Morning Forecast: Tuesday, 6 January
Institutional Capital Rotates; XRP Emerges as the Preferred Regulated Trade
This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).
Today’s edition is a lighter, streamlined version with the main five stories front and centre. I’m in the middle of finalising the studio internet upgrade, and the training programme drops later this week. Full, normal editions return tomorrow.
Let’s get into it 👇
👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance
🚀 XRP Leads Institutional Rotation: Record ETF inflows suggest a structural shift toward regulated assets with rules.
🚀 NVIDIA Launches Rubin Architecture: Annual production cycles slash costs while forcing cloud providers into perpetual spending.
💰 Gold Reserve Reclaims Assets: Reclaiming the Brisas deposit follows Maduro’s arrest and surging global gold prices.
🇻🇪 Venezuela Shift Faces Repression: Acting President Rodríguez seeks U.S. cooperation while military forces maintain internal order.
🥉 Copper Hits Record Highs: Global hoarding and potential tariffs pushed prices past $13,000 amid supply scarcity.
⚖️ Fear & Greed
📊 Market Snapshot
Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $93,805 (▼ -0.02%)
Ethereum (ETH): $3,238 (▲ 0.45%)
XRP: $2.37 (▲ 1.19%)
Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: $6,901 (▲ 0.00%)
NASDAQ 100: $25,615 (▲ 0.14%)
FTSE 100: £10,084 (▲ 0.54%)
Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.18% (▲ 0.67%)
Oil (WTI): $59 (▲ 0.27%)
Gold: $4,461 (▲ 0.32%)
Silver: $78.36 (▲ 2.39%)
Data as of UK (GMT): 12:41 / US (EST): 07:41 / Asia (Tokyo): 21:41
✅ 5 Things to Know Today
🚀 XRP’s Institutional Rotation
XRP jumped 9% to $2.34 on Monday, January 5, 2026, leading a broader crypto rally as institutional capital decisively rotates away from legacy assets. While Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have faced recent outflows, spot XRP ETFs saw $46 million in fresh net inflows on Monday alone, marking their biggest single-day haul since early December. Remarkably, these XRP funds haven’t seen a single day of net outflows since their mid-November launch, amassing over $1.3 billion in total assets. This mechanical demand is hitting the market just as exchange balances sit at multi-year lows, creating a supply squeeze that pushed XRP to intraday peaks near $2.40 while Bitcoin and Ethereum struggled with more modest gains (Barron’s).
This isn’t just retail hype: it’s a structural shift. Large-scale allocators are clearly using the new ETF infrastructure to build positions in assets with fresh regulatory clarity. Unlike the speculative spikes of 2021, current buying appears mandate-driven, evidenced by the fact that institutions poured $483 million into XRP ETFs in December even as the price dropped 15%. With the SEC litigation officially settled and a wave of new altcoin ETFs from firms like Franklin Templeton and Grayscale now live, the “regulatory risk premium” that once suppressed XRP is evaporating. Investors are watching to see if this liquidity migration continues to favor regulated alternatives over the established mega-caps.
Sensei’s Insight: Watch the $2.30 resistance level closely, if it holds, $2.60 is next . Sustained ETF inflows suggest institutional accumulation is providing a firm floor, but a sudden drop in daily volume could signal that the initial allocation window is closing.
🚀 NVIDIA’s Rubin Launch Shakes Up the AI Cycle
Jensen Huang just unveiled the Vera Rubin platform at CES, confirming all six chips are already in full production. This system uses an “extreme co-design” approach, linking CPUs and GPUs to deliver five times the inference speed of the Blackwell series. NVIDIA is officially shrinking its product cycle to 12 months, down from the traditional 18 to 24 month window. With 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs per rack, the platform delivers 260 TB/s of bandwidth to handle the massive data flows required by hyperscalers like AWS and Microsoft (NVIDIA).
This shift to an annual cadence suggests that high-end GPUs now have a useful life of only one to three years before they’re obsolete. It forces cloud providers into a perpetual spending loop to stay competitive. The most interesting data point is the 10x reduction in token costs, which signals that running massive AI models could soon be cheap enough for every consumer app. While AMD is securing high-profile deals with OpenAI to provide an alternative, NVIDIA is pushing into “physical AI” with a Mercedes-Benz integration launching this quarter. Watch for supply chain bottlenecks at TSMC to see if these chips hit the 2026 target.
