Shares of major U.S. oil companies surged in premarket trading on Monday as investors began to price in the potential long-term consequences of Washington’s dramatic military intervention in Venezuela, a move that could eventually redraw the global oil supply map even as near-term uncertainties remain high.

Chevron led the rally, rising 6.4% by 7:40 a.m. ET, reflecting its entrenched footprint in Venezuela and perceived first-mover advantage. Exxon Mobil gained 3%, ConocoPhillips advanced 5.5%, and oilfield services heavyweight SLB climbed 8.5%, as markets reacted to the possibility of renewed access to the world’s largest proven crude reserves.

The gains followed a surprise U.S. operation over the weekend that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, an audacious escalation that has reverberated across diplomatic, security, and energy circles. President Donald Trump has since said the United States would “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” is achieved, placing the country’s vast oil wealth at the center of Washington’s stated objectives.

Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC and holds an estimated 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, roughly 17% of the global total, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Years of mismanagement, underinvestment, and sanctions have crippled its oil industry, slashing production from about 3.5 million barrels per day in the 1970s to well under 1 million barrels per day in recent years.

Trump has made clear that reversing that decline is now a strategic priority. Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, he said U.S. oil companies would be encouraged to pour billions of dollars into repairing Venezuela’s “badly broken” energy infrastructure.

“Let’s start making money for the country,” Trump said, framing the intervention as both a geopolitical and economic reset.

Oil prices, however, showed only a muted response. Brent crude futures for March delivery were up 0.5% at $61.03 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate for February delivery rose 0.6% to $57.64. The modest move underscores a key tension in the market: while Venezuela’s reserves are enormous, any meaningful increase in supply is widely seen as a long-term prospect rather than an immediate shock.

Analysts say Chevron stands out among U.S. majors as the most immediately exposed to potential upside. The company has maintained a presence in Venezuela through joint ventures even during periods of heavy sanctions, giving it institutional knowledge and operational footholds that rivals lack. Allen Good, director of equity research at Morningstar, said Chevron appears best positioned to benefit from any U.S.-backed effort to revive Venezuelan production.

At the same time, the intervention could open the door for Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips to re-enter the country after years on the sidelines. But Good cautioned that optimism should be tempered. Venezuela’s oil sector, he said, will require tens of billions of dollars in fresh investment to achieve meaningful production gains, and companies are unlikely to commit capital without clear regulatory and contractual frameworks.

“Oil companies will need to be cautious about deploying capital until there is greater certainty,” Good said, adding that while Chevron may be able to add incremental barrels in the near term with U.S. approval, large-scale volume increases are likely years away.

In that context, he warned, the idea of rapidly unlocking Venezuela’s oil riches remains far from assured.

Energy veterans echo that caution. Neil Atkinson, an independent analyst and former senior figure at Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, said restoring the industry goes far beyond reopening wells. He pointed to deep-rooted structural challenges, including weak law and order, unreliable electricity supplies, and shortages of basic goods such as food and fuel.

“If you want to get Venezuela’s oil industry back up and running, you need stability,” Atkinson said in an interview on CNBC. “That stability simply does not exist right now. A lot has to happen, and it cannot happen without the consent of the Venezuelan people.”

Atkinson also noted that Venezuela’s crude is predominantly heavy and costly to process, requiring specialized infrastructure and sustained investment. With oil prices relatively low by historical standards, he said the calculus for U.S. companies is less about short-term returns and more about long-term strategic positioning.

“For long-term strategic reasons, yes, companies would be interested,” he said. “But this is a long-term play.”

Signs of that long-term interest are already emerging. The Financial Times reported on Monday that Ali Moshiri, a former top Chevron executive, is seeking to raise $2 billion through his investment firm, Amos Global Energy Management, to kick-start Venezuelan oil projects. Moshiri told the newspaper that investor sentiment had flipped almost overnight following Maduro’s capture.

