Stocks rise after U.S. attacks Venezuela. Gold tells a different story

The S&P 500, the major market index with the most exposure to the oil and gas sector, was set to open higher after a weekend of geopolitical upheaval, with President Donald Trump declaring that the U.S. plans to “run” Venezuela following the capture of its longtime leader Nicolás Maduro. Oil stocks, including Chevron, Valero, and ConocoPhillips, were leading the early gains.

But even as stocks rose, gold was flirting with record highs, with silver climbing even more dramatically. The split-screen market reaction suggested investors were betting that the conflict will benefit the U.S. energy sector while also remaining relatively contained, rather than deepening into a longer-term clash. At the same time, investors appeared to be actively hedging against more extreme scenarios and more general uncertainty.

After his capture in a surprise U.S. raid this past weekend, Maduro was indicted in U.S. federal court on charges including narco-terrorism and drug trafficking, allegations that prosecutors say link senior Venezuelan officials to trafficking networks.

Maduro and his allies reject those charges — alongside accusations of human-rights abuses and electoral illegitimacy — portraying them as politically motivated and part of a long-running campaign of foreign interference. Outside the U.S., some governments and commentators are more skeptical of the White House’s narrative, arguing that U.S. sanctions and intervention have played a major role in shaping both Venezuela’s crisis and how its leadership is portrayed internationally.

Meanwhile, the legality of Trump’s operation remains an open question. Online, critics pointed to polls suggesting that younger American voters — those who grew up amid the U.S. military’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — strongly disapprove of the raid and intervention in Venezuela.

The spike in oil stocks is straightforward: Investors see a sudden improvement in American oil companies’ pricing power and political strength. They may also foresee a future in which U.S. companies gain privileged access to Venezuelan supplies.

But the surge in precious metals suggests that anxiety is also growing, with investors increasingly hedging against a world in which policy decisions feel improvised, legal boundaries are blurred, and geopolitical norms are treated as flexible rather than binding. Because gold sits outside any one government’s control, it remains one of the clearest ways for investors to hedge against institutional risk itself — not just in the case of economic downturns, but amid uncertainty about how power is exercised.

Such concerns has been building over the past year. Gold’s historic run — up some 70% in 2025 — has coincided with a bull market in stocks, suggesting that demand is less about anticipation of an imminent crisis than long-term protection. Persistent inflation worries and questions about institutional independence are pushing investors toward hedges that don’t rely on policy credibility, while expectations for lower interest rates have reduced the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets.

Now the Venezuela shock adds a fresh catalyst. It reinforces fears that the U.S. is willing to act unilaterally and unpredictably abroad at the same time that fiscal pressures and economic uncertainty grow at home.

On X, the widely-followed financial newsletter The Kobeissi Letter noted how shares of Chevron jumped as much as 11% in the run-up to Monday’s open — a move the account estimated added roughly $35 billion to the company’s market capitalization, just on the Venezuela news alone.

Whether or not that overstates causality, it illustrates investors’ sense that the Venezuelan action strengthens the position of large U.S. energy firms, even as it raises larger legal and economic questions.

“This is a major economic operation,” the Kobeissi Letter concluded.