take control of the oil-producing nation and that the U.S. embargo on all Venezuelan oil remained in full effect. The U.S. strike on Venezuela to extract the country's president inflicted no damage on the country's oil production and refining industry, two sources with knowledge of operations at state oil company PDVSA said at the weekend. In a global market with plentiful oil supply, analysts said any further disruption to Venezuela's exports would have little immediate impact on prices. "We see ambiguous but modest risks to oil prices in the short-run from Venezuela depending on how U.S. sanctions policy evolves," Goldman Sachs analysts led by Daan Struyven said in a January 4 note, keeping its 2026 oil price forecasts unchanged. Helima Croft, RBC Capital's head of commodities research, said: "Certainly, we think full sanctions relief could unlock several hundred kb/d of production over a 12-month period in an orderly transition situation." "However, all bets are off in a chaotic change of power scenario like what occurred in Libya or Iraq," she added. A top Venezuelan official declared on Sunday that the country's government would stay unified behind Maduro. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, together called OPEC+, decided to hold their output on Sunday. Analysts are also watchi...
Key Points Palantir has been hitting on all cylinders, but its valuation is very frothy. CrowdStrike is starting to turn the corner and see revenue growth accelerate, but it trades at a very high valuation. Both stocks could easily come under pressure due to their valuations. 10 stocks we like better than Palantir Technologies › In The Motley Fool's 2026 AI Investor Outlook Report, 90% of investor...
Key Points Palantir has been hitting on all cylinders, but its valuation is very frothy. CrowdStrike is starting to turn the corner and see revenue growth accelerate, but it trades at a very high valuation. Both stocks could easily come under pressure due to their valuations. 10 stocks we like better than Palantir Technologies › In The Motley Fool's 2026 AI Investor Outlook Report, 90% of investors surveyed planned to buy or hold artificial intelligence (AI) stocks in 2026. However, in the survey, one of the top concerns from investors regarding AI stocks was valuation. Many leading AI stocks are actually trading at very reasonable valuations, but that's not the case with all of them. Let's look at two AI stocks with the highest price tags. 1. Palantir The poster child for AI stocks being overvalued is no doubt Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR). The stock trades at a whopping forward price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 67 times 2025 analyst estimates and 49 times the 2026 consensus. At the height of software-as-a-service (SaaS) valuations, the median enterprise value (EV)-to-sales multiple (EV takes in account a company's net cash or debt) for software stocks was around 20 times in 2021 and 2022, so Palantir has far exceeded those levels. SaaS stocks can offer a cautionary tale for Palantir investors. With growth in the mid-30% range, valuations soared for the group at the start of this decade, but they have since plummeted as revenue growth has slowed, and EV/S multiples for the group are now closer to 6 times. Now working in Palantir's favor is that its revenue growth has been accelerating every quarter for the past two years, and came in at 63% last quarter. The growth is being led by U.S. commercial customers, who are increasing adoption of its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). The company's AI bootcamp strategy has helped remove friction from the sales process by quickly demonstrating value to potential clients, which is enabling it to quickly add new custom...
As Tesla Inc.’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares continue to soar, former fund manager George Noble says that its valuations are fundamentally disconnected from reality, even after considering its ambitious robotaxis and Optimus humanoid robots. Tesla Shares Significantly Overvalued Noble, who ran Fidelity’s Overseas Fund, outlined Tesla’s “sum of the parts valuation,” considering its various products and seg...
