WSJ What’s News - Traders Bet on Trump’s Next Military Move

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

A.M. Edition for Jan. 8. Federal and state officials square off over yesterday’s shooting of a 37-year-old woman by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Plus WSJ reporter Alexander Osipovich explains how prediction-market gamblers are putting big bucks behind their bets on the next target of U.S. military action. And why users can’t get enough of LinkedIn. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anger and finger pointing in Minneapolis after an ICE officer fatally shoots a motorist. Plus, a look at the traders betting on President Trump's next military target. So, for example, Polly Market has a market on whether the U.S. will strike Iran by the end of June of this year. That jumped after the attack on Venezuela this weekend. Recently, Wednesday afternoon, it was at 34%. And why users can't get enough of LinkedIn. It's Thursday, January 8th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal,

and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Federal and state officials are squaring off over yesterday's shooting of a 37-year-old woman, Renee Nicole Good, by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer in Minneapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam called the killing preventable, but said good was obstructing law enforcement and refused to obey the

commands of ICE agents. It's very clear that this individual was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations. Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he's been taught to do in that situation, and took actions to defend himself and defend his fellow law enforcement officers. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye disputed that assessment in a heated press conference telling ICE to get out of the city and accusing the agency of looking for excuses to use force. They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly. That is bullshit.

The city's police chief said that good didn't appear to be the target of a federal law enforcement operation, saying her vehicle was blocking the road when an officer approached her on foot. The vehicle then drove off, he said, and at least two shots were fired. Good was found with a gunshot wound to the head and pronounced dead at a local hospital. Anti-ice protesters gathered in Minneapolis after yesterday's shooting and demonstrations were held in other major cities. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz urged the public to protest peacefully and directed National Guard troops to prepare in case they were needed to assist state and local authorities. Back in Washington, the House is set to vote today to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years. That effort took a step forward yesterday

with several Republicans crossing party lines to back the move in a procedural vote. President Trump has opposed extending the ACA subsidies, instead backing the general notion of funding health savings accounts. Meanwhile, Democrats number two in the House, Maryland's Steny Hoyer, is stepping down at the end of his term. Hoyer is 86 years old and began his House career in 1981. During his time in House leadership, Democrats pushed through the Affordable Care Act and passed a massive COVID-19 relief package. Will the U.S. acquire Greenland this year?

Officials from the island are due for talks in Washington next week. How about striking Somalia by the end of January? The Trump administration just cut off all assistance to its government? Or what about playing a role in ousting Iran's supreme leader by mid-year? Republican Senator Lindsey Graham just warned the Ayatollah that Trump would kill him if he didn't stop a crackdown on anti-government protesters. Well, those subjects of fevered foreign policy speculation also happen to be contracts you can purchase or bet on on crypto-based platforms like Polymarket, which we should note has a data partnership with Dow Jones,

the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Joining me to discuss these pretty prediction markets, which have been enjoying a boom in popularity lately. I'm joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Alexander Ossippovich. Alex, we've talked about prediction markets a little bit here, but much more so over on our tech news briefing podcast. So just remind us how they operate and what has been catching your attention about them lately. Prediction markets are actually a pretty simple idea. They are a marketplace where people can bet on future events.

The way it works is they will allow you to bet on a yes or no question about some future thing happening. like will Donald Trump pick Kevin Hassett to be his next Federal Reserve chief? And you can buy a contract saying, yes, this will happen or no, it won't happen. If you are right, you get a dollar per contract. So the price of each contract is in cents and it reflects the probability that people assess of that event. So if the contract for Trump picking asset is currently at 60 cents, that reflects a 60% probability and the wisdom of polymarket betters.

Okay. And unsurprisingly, I mean, a lot of activity on these platforms is like around sports, you know, is IU or Oregon going to win in a few days? But increasingly, we are seeing, as you mentioned, finance topics, the number of IPOs this year or culture topics. And there's a notable trend we are seeing just in the last few days since this move to oust Nicholas Maduro. Yes, there is some interest in these markets on U.S. military action.

