Trump’s Venezuela Oil Announcement Won’t Save the Price: 8 Key Items Shaping the Stock Market Monday

These are the early headlines and other items poised to influence the market at the start of the trading day. As we share this collection of market drivers, U.S. equity futures point to weak start for the final trading day in August.

1. Oil prices rose more than 3.5% ‌on Monday after the U.S. attacked an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz and Tehran said it had retaliated, as their conflict extended into its sixth month… Shipping data showed the number of visible commodity vessels transiting the strait over the weekend fell to five a day, highlighting caution among operators concerned about attacks on shipping. (Reuters)

The U.S. Treasury Department is likely to unveil weekly new secondary sanctions aimed at increasing ‌economic pressure on Iran, with an initial focus on banks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters on Sunday. (Reuters)

With the first acknowledged attacks in weeks, odds of any near-term resolution are fading and that is lifting oil prices on Monday morning. The reported decline in ships through the strait has the potential to either renew concerns over supply chains and dwindling oil inventories or at least temper expectations for softening inflation pressures.

In our view, that also explains the below:

2. Trump said the agreement announced Friday night would give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country… But the answers to many questions, including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen, were not immediately clear. (AP News)

President Donald Trump is set to meet with US oil refining executives as he confronts persistently high gasoline prices stoked by the war in Iran. The meeting, planned for the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 1 with representatives of at least 10 fuel makers and distributors, was described by people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because it is private. The session will give Trump an opportunity to hear directly from industry executives about market dynamics, what can be done to lower gasoline prices and how to bolster domestic fuel refining capacity… (Bloomberg)

We and many others suspected this was one of the goals of the Trump administration, to tap Venezuela’s oil reserves, and our thinking is that Tuesday’s meeting with oil patch executives will help answer questions about timing and cost coverage. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves at approximately 300 billion to 303 billion barrels, but its current actual production capacity is only about 1 million to 1.1 million barrels per day.

However…

3. Analysts have maintained forecasts for oil prices above $80 a barrel in 2026 as shipping disruptions linked to the U.S.-Iran conflict drive expectations of reduced supplies while weak demand in China limits ‌the upside, a Reuters poll showed. (Reuters)

Ramping oil production capacity in Venezuela to at least counter balance what is not being move through the Strait of Hormuz is going to take time, not measured in day or weeks but months and quarters. Odds are that we will see some bombastic headlines following Trump’s meeting with oil executives on Tuesday, but those should give way to a series of questions about when production will ramp and what that could mean for oil prices not so much this year, but in 2027 or later.

4. Top economic policymakers from many of the world’s wealthiest nations begin two days of meetings on Monday in Asheville, N.C., at an incredibly challenging moment. Global inflation is high, growth is choked by war in the Middle East, and rising borrowing costs are straining government budgets. (NY Times)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday he will encourage G20 members to re-examine terms of ‌trade with China to shrink global imbalances and press Beijing to rebalance its economy away from exports and toward domestic consumption. (Reuters)

Bessent may be playing three-dimensional chess as he navigates between the U.S.-Iran war, economic sanctions on Iran and its “partners” and the upcoming meeting between Trump and China’s Xi on September 24. The concern that the market is likely to have is the renewed uncertainty that those cumulative moves could make, the risk of rekindling a trade war and another round of inflation driving tariffs.

5. This week, Nvidia rival Broadcom will take center stage when it reports third-quarter fiscal-2026 results on Wednesday. Other companies in the artificial-intelligence ecosystem announcing earnings this week include Dell Technologies on Tuesday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Wednesday, and Ciena on Thursday. The major economic data release this week will be Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That and the consumer price index, to be released a week later, will go a long way to determining the Federal Open Market Committee’s next move on interest rates. (Barron’s)

We’ll have more to come during this busy week of earnings and arguably critical economic data coming this week following remarks made by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh on Friday at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium that led the market to lean into expecting a September rate hike. What the above does not mention is the August PMI data from ISM that will give us a preview of what next week’s August CPI and PPI reports are likely to show. As we collect those insights from ISM, we’ll keep a close watch on oil and gas prices, which as of now, look to head higher in early September. Not exactly constructive for the Fed standing pat in September.

6. Financial Stability Board Chair Andrew Bailey said on Monday that the impact of AI on cyber risk was the most immediate concern for the global financial system, saying the technology could change the speed, scale and economics of an attack. The FSB is a global watchdog that seeks to identify and manage risks in financial systems. In a letter to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors ahead of meetings this week, Bailey, who also serves as the Bank of England governor, said many countries do not have systems in place to manage the deployment of advanced artificial intelligence models. (Reuters)

We’re all about collecting data points here at the Portfolio and we’ll toss the one above onto the growing pile of warnings about the vector and velocity of cyberattacks as bad actors leverage AI. Our view remains that in today’s increasingly connected, digital world, cybersecurity should be a component of every investor’s portfolio. Our preference continues to be the broad based exposure afforded by the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR).

7. Economic data today per TipRanks: There are no market moving economic reports scheduled for Monday.

8. Companies reporting today per TipRanks: AM – Science Applications (SAIC).

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long CIBR.