Morning Bid: Stocks set for TACO Thursday

A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Tom Westbrook

Relief has lifted Wall Street, Asia stocks and European futures as U.S. President Donald Trump did a TACO at Davos, saying he wouldn’t take Greenland by force of arms and later posted on social media that tariffs wouldn’t be needed either and a deal was in sight.

There are no details.

So the gains in stocks haven’t fully recouped the week’s losses and nor have dips in precious metals made much of a dent in the whopping rally that’s been ignited while Trump has lit up geopolitical risks from Venezuela to the Arctic.

Gold is about $100 an ounce under a record high and up 11% this year, while silver – also off recent record peaks – is up 30%. [GOL/]

That’s a reasonable indicator that while the TACO acronym – Trump Always Chickens Out – has held true this time, investors won’t get too comfortable while he is playing with fire.

Deal or no deal, the U.S.-European alliance is at its lowest ebb in 80 years. In Davos, ECB President Christine Lagarde walked out of a dinner during a speech by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Denmark “irrelevant”. As Canada’s Mark Carney noted in reference to the world at large, “We are in the midst of a rupture.”

Elsewhere the U.S. Supreme Court signalled it is likely to let Fed Governor Lisa Cook keep her job – a fetter on Trump’s push to oust her and extend influence over the central bank.

Wall Street is pushing back on other fronts, with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon saying Trump’s proposal to cap credit card interest rates would be an “economic disaster”.

Other executives are also sceptical of Trump’s interventionist measures aimed at tackling the affordability crisis, and are in talks with the White House to try and soften the rough edges.

The Aussie dollar jumped in the Asia session on a stronger-than-expected employment report that has the market seeing a better-than-even chance of a rate hike as soon as next month.

And the global AI boom swept up South Korea’s KOSPI over the 5,000 mark for the first time.

Key developments that could influence markets on Thursday:

– World Economic Forum in Davos

– U.S. PCE inflation (November)

– U.S. earnings, including Procter & Gamble, Intel, General Electric, Capital One, Freeport-McMoRan

(Editing by Shri Navaratnam)