As Tesla Inc.’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares continue to soar, former fund manager George Noble says that its valuations are fundamentally disconnected from reality, even after considering its ambitious robotaxis and Optimus humanoid robots. Tesla Shares Significantly Overvalued Noble, who ran Fidelity’s Overseas Fund, outlined Tesla’s “sum of the parts valuation,” considering its various products and segments, before comparing each of them with the valuations of peers and competitors, on Sunday, in a post on X. Starting with robotics, Noble compared Tesla's Optimus project with established and emerging competitors. “Boston Dynamics is estimated to be worth $5B. Figure AI recently raised money at a valuation of $39B,” he said, while adding that “both are far ahead of $TSLA in the development of robots.” See Also: Tesla’s European Slump Worsens Despite Cheaper Models Even when “generously imputing the Figure AI valuation to Optimus,” Noble said that would translate into $12 per share for Tesla. Moving on to the company’s robotaxis business, he pointed to the projected valuation for Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, which he said is “rumored to be going public at a $100B valuation,” adding that assigning a similar valuation to Tesla's robotaxis business would imply “a value of $30 per $TSLA share.” The company's core automotive business, he said, is already in decline, which, going by “comparables,” is worth $60 billion, or $18 per share, and finally, the energy business, according to Noble, would be worth an additional $20 per share. All in, Noble said the entire company adds up to just “a total valuation of $80 per $TSLA share,” which stands in stark contrast to its current $438.07 per share. While acknowledging the rough nature of his estimations, Noble said that his “back-of-the-envelope calculation is far more realistic” than those cited by the company’s bulls, who he said “worship at the altar of price.” Tesla Loses EV Crown Despite Being ‘Ridiculously Overvalued’ La...
XPeng (NYSE:XPEV) is back on investors’ radar after recent trading swings, with the stock closing at $20.43. You are weighing that price against mixed return figures across the month and the past 3 months. See our latest analysis for XPeng. Beyond the latest move to $20.43, XPeng’s 1 year total shareholder return of 73.87% and 3 year total shareholder return of 106.16% contrast with a 90 day share...
XPeng (NYSE:XPEV) is back on investors’ radar after recent trading swings, with the stock closing at $20.43. You are weighing that price against mixed return figures across the month and the past 3 months. See our latest analysis for XPeng. Beyond the latest move to $20.43, XPeng’s 1 year total shareholder return of 73.87% and 3 year total shareholder return of 106.16% contrast with a 90 day share price return decline of 13.69%, hinting that recent momentum has cooled after a stronger longer term run. If XPeng has you thinking about where else growth stories might emerge in autos, it could be worth lining up auto manufacturers as your next comparison set. XPeng is still loss making, yet it shows annual revenue and net income growth. It trades at $20.43 with some discount to one fair value estimate, so is the market leaving upside on the table or already pricing in future growth? Most Popular Narrative Narrative: 27.7% Undervalued With XPeng last closing at $20.43 and the most followed narrative pointing to a fair value of $28.24, the gap between price and thesis is clear enough to catch attention. XPeng's rapid in-house development and deployment of proprietary AI hardware (Turing AI SoC) and vision-based ADAS are expected to significantly advance its vehicle autonomy and smart cockpit solutions, aligning with surging consumer demand for intelligent, software-centric vehicles. This is seen as setting the stage for higher-margin software revenue and enhanced gross/net margins. Read the complete narrative. Curious what kind of revenue lift, margin shift, and earnings profile are being pencilled in to back that higher fair value? The most followed narrative leans on aggressive top line growth, a sharp swing into profitability, and a richer future earnings multiple to justify today’s discount. The details behind those assumptions are where the story really gets interesting. Result: Fair Value of $28.24 (UNDERVALUED) Have a read of the narrative in full and understand wh...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: Venezuela ’s President Maduro is in US custody. The remnants of his regime appear still to be running the country , for now. The likely market impact of this is minimal, for now. Longer term, it hastens de-globalization and the return of spheres of influence . AND: Don’t give up in 2026. Orinoco Flow T...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: Venezuela ’s President Maduro is in US custody. The remnants of his regime appear still to be running the country , for now. The likely market impact of this is minimal, for now. Longer term, it hastens de-globalization and the return of spheres of influence . AND: Don’t give up in 2026. Orinoco Flow The revived Monroe Doctrine has felled Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. It’s an extraordinary development by almost any yardstick — an audacious US military attack to kidnap the president of a sovereign power, bringing one of the world’s nastier and more incompetent dictatorships to an end. And it’s almost exactly the opposite of what Americans thought they were voting for when they elected an avowed non-interventionist. It smacks instead of the more swashbuckling approach under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. And yet by financial yardsticks, it’s possible that Operation Absolute Resolve will barely matter at all, at least in the short term. Forced regime change in Venezuela would have been regarded as a black swan a year ago, but now qualifies as a “shock but not a surprise” (to quote Tina Fordham of Fordham Global Foresight). At least in the short term, the Orinoco will continue to flow and markets will be little affected. The Sad Reality The main reason markets should be able to take this in stride is, sadly, that Venezuela doesn’t matter much at present, even though it boasts huge reserves of oil. Neil Shearing of Capital Economics sets this out succinctly: Venezuela’s global economic importance has diminished significantly over the past 50 years. In the 1970s, it accounted for roughly 1% of global GDP and produced around 3.5 million barrels of oil per day (mbpd), or 8% of global supply. Today, it represents barely 0.1% of world GDP and produces about 1 mbpd, or just 1% of the global total, making it only the 18th-largest oil producer worldwide. Due to worsening mismanagement, t...
