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The US plans modest but symbolic cuts to NATO command staffing, fuelling fresh unease in Europe over Washington’s strategic priorities.

Washington Post had the info.

Summary:

• US plans to cut around 200 positions from NATO command and intelligence bodies.

• Intelligence, special operations and maritime centres are among those affected.

• Reductions will mainly occur through attrition rather than recalls.

• Move aligns with US focus on the Western Hemisphere.

• Timing risks amplifying European anxiety over US commitment to NATO.

The United States plans to reduce the number of personnel it assigns to several key NATO command and intelligence bodies, a move that is likely to sharpen European concerns over Washington’s long-term commitment to the alliance, according to officials familiar with the matter.

US and European sources said the Trump administration has signalled to some European capitals that it will eliminate roughly 200 US positions from NATO entities involved in military planning, intelligence coordination and special operations. The cuts are expected to affect bodies including the UK-based NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre, the Allied Special Operations Forces Command in Brussels, and Portugal-based STRIKFORNATO, which oversees certain maritime operations.

The changes are expected to be implemented largely through attrition, with the US declining to replace personnel as they rotate out of their posts, rather than through immediate recalls. About 400 US personnel are currently assigned to the NATO bodies affected, implying a reduction of roughly half.

While the drawdown is small relative to the overall US military footprint in Europe, which totals around 80,000 personnel, the timing is politically sensitive. The alliance is already navigating one of its most diplomatically fraught periods in decades, amid renewed uncertainty over US strategic priorities.

Officials said the staffing changes broadly align with the administration’s stated intention to reallocate military resources toward the Western Hemisphere. However, the move risks reinforcing perceptions in Europe that Washington is scaling back its operational engagement within NATO’s core structures.

The decision comes against a backdrop of rising tensions triggered by President Donald Trump’s revived push to acquire Greenland, an unprecedented prospect of territorial pressure within the alliance. Trump has also recently reposted commentary on social media describing NATO as a threat to the United States, further unsettling European capitals.

A NATO official sought to play down the impact, saying adjustments to US staffing levels are routine and noting that overall US troop levels in Europe remain elevated. Nonetheless, the symbolic weight of the cuts is likely to resonate far beyond their immediate military effect.

Also, ps. Trump is speaking in Davos on Wednesday, January 21, 2026

• a special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos from 13:30–14:15 GMT

He spoke Tuesday at a press conference.

• investingLive Americas market news wrap: US stock markets battered, yields rise

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

Well, this is what you call an empty data calendar, nothing listed from APac at all.

That API data listed will not be released until 24 hours later given the US holiday on Monday.

The Bloomberg calendar does list minor items, unlikely to shift around markets much:

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

• No tariff decision from the US Supreme Court today. It could be a long wait now
• Trump press conference as it happens: Playing the greatest hits so far
• Mark Carney lays bare the rupture in the world order, says it will mean a poorer world

Markets:

• Gold up $80 to $4749
• US 10-year yields up 6 bps to 4.29%
• WTI crude oil up 23-cents to $59.57
• S&P 500 down 2.1%
• CHF leads, JPY lags

It was the worst day of the year so far in equity markets and there was no safe haven as bonds sold off as well. The S&P 500 fell more than 2% and the Nasdaq 2.5%, including selling into the close. When you include stocks, bonds and bitcoin, it was the worst cross-asset day since April.

Gold played the role of safe haven, rising 1.7% and hitting a record at $4766. Silver hit $95.87 as well, though it gave back $2 as the day wore on. Gold is now up 9% year to date.

The market was focused on Davos with Trump set to fly there overnight. The President held a press conference that took up most of the US afternoon. It was long-winded and he detailed all his accomplishments in his first year while airing the usual grievances. He conceded he didn’t know which way the Supreme Court ruling would go, which is a different message than we heard from Bessent.

Perhaps the most-notable line was on Greenland late in the press conference, where he said that NATO is going to be very happy on Greenland and that the people of Greenland will be thrilled. That perhaps sets the stage for some kind of climb down before the weekend but we will have to wait and see.

The risk of all the Trump noise is that the market misses what’s happening in Japan where 30-year yields rose 25 bps today. That’s an extremely concerning news as Takaichi launches an election campaign that includes more spending in the heavily-indebted country. This chart should be on everyone’s screen.

Looking at the yen, the move on the day was only 10 pips but normally on a brutal risk-off day like today, you would see some genuine yen strength. Instead, it’s the worst-performing major currency. That speaks to the underlying weakness. Instead, money is pouring into Switzerland and gold.

Canada’s Carney delivered an eye-opening speech in Davos where he outlined the breakdown of the global order and said it’s not coming back. He called on middle powers to work together but essentially outlined a world that will grow poorer.

