Foreigners Buying Lots Of US Dollars To Buy Lots Of US Stocks & Bonds

The stock market rose today, buoyed by the fact that President Donald Trump didn't raise tariffs on Day #1 of his second term as was widely expected. Instead, he will be raising them on Canada and Mexico on Day #13 (February 1). That's what he said Monday evening. Stocks also got a boost when Trump announced today that Softbank, OpenAI, and Oracle are forming a $100 billion joint venture to fund AI infrastructure. After the market close, Trump said his team is talking about a 10% tariff on China, not 60% as he had been saying when he was on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil dropped 3.3% since January 15 because, as expected, Trump signed lots of executive orders on Day #1 to enable more oil and gas production in the US.