The Hold Report

Fri, Jan 2, 2026 Wall Street opened 2026 reaching for chips. The S&P 500 rose 0.4%, the Nasdaq 1%, Nvidia and Alphabet both up more than 2%. Tesla surrendered its EV crown to BYD after a 15.6% sales drop in Q4, marking its second year of decline. The market looked at the data, punished the carmaker, and pivoted to the hardware with pricing power. While Austin stumbled, the rest of the world bi...

Thu, Jan 1, 2026 Xi Jinping sat at a desk in Beijing and called reunification with Taiwan “unstoppable,” coinciding with his live-fire drills around the island, seeking to end its robust, multi-party democracy with free and fair elections, strong civil liberties, and peaceful transfers of power. 22 million Taiwanese people disagree. Pro-unification sentiment sits at 6% . The government passed a re...

Wed, Dec 31, 2025 Russia accused Ukraine of launching 91 drones at Vladimir Putin's residence in Novgorod on Sunday night. The Kremlin provided no evidence. The Institute for the Study of War found no corroborating footage. Ukraine called it "a complete fabrication." Trump said Putin told him about the attack in a phone call. "I was very angry," he said, before acknowledging it "possibly" didn't h...

Tue, Dec 30, 2025 The year is closing with a reversal no one saw coming. General Motors is hitting all-time highs, up 55% for 2025 – its best performance since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009. Five straight months of gains. Aggressive buybacks, consistent earnings beats, and looser emissions standards under Trump. Tesla, the stock that was supposed to represent the future, is up just 17%. The mar...

Mon, Dec 29, 2025 Volodymyr Zelenskyy left Trump Island on Sunday saying Ukraine and the United States had agreed on the military elements of a 20-point peace plan and were 90% of the way to a deal. The remaining 10 percent is the hard part: territory. Any concessions, he said, would require a referendum. "It's their land, not the land of one person. It's the land of our nation." The meeting came...

Sun, Dec 28, 2025 Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets Donald Trump in Florida today, carrying a 20-point peace framework he says is 90% ready , though he told European leaders that he doesn't expect Russia to budge . The sticking points remain the hardest ones: who controls the Donbas, who manages the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and what security guarantees the West will actually enforce. Zelenskyy has sign...

Sat, Dec 27, 2025 US stocks drifted lower on Friday in thin post-Christmas trading, the S&P 500 slipping 0.03% on well below the usual volume. The index is on track to end the year up 18%, buoyed by deregulation hopes and enthusiasm for AI. But beneath the surface, investors are voting with their feet: active equity mutual funds saw roughly $1 trillion in outflows , the 11th consecutive year o...

Fri, Dec 26, 2025 Something is shifting beneath the surface of US markets. Banks have added $600 billion in market value this year as investors bet the regulatory regime is about to loosen. Tech billionaires are more than $550 billion richer, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang climbing the ranks as his company moves to absorb top talent from chip rival Groq via a non-exclusive licensing deal that also bri...