Netflix will report after the close.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

Administration officials handed out a packet to the press at the event on “365 Wins in 365 Days”.

This has started out with the usual greatest hits

• Sleepy Joe Biden
• Greatest stock market in the world
• Stolen election
• We could have 20% GDP growth
• Hottest country in the world

He went on a long rant about Somalia and Somalians. Trump called Somalia “not even a country” and “just about the worst in the world” but so far there is nothing newsworthy. I’ll update live.

On tariffs:

• I don’t know what the Supreme Court is going to do
• A tariff is like a licence
• It’s possible that if we lose the case, we’re going to have to do the best we can to pay it back
• We’re waiting for that case anxiously

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

At the top of the hour (1 pm ET), US President Trump is set to join Karoline Leavitt at the podium for the White House press conference.

These things rarely run on time so standby for a bit. The S&P 500 is at the lows of the day, down 1.6%, or 109 points, to 6831. The index could certainly swing depending on what sort of positions Trump stakes out.

Shifting to S&P 500 futures, the overnight low was 6935 and we’re about 30 points away from that.

Anything to bring down the temperature could spark a sharp reversal in stock markets.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

Former Bank of England/Bank of Canada Governor and now Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid bare his view of the breakdown in the global order at Davos today.

The comments are intense, if not frightening.

“It seems that every day, we’re remind that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must. This aphorism of Thucydides as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself and faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along in order to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. Well it won’t.”

He talked about how ordinary people live within a preformative lie, but how that system is fragile because people can stop performing the lie. He said it’s time to stop pretending the world order still exists.

He goes on.

We knew that the rules-based order was partial false, he said. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asympetrically and international law applied with varying rigor. This fiction was useful he said.

“American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security … We largely avoiding calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition … recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as a weapon. Tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”

He said the multilateral institutions of collective problem solving are under threat. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

“A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable,” he said.

The gains from transactionism will be harder and harder to get, he warned.

The question for middle powers, he said, was either to respond by building higher walls or doing something more ambitious. He outlined a system of working with different partners on different issues where there is enough common ground to work together.

He also called for some kind of economic bloc of middle powers.

“The great powers can afford to go it alone,” he said. “When we only negotiate bilaterally with hegemons, we negotiate from weakness; we accept what’s offered, we compete with each other to be the most accommodating, this is not sovereignty, it’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

He went on:

“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: Compete with each other for favor, or combine to create a third path with impact…. the power of legitimacy will remain strong if we choose to wield them together.”

Carney said Canada has what the world wants: energy, critical minerals, an educated workforce and fiscal capacity.

“The old order is not coming back… we believe we can build something better, this is the task of the middle powers. We have the capacity to stop pretending, to build our path together. We choose it openly, confidently and open to any country willing to take it with us.”

He got a standing ovation.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

The market is voting that Trump has misplayed his hand on Greenland.

Opposition is lining up in a strong way, including in the United States. It’s not clear if there is any plan here but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told everyone to calm down and that’s being taken as a sign that Trump might not be serious about it.

In addition, the letter to Norway complaining about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize is so cringe-worthy that we can’t possibly extend this timeline another day.

Whatever the reason for the bounce, it’s a nice one off the lows. Thought it’s also a remind that we’re in an era where the government picks the winners and losers as state-backed Intel is the top performer on the S&P 500, up more than 6%.

Other chip names are also among the winners toady, with AMD up 2.75% and Micron up 1.7% but Nvidia is down more than 2%. All the Mag7 names have been struggling this year and are down today, including the formerly-resilient Google, which is off by 1.4%.

The overall market may have also got a bounce from the punt by the Supreme Court on the tariff decision. Given their calendar, it could now be until Feb 20 before they make a decision. That takes down the near-term volatility and may have led to some put buying through earnings season, particularly one where the chip names should see some sensational numbers.

Over in bonds, yields have come down from the initial pop as the market takes stock of what’s happening in Japan. After rising as high as 4.31%, US 10-year yields are now trading at 4.26%. Treasury Secretary Lutnick is on the wires again saying that interest rates are too high.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

The waiting game continues as the US Supreme Court released two decisions today but neither were on tariffs.

For the legal fans out there, here is an LLM-generated review of the two decisions today.

Berk v. Choy

The Court held that Delaware’s requirement for an “affidavit of merit” in medical malpractice suits does not apply in federal court. Petitioner Harold Berk’s suit had been dismissed for failing to provide an expert’s attestation of the claim’s validity as required by state law. Writing for the majority, Justice Barrett concluded that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 governs the information required at the outset of litigation, and because it only requires a “short and plain statement of the claim,” it displaces contrary state evidentiary hurdles.