And one thing that you can see in the data is, that after the U.S. launched this strike against Venezuela and seized President Maduro, other countries started to seem like potential targets too. So, for example, Polly Market has a market on whether the U.S. will strike Iran by the end of June of this year, jumped after the attack on Venezuela this weekend. Recently, Wednesday afternoon, it was at 34%. So keep that in mind. Yeah, it's not just Iran. We're seeing kind of a rising sense among the crowd that there could be U.S. intervention in a host of different countries, just help us understand how to interpret the odds we are seeing on sites like Polymarket. And I guess a little bit of context here, we report that

somebody, we don't know who made about 400 grand betting on Maduro's downfall on Polymarket in recent days. Though because of the way these platforms operate, their identity is a secret. It's not immediately obvious. A new Polymarket account created in late December put down tens of thousands of dollars, mostly on a market on whether Maduro would be out as the leader of Venezuela by the end of January. This trader ended up making more than $400,000. And what's super interesting is that many of this trader's bets were placed just hours before the attack around the time, in fact, just before Trump gave the final order sending the military in. There's the lack of transparency on these platforms. And there are other serious implications here, including potential

corruption. Absolutely. The interesting thing here is that prediction markets kind of have two purposes. One is that they are kind of barometer of the likelihood of future events. Ideally, you want to have well-informed people trading on them, putting skin in the game. That is ideally, according to the vision of prediction markets, the way that you get truth. But the other side of that coin is that you could have people who have genuine inside knowledge who jump into these markets, trade on that, make them more accurate in doing so, but also take advantage of other people who are not as well-informed. And that is why we have laws against insider trading in the stock market.

I have been speaking to Wall Street Journal reporter Alexander Ossipovich. Alex, thank you so much for stopping by. Thank you for having me. Coming up, we've got the day's top markets news, including President Trump's crackdown on the defense industry, and a look at why LinkedIn is so good at grabbing our attention. That and more after the break. Shares in defense contractors. like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman slipped Wednesday after President Trump pledged to block

company dividends, stock buybacks, and limit executive pay. Trump posted the executive order on true social, saying the sector needs to speed up its production and maintenance of military equipment or otherwise risk losing its business with the Pentagon. Chinese automaker Neo plans to sell its EVs in Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand this year as the company presses in overseas expansion amid intensifying competition in China. According to research from Goldman Sachs, the Chinese auto market is getting increasingly crowded with 119 new model launches in the pipeline for this year. And two oil majors are warning that falling oil and gas prices are hurting their bottom line.

Last night, ExxonMobil said upstream earnings would decline to $800 million in the fourth quarter, down from $1.2 billion in Q3. Similarly, Shell said it expects to report higher oil and gas production, but warned of significantly weaker oil trading performance. According to UBS, the industry will be grappling with depressed oil and gas prices for some time, with analysts at Saxo, saying the prospect of higher Venezuelan exports risks adding barrels to a market already grappling with ample supply. And finally, while the spread of misinformation in deepfakes has, raise concerns about a lot of social media, more people are now spending their time on LinkedIn. Journal Tech reporter Stu Wu says the Microsoft-owned network has lured people leaving other sites like Facebook and X,

where content moderation is in decline. So I went out and interviewed some people. They said, oh, man, I just got tired of all the shouting on X and Facebook. So they said they liked LinkedIn because of one of its oldest rules, which is you have to use your real name. So there's a couple reasons why this makes LinkedIn stand out from other social networks. Number one, there have been all these studies that if there's a requirement to use a real name, you're much more likely to remain civil. And number two, if you post something that might reflect poorly on you, well, that's the first place a recruiter or someone who wants to hire you might check to see whether you're suitable for a job. So that forces people to be more self-disciplined about what they post, which reduced toxicity on the site.

And all that is paying off for LinkedIn, which has seen its revenue. News soar and membership double to around 1.3 billion users over the past five years. And that's it for what's news for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening. Thank you.