Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq waver on threat to Fed as DOJ begins criminal probe of Powell

Stocks closed at fresh highs on Monday, with investors turning their attention to the upcoming inflation print due out on Tuesday morning.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 0.2%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) gained 0.2%. Both indexes closed at fresh records. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added 0.3%.

Yahoo Finance’s Myles Udland reports:

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi reports:

Read more here.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) rose 1% to trade above $91,000 on Monday as investors bought up assets perceived to be outside the influence of politics.

The move in the world’s largest cryptocurrency comes after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell released a video on Sunday calling out the Trump administration for attempting to pressure the central bank.

Powell said a subpoena received on Friday from the Department of Justice, ostensibly related to his testimony about headquarters renovation plans, is actually an attempt to apply pressure and influence the central bank’s rate-setting policies.

“Legal scrutiny of the chair of the most influential central bank on earth, set against sustained political demands on interest rates, sends a signal investors do not ignore,” Nigel Green, founder of deVere Group, said on Monday.

“Bitcoin, typically, responds positively to precisely this kind of signal,” he added.

Yahoo Finance’s Jen Schonberger reports:

Read more here.

The US dollar (DX-Y.NYB) weakened against a basket of global currencies on Monday as investors priced in the Department of Justice’s criminal probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell and turned back toward the “Sell America” trade.

The euro (EURUSD=X) and pound sterling (GBPUSD=X) strengthened through the first half of Monday as the currencies rallied by more than 0.3% and 0.45%, respectively, against the dollar. Both are widely considered global base currencies and typically appreciate when the dollar weakens as foreign exchange traders shift capital toward Europe.

The Swiss franc (CHFUSD=X), commonly considered a safe-haven currency due to Switzerland’s global stability, also strengthened against the dollar, which fell by 0.5% against the Swiss unit.

In Asia, the Japanese yen (JPYUSD=X) remained depressed against the dollar as investors stayed invested in higher-yielding currencies, while volatility remained constrained.

In physical flight-to-safety markets, gold and silver both popped through Monday’s trading session, gaining more than 2% and 8%, respectively, as investors look for stable, safe investments.

Commodities trading house Vitol has begun shipping naphtha to Venezuela, supplying a critical component for oil exports coming out of the South American hotspot.

On Monday, the Dutch commodities giant chartered a crude oil tanker to load around 460,000 barrels’ worth of naphtha, an oil diluent, from the US Gulf Coast and ship the product to Venezuela, according to the energy intelligence firm Kpler.

Naphtha, a light petroleum petrochemical often mixed with heavy crude oil to make it easier to transport, is critical in Venezuela. The country’s primary Merey 16 type of crude is an extra-heavy grade of oil, meaning it is highly viscous and dense, and therefore cannot be moved through pipelines without being mixed with a diluent substance such as naphtha.

Since the US’s extraction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has been pressuring American oil companies to commit billions of dollars in capex for reentering and rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry.

The country is widely understood to be sitting on the world’s largest proved oil reserves, but the oil’s primary heavy grade makes it difficult to transport and refine, eating into margins for oil producers.

However, the first winners have been the international trading houses Vitol and Singapore-based Trafigura, which cut the first deals with the Trump administration due to the firms’ ability to quickly begin moving product in and out of Venezuela, according to Reuters.

Vitol’s chartering of a crude oil tanker to export naphtha from the US to Venezuela is seen as the first movement of oil products under the Trump administration’s new management of the Venezuelan industry.

Naphtha is produced as a byproduct of oil drilling, potentially offering an added line of business for US oil companies willing to reenter Venezuela. Before the US began its blockade of sanctioned oil vessels moving in and out of Venezuela in December, Russia was the largest supplier of naphtha to the South American country.

Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports:

Read the full story here.

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley reports:

Read the full story here.

Shares of Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) rose as much as 1.5% early Monday after CNBC reported that Apple (AAPL) chose Google’s Gemini model to power its AI-related products.

“After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we’re excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users,” Apple wrote in a statement obtained by Jim Cramer.

Alphabet stock quickly forfeited these gains after the initial headlines crossed.

The news comes as Google continues to win plaudits for its Gemini model released in late November, which prompted rival OpenAI to declare a “code red” ahead of the holidays and has seen the latest leg of the AI race take on a new character.

Apple and Google already have an existing relationship, with Google paying Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search browser inside its Safari browser.

Meta (META) said Monday it has appointed President Trump’s former deputy national security advisor Dina Powell McCormick as its president and vice chair.

“Dina’s experience at the highest levels of global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth as the company’s President and Vice Chairman,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday.

The company said McCormick will “ensure our multi-billion-dollar investments execute against our goals.” Meta is set to spend $71 billion in 2025, at the midpoint of its capital expenditure guidance range. The social media giant is building a massive AI data center in rural Louisiana as it looks to use artificial intelligence to bolster its core ad business and to rival cloud players Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN).

Meta has hired other Trump-linked personnel as Zuckerberg has worked to align the company with the current administration. In January, Meta brought on a former Trump deputy as its chief legal officer and a top former DOGE lawyer as a lobbyist.

Apple (AAPL) shares fell fractionally Monday, with the stock eyeing a ninth consecutive day of decline — which would mark its longest losing streak since 1991, according to Bloomberg data.

Apple stock’s decline came even as closely-watched data from Counterpoint Research on Monday showed the company led the global smartphone market in 2025 with a 20% market share. The iPhone maker accounted for its highest-ever share of global shipments (25%) in the fourth quarter, according to Counterpoint.

Bernstein analyst Mark Newman said the results show Apple is “well on track” to meet Wall Street consensus estimates for iPhone sales — $78.16 billion, per Bloomberg data — in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2026.

Apple is set to report results for the quarter on Jan. 29.

US stocks slid on Monday at the market open, pulling back from last week’s rally to all-time highs as investor concerns mounted over Federal Reserve independence amid the Trump administration’s launch of a criminal investigation into Chair Jerome Powell.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.8%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell 0.3%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) dropped around 0.2%.