China’s top diplomat has accused the United States of acting like the world’s policeman and condemned US military strikes on Venezuela as a serious violation of international law and sovereignty. Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remarks on Sunday during high-level talks in Beijing with Ishaq Dar, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Pakistan. Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Fore...
China’s top diplomat has accused the United States of acting like the world’s policeman and condemned US military strikes on Venezuela as a serious violation of international law and sovereignty. Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remarks on Sunday during high-level talks in Beijing with Ishaq Dar, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Pakistan. Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar (left) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on Sunday. Photo: Xinhua Wang said the international landscape was becoming increasingly volatile, marked by growing unilateralism and what he described as bullying behaviour when discussing the sudden change of situation in Venezuela. Advertisement “China has never believed that any country can play the role of an international policeman, nor do we agree that any country can claim itself to be an international judge,” he said, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. The sovereignty and security of all countries should be fully protected under international law, Wang said, adding that China opposed the use or threat of force in international relations and rejected attempts to impose one country’s will on others. Advertisement His comments followed a US military raid early on Saturday in Caracas that resulted in the arrest and transfer of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife to the United States for prosecution. China’s foreign ministry later issued a statement strongly condemning Washington for using force against a sovereign state, calling the operation a serious violation of international law and an act of hegemonic coercion.
Trump's New Energy Doctrine: Regime Change, Then Drill Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics , President Donald Trump has embarked on his own regime-change mission. And this time the United States intends to keep the oil. American Special Operations Forces captured Nicolás Maduro in a daring raid, nabbing the Venezuelan leader from his bed early Saturday morning before sending him north...
Trump's New Energy Doctrine: Regime Change, Then Drill Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics , President Donald Trump has embarked on his own regime-change mission. And this time the United States intends to keep the oil. American Special Operations Forces captured Nicolás Maduro in a daring raid, nabbing the Venezuelan leader from his bed early Saturday morning before sending him north aboard the USS Iwo Jima to New York, where he will face criminal charges related to an alleged narco-terrorism conspiracy. The leftist strongman had ruled the South American state for more than a decade. Now Trump will take over. “ We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition ,” he told reporters during a Mar-a-Lago press conference, deputizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to manage in the interim as “a team.” Though long a critic of the foreign entanglements that defined the presidencies of his Republican predecessors, Trump insisted he could do regime change right. “We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally,” he said. “ We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world going in .” He will not, however, clean house. Trump claimed Delcy Rodríguez, a Maduro loyalist and the current Venezuelan vice president, was already willing to work with the United States to remake the country. He said it would be “very tough” for opposition leader María Corina Machado to assume power. Just hours after perhaps the most consequential decision of his tenure, the once ostensibly isolationist president was suddenly and remarkably open-ended in his commitment to rebuild a nation thousands of miles away from his own. Of a potential American occupation force, Trump said, “We are not afraid of boots on the ground.” Even if the newly announced nation-building mission may be something of a flashback to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Trump did not echo the language of the War on Terror. He spo...