“I’ve had a dozen calls over the past 24 hours from potential investors,” Moshiri said. “Interest in Venezuela has gone from zero to 99 percent.”

That surge in interest reflects a broader market belief that Trump’s intervention, if it holds, could eventually reset the oil market by unlocking supply that has been effectively stranded for years. Greater Venezuelan output, over time, could add downward pressure on global oil prices, offering relief to consumers and energy-intensive industries while reshaping OPEC dynamics.

However, markets are balancing excitement with realism for now. The rally in oil stocks suggests investors see strategic optionality and long-term upside, not an immediate production windfall. Some analysts believe that although Venezuela represents potential energy abundance on a grand scale, turning that potential into barrels on the market will be measured in years, not weeks.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday delivered a broader cautionary message to investors tempted to chase stocks moving on Venezuela’s sudden political upheaval, arguing that markets routinely overestimate how quickly geopolitical shocks translate into sustainable corporate earnings.

Cramer’s remarks came amid a powerful rally on Wall Street that appeared to shrug off the dramatic news out of Latin America. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 594.79 points, or 1.23%, to close at a fresh all-time high, reinforcing his view that U.S. equities remain driven more by earnings, liquidity, and valuation than by short-lived political narratives.

At the heart of Cramer’s argument is a distinction he says investors repeatedly blur: the difference between trading volatility and building long-term wealth.
“Along with an index fund, I want you to own individual stocks — not trade them,” Cramer said. “Let the power of compounding do its work.”

He warned that geopolitical events often create sharp, emotional market reactions that look compelling in the moment but rarely offer durable investment edges. Venezuela, he said, is a textbook case.

While President Donald Trump’s move to oust the country’s leadership has fueled speculation about oil supply, energy infrastructure, and U.S. corporate access to the world’s largest proven crude reserves, Cramer argued that markets have already priced in much of the optimism.

Energy stocks such as Chevron, refiners including Valero, and oil-services firms like Halliburton jumped on the assumption that Venezuela could quickly re-emerge as a major oil supplier aligned with U.S. interests. Cramer pushed back on that narrative, noting that Venezuela’s oil industry has been hollowed out by decades of underinvestment, sanctions, technical decay, and brain drain.

Rebuilding production capacity, he said, would require years of work, billions of dollars in capital, and a stable political framework that does not yet exist. Even under the most favorable assumptions, meaningful cash flow for U.S. companies would likely arrive far later than current share price moves imply.

“People always underestimate how long it takes for political change to show up in corporate profits,” Cramer said, adding that investors often mistake a compelling story for an investable timeline.

He also cautioned that commodity markets tend to front-run geopolitical developments aggressively. Oil prices, he noted, often react immediately to supply narratives, leaving little margin for latecomers once the story is widely understood. In that context, chasing energy stocks after a geopolitical rally can expose investors to sharp reversals if expectations cool or timelines stretch.

Rather than trading headlines, Cramer urged investors to concentrate on businesses with clear earnings visibility and valuations that provide downside protection. He framed this as especially important in a market trading near record highs, where selectivity matters more than broad speculation.

Within financials, Cramer highlighted Goldman Sachs as a potential beneficiary of a recovery in deal-making, capital markets activity, and equity issuance, particularly if market confidence continues to improve. He said Goldman’s earnings power is closely tied to financial activity rather than political events, making it a cleaner long-term bet.

He also pointed to Citigroup, which he believes can continue exceeding earnings expectations as management pares back complexity, exits non-core businesses, and improves returns on capital. Capital One was another standout for Cramer, whom he described as one of the cheapest large U.S. banks following its acquisition of Discover — a deal he said the market has not fully digested in terms of long-term earnings potential.

Stepping back, Cramer framed the Venezuela episode as a reminder that markets are littered with examples where investors chased geopolitical excitement only to be disappointed by the slow grind of reality. From regime changes to wars and sanctions, he said, the economic payoff almost always arrives later and more unevenly than traders expect.