Sensei’s Insight: Pay attention to TSMC’s packaging capacity rather than just chip orders. If production can’t scale to meet NVIDIA’s new 12-month speed, the entire AI hardware boom could hit a hard ceiling.
💰 Gold Reserve Eyes a $44 Billion Return
Gold Reserve Ltd. isn’t wasting a second following the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces on January 4. The Toronto-listed miner is moving to reclaim its Brisas deposit, a site containing 10 million ounces of gold and 1.4 billion pounds of copper that was seized years ago. With gold prices hitting $4,440 an ounce on Monday, that single asset is now worth roughly $44.4 billion. The market’s reaction was immediate: Gold Reserve’s stock price surged 103% in a single day as investors priced in the possibility of the company actually getting its hands back on the keys. Vice-chair Paul Rivett says the company is already fielding calls from mining giants interested in partnerships to develop the site (Bloomberg).
This is a massive shift in how the market values “lost” assets in high-risk regions. For nearly two decades, these Venezuelan claims were essentially valued at zero, but the regime change has instantly revived their commercial viability. The Trump administration is framing this as a strategic resource play, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick signaling that reclaiming Venezuela’s “thousands of tonnes of gold” from Chinese influence is a top priority. For retail investors, the takeaway is about more than just one miner. It’s a signal that frozen arbitration awards and expropriated projects across the region could soon be revalued as liquid assets if the new administration honors international law.
Sensei’s Insight: Watch for the formal partnership announcement. Gold Reserve has the legal claims, but their technical team is mostly in their 70s. They need a major operator’s muscle to actually extract this value.
🇻🇪 Venezuela’s Power Shift: New Leader, Same Playbook
Delcy Rodríguez took the oath as acting president on January 5, following Nicolás Maduro’s removal. Her swearing-in speech was a total pivot from the old anti-U.S. script, calling for a “cooperation agenda” with Washington. Donald Trump quickly reciprocated, suggesting she could help “make Venezuela great again.” However, the “peace” Rodríguez promised is currently enforced by military checkpoints and pro-government gangs called “colectivos.” At least seven journalists have been detained, and officials fired “warning shots” at drones near the presidential palace. While the face of leadership has changed, the machinery of internal repression appears very much intact (Bloomberg).
This shift signals regime continuity, not a democratic pivot. Maduro’s son publicly endorsed Rodríguez, and her brother Jorge still controls the National Assembly. Energy stocks like Chevron surged 5.1% to $163.85 on hopes of revived production, but the macro environment is brutal. The bolívar fell 467% against the dollar over the last year, fueling hyperinflation that could spark unrest. Despite the diplomatic thaw, a global oil glut may cap any price gains. Trump’s decision to work with Rodríguez effectively sidelines Nobel winner María Corina Machado, meaning political stability now hinges on a 90-day constitutional clock.
Sensei’s Insight: Watch the 90-day window and the bolívar’s black market rate. If the current repression fails to quiet the streets, the “cooperation” rally in energy stocks could hit a wall.
🥉 Copper Smashes $13,387 as the US Hoards Supply
Copper futures just hit a record $13,387.50 per ton, crossing the $13,000 mark for the first time. It’s a massive move, representing a 42% surge over the last year. This isn’t your standard supply-demand story. Instead, we’re seeing a geographic squeeze where US warehouses have hoarded over 500,000 short tons of copper. That’s about half the world’s readily available stock sitting in a country that only uses 10% of global demand. Traders are basically parking metal in the US to front-run potential tariffs, which has drained global inventories and pushed the market into backwardation, where spot prices trade higher than futures because of immediate scarcity (Bloomberg).
For us, the real story is the policy risk. This price action is built on the expectation that the White House will slap a 15% to 30% tariff on refined copper. If that doesn’t happen, the locked US inventory could flood back into the global market, which could cause a 20% price drop. Beyond the trade games, structural demand from AI data centers is real. A single megawatt of capacity can require 33 tonnes of copper, nearly triple what conventional centers need. With the Mantoverde strike in Chile further tightening near-term supply, the market has lost its traditional safety buffers.
Sensei’s Insight: Watch the June 30 tariff decision. An exemption would likely trigger a massive inventory dump and price crash. Until then, the scramble for the remaining global supply stays aggressive.
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This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).