Final Tally: Trump Pulls a Fed Fake-Out, Benchmark Bets on Bar Games, Penny Stocks Break Records

Me this morning: markets are off to a great start this year… sure we’ve got the Venezuela situation and Trump swinging his tariff hammer at anyone blocking his Greenland conquest, but overall? Things are looking noice.

Trump: hold my Diet Coke.

Just when I thought the week was safely in the W column… Trump showed up like it was an Impractical Jokers episode and pranked the entire market with his best “confused Biden” impression.

So WTF happened? Well, if you recall, stonks briefly perked up earlier this week on the assumption that National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett was the odds-on favorite to replace Jerome Powell when Powell’s term ends in May.

Then today Trump essentially looked at Hassett and said, actually… stay where you are, buddy.

“I actually want to keep you where you are,” Trump said at a White House event… which Wall Street immediately translated as: uh oh, maybe the replacement won’t be as market-friendly as we hoped.

Cue the speculation machine.

Prediction markets wasted no time pushing former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to the front of the pack. And while that may sound like inside-baseball Fed gossip, traders care for one simple reason: Hassett is seen as the “keep rates low, f*** inflation” option. Warsh? Not so much.

That uncertainty alone was enough to knock the wind out of the rally and put the whole week back in the red.

By final close, The S&P 500 crawled up about 0.1%, the Nasdaq Composite poked its head above flatline territory, and the Dow barely inched forward.

And it wasn’t just the Fed chair roulette wheel spinning. Investors also had to juggle escalating geopolitical noise… from Iran tensions to Trump randomly threatening tariffs on countries that don’t “go along with Greenland.” Which is one of those sentences you read twice just to make sure it wasn’t satire.

That said, we got a surprise dose of excitement from a company that usually reeks of weed and farts (Hint: it’s the adult version of Chuck E. Cheese: Dave & Buster's).

Shares jumped after Benchmark upgraded the stock to Buy and stapled a $30 price target on it… implying a 55% upside. The bull case? “Improved food and beverage execution” (a phrase that has never been spoken sincerely inside a Dave & Buster’s) and a half-price promotion that’s finally getting people through the door.

Apparently, the American consumer is still alive… they just needed discounted wings and a broken racing simulator. At least, that’s the thesis according to Benchmark.

And while large-cap indexes mostly treaded water to end the week, small caps were stunting on these hoes.

Get this, the Russell 2000 is now on pace to outperform the S&P 500 for an 11th straight session… the longest streak like this since 2008. The index is up more than 8% just 16 days into the year, compared to about 1.5% for the S&P, marking a rare role reversal after years of small-cap underperformance. “Penny stock traders unite!”

So yeah, the Fed chair succession might be a game of Guess Who, and the market is treating Trump like an unstable RISK player who just realized he’s one territory short of world domination. But the market’s coping mechanism is clear: buy small caps, ask questions later. Welcome to 2026.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

>Trump floats new tariffs in push to acquire Greenland (CNBC): Somehow, Donnie found a use case for tariffs that involves glaciers. 

>Mother of one of Elon Musk’s children sues xAI over sexual images (Financial Times): “Grok, generate an image of Elon Musk sitting in a courtroom wearing a bikini, while his baby mama testifies on the stand.”

>Trump housing plan to allow 401k money for down payments, adviser says (Reuters): When “long-term investing” meets “I just want a house, man.”

>Trump Says 'Venezuela Leaker' Jailed As Polymarket Accounts Go Quiet (ZeroHedge): So, when are we gonna do something about all the crypto influencers rugpulling their followers?

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Coca-Cola as mentioned in the article.