☕ Nvidia and AMD give us a clear signal at CES: It’s early innings!

Good morning! 👋 

It’s Hayley here, as Keith was up burning the midnight oil on the first One Bar Ahead® 2026 issue, which may just be one of the most important ones we’ve ever produced. There’s a lot on the cards this year, and it’s shaping up to be one that rewards preparation. 

People often tell us that it helps them get their bearings for the year ahead. If that would be helpful for you, you can take a look here. 😃 

Anyway, the markets are a little split this morning, but all in all fairly flat - which, given the headlines swirling, is quietly telling you something important. 

Wall Street has made a strong start to ’26 despite the events in Venezuela, including the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro.  

You’d expect panic. You’d expect a sharp risk-off move. 

Instead, very little drama, with stocks and indices continuing to push toward new highs. 

That’s your first clue. 

We’ve seen this before. 

U.S. equities continued to climb through last year’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and they’re doing the same now.  

As Keith mentioned yesterday, markets have a long history of absorbing geopolitical shocks far more quickly than most people expect. The initial reaction often feels dramatic, but once the machines and the fundamentals take over, price tends to follow value rather than fear. 

And those fundamentals remain intact. 

• Strong domestic growth. 

• Healthy corporate earnings, particularly across tech and AI. 

• And a meaningful amount of capital still sitting on the sidelines. 

Together, those forces have consistently outweighed overseas shocks that rarely disrupt core U.S. economic drivers. History shows that investors who stay engaged, rather than reacting emotionally, tend to be rewarded. 

This week, fresh economic data starts rolling in as the reporting calendar gets back on track, which often brings a bit of recalibration. 

As Keith has mentioned recently in a conversation with Kristen Scholer, he expects the first half of the year to be choppier than the second half. (Watch) 

We’re only on the second trading day of 2026, and that already feels like it’s proving true. 

This is where mindset matters. 

There’s a reason Keith has repeated this for years: 

Volatility and chaos can feel uncomfortable, but they’re often the exact conditions where opportunity, and then profit, are created.  

Which brings me to the CES - Consumer Electronics Show.  

Yesterday, both Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su unveiled next-generation AI platforms that are now ramping into full production. They’re delivering major gains in performance, efficiency, and scale across inference, robotics, autonomous systems, and data centre workloads. 

We’ll dig into the specifics over time, but the key point today is this: AI compute demand is surging far beyond current supply, and every chip and system these companies can produce is being snapped up by hyperscalers and enterprises racing to scale. 

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that these two companies are simply chip makers anymore...  

That’s gotta be a tough backdrop for the bubble naysayers!  

And so far, CES has made one thing very clear. We are still in the early innings of this cycle. 

Isn’t that just so exciting?!!  

You’ve got this - I promise. 💯 

As always, let’s MAKE it a great day. 

Hayley E 😀