His broader advice was simple but pointed: investors should resist the urge to react to every breaking headline and instead anchor portfolios around high-quality companies with durable cash flows, reasonable valuations, and management teams executing against clear strategies.

“Trading feels productive,” Cramer implied, “but ownership is what actually builds wealth.”

In a market still hitting record highs and navigating global political uncertainty, Cramer’s warning was less about Venezuela specifically and more about discipline — a call for investors to tune out the noise and focus on fundamentals that compound over time.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and a critical partner to Nvidia, has capped 2025 with a sharp surge in revenues, underscoring how the global race to build artificial intelligence infrastructure is reshaping the tech manufacturing industry.

The Taiwanese group, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, reported fourth-quarter revenues of 2.6 trillion Taiwan dollars ($83 billion), a 22% jump year-on-year, comfortably beating market expectations of about NT$2.4 trillion, according to LSEG data. The strong performance was driven largely by its components and cloud-related businesses, which have become increasingly central to the company’s growth story as AI spending accelerates.

Foxconn sits at the heart of the global technology supply chain. It assembles Apple’s iPhone, produces a wide range of consumer electronics, and, crucially, manufactures the servers that house high-performance chips inside data centers. That positioning has turned it into a major beneficiary of the unprecedented capital expenditure wave sweeping through Big Tech as companies race to secure computing power for generative AI models.

In a statement, Foxconn said revenue in the final quarter of 2025 delivered “strong growth both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year,” exceeding its own expectations and creating a high comparison base heading into early 2026. The company also flagged that earnings are likely to land near the upper end of its five-year historical range, even as it enters what is traditionally the off-season for information and communications technology products.

The numbers reflect a deeper structural shift. Demand for AI servers and so-called “AI racks” — densely packed systems designed to support Nvidia’s most advanced chips — has become a key earnings driver. These systems are far more complex and higher-margin than conventional servers, giving Foxconn exposure not just to volume growth but also to richer revenue per unit.

Investors have taken notice. Foxconn’s share price rose about 25% in 2025, building on a 76% rally the previous year, as markets increasingly priced the company less as a cyclical electronics assembler and more as a critical enabler of the AI economy.

That re-rating has been reinforced by a series of strategic moves. In November, Foxconn signed a partnership with OpenAI to collaborate on the design of next-generation AI infrastructure hardware, a deal that signals its ambition to move upstream from pure manufacturing into co-development of advanced systems. In May, it announced a separate partnership with Nvidia and the Taiwanese government to help provide infrastructure for a major AI factory in Taiwan, aligning the company closely with national efforts to anchor AI supply chains domestically.

Foxconn has also been expanding its footprint in data-center construction and power infrastructure, areas that have become increasingly important as AI workloads drive up energy consumption. In July, it said it was taking a stake in TECO Electric & Machinery Co, a move seen as strengthening its capabilities across the broader AI infrastructure stack, from servers to power and cooling systems.

While consumer electronics demand remains uneven, particularly as smartphone and PC markets mature, Foxconn’s exposure to cloud and AI investment is helping to offset those pressures. The company acknowledged that the first quarter of the year typically marks a seasonal slowdown for ICT products, but said the continued rise in AI rack shipments should provide a strong counterbalance.

The results also highlight the knock-on effects of Nvidia’s dominance in AI chips. As one of Nvidia’s key manufacturing partners, Foxconn stands to benefit directly as hyperscalers and governments pour billions into data centers built around Nvidia’s hardware. That has turned Foxconn into a bellwether not just for electronics manufacturing, but for the pace and durability of global AI investment.

Looking ahead, analysts say the main question is not whether AI demand will persist, but how concentrated it remains among a handful of suppliers. Foxconn appears, for now, firmly embedded in that ecosystem, leveraging scale, engineering depth, and strategic partnerships to capture a growing share of the AI infrastructure boom.

In that sense, the company’s blockbuster fourth quarter is less about a single strong period and more about a longer-term reset of its business.