Ellingburg v. United States

The Court unanimously ruled that restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA) is criminal punishment. Holsey Ellingburg challenged the retroactive application of the MVRA to his pre-enactment crime as a violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Justice Kavanaugh noted the MVRA’s text, which labels restitution a “penalty” and integrates it into criminal sentencing, makes its punitive nature “abundantly clear”. This classification ensures that restitution is subject to constitutional protections against retroactive punishment.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

It’s another Decision Day at the US Supreme Court.

The first two this year have seen the Supreme Court rule on things that weren’t tariffs but today is another opportunity for them to decide if tariffs are illegal without Congressional approval. If that’s the case, they will also have to decide on whether or not to refund the roughly $140 billion in tariffs already paid.

Treasury Secretary Bessent is on the wires defending tariffs and saying they can be reconstituted but it could be a messy process. I looked at how the administration could pivot and use different tariff powers here.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the stocks that could be winners and losers on the tariff decision.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

Bloomberg reports that the Danish pension fund AkademikerPension will unload its $100 million position in US Treasuries by the end of the month.

The fund managers about $25 billion in savings for teachers and the fund manager cited Trump’s attempt to take over Greenland as one of the reasons to drop the holdings but also said:

“The US is basically not a good credit and long-term the US government finances are not sustainable,” Anders Schelde, chief investment officer at AkademikerPension told Bloomberg.

I highlighted that Denmark’s central bank holds $100 billion in reserves, with about half of that likely to be in US dollars. Them and others may need to reconsider those holdings, especially after the confiscated Russian reserves and crippled its ability to use the international financial system after the invasion of Ukraine.

It’s no surprise that gold is up 1.6% and just hit another fresh record high at $4748. At the end of the day, it’s the ultimate monetary alternative and if there’s any shift out of US dollars, that’s going to be one of the places it goes.

Whether it’s Denmark or someone else, there is some heavy selling in Treasuries today. US 10-year yields are the highest since September and that’s despite three Fed rate cuts in that time. The chart looks like an inverted head-and-shoulders with a target just below 4.5%.

A big part of what’s happening in bonds is a fiscal reckoning in Japan, where 30-year yields are up 25 basis points today and risk kicking off an international crisis.

S&P 500 futures are also down 1.5%.

At the end of the day, it might be a crisis in Japanese bonds that ends up halting Trump’s imperialism. The noise is extremely loud right now and it’s going to be difficult to wade through the headlines and find an edge.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

• BoE Governor Bailey warns that the loss of Fed independence risks spillover effects
• The S&P 500 falls to new lows as risk aversion dominates: Will we get another TACO trade?
• The Swiss Franc surges on risk-off flows as US Dollar longs get squeezed. What’s next?
• Japan bond yields continue to surge higher on the week
• Gold keeps breaking records, but watch out for these risks that could trigger a selloff
• Dollar drops further as the fallout from Trump’s Greenland tariffs continues
• Gold Price Today at All-Time-High but Profit-Taking Risk at $4,760
• What Trump is threatening on Greenland is very different, says Bessent
• What are the main events for today?
• German producer prices post another annual average decline in 2025
• UK November ILO unemployment rate 5.1% vs 5.1% expected
• FX option expiries for 20 January 10am New York cut
• Gold tops $4,700 for the first time as the surge higher continues
• US president Trump: We have to have Greenland
• The risk mood keeps on the defensive as we look towards European morning trade

The main highlight of the session in terms of data releases was the UK employment report. The employment change in the three monhts to November beat expectations, but payrolls decreased in December. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.1%. The data didn’t change anything in terms of market pricing.

We also has the German ZEW index beating estimates at 59.6 vs 50.00 expected and 45.8 prior. Again, the reaction to the data was muted here too as it didn’t change anything for the ECB.

The focus remains on Greenland and the latest Trump’s escalation. The risk-off flows continue to dominate with major stock indices falling to new lows and safe havens like Swiss Franc and precious metals extending gains.

The US Dollar has been the most notable mover in FX as it plunged throughout the session. The de-dollarisation narrative is of course back on the menu, but I would say it’s more about the squeeze on the recent US Dollar longs. If we were to get a de-escalation, the greenback could bounce back and return to pre-escalation levels.

The other notable movers have been long-term bond yields, with the Japanese ones catching everyone’s attention as 40-yields surpassed 4% for the first time ever. JGBs have been selling off since Takaichi got elected on expectations of more stimulus amid an already worrying fiscal position.

In the American session, we don’t have much on the agenda. The focus will be on the potential US Supreme Court decision on Trump’s tariffs. The decisions are usually announced around 10:00 ET/15:00 GMT.

We will also get the weekly US ADP jobs data but it’s not been a market-moving release lately. We likely need big surprises to trigger a market reaction. Nevertheless, the data has been pointing to gradual improvement in the labour market.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.

The post Ex-Dividend 21/01/2026 first appeared on IC Markets | Official Blog.