How US Strike On Venezuela Changes Everything (What’s next for Gold - Silver - Oil)

300 billion barrels. That's more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia, more than anyone. And if you think this is just about drugs or geopolitics, you're missing the biggest investment opportunity of the next 20 years. Because what's happening right now in Venezuela isn't just changing the oil markets, it's reshaping gold, it's reshaping silver, the petrodollar system is creating a massive deflation play that could define your investment returns for the rest of your life, even if you're just 100% in stocks or anything else. So in the next 25 minutes, I'm going to show you exactly which sectors are about to boom, which are the ones at risk, and how to position yourself to profit from this seismic shift in commodities, which have knock-on effects to everything else, by the way. My name is Felix Prehn, I'm an ex-investor in bank accounts. Winston back there, who does all the hard research around here, which is why he looks so tired. And we've seen how Wall Street really works. I'm also the founder of the Goat Academy with over 20,000 students and the co-founder of Tradevision.io, where we give you access to insane level of data. I'll show you a hint of that today. And my mission here is very simple. Teach regular investors, which is what I used to be, how to spot the opportunities that Wall Street sees first before the mainstream catches on. And right now, Wall Street is quietly positioning for what I call the Venezuela reset. So by the end of this video, you'll understand exactly what that means and how to profit from it. So let's dive into it. Now, what actually happened? If you've been living on the rock, last Friday night, the United States launched a military strike against Venezuela. They captured Nicolas Maduro, who now faces narco-terrorism charges in New York. Now, why does that matter? Well, the oil infrastructure was left untouched. Not in the greatest shape, but they didn't damage it with the bombings. Zero damage to production facilities, refineries, or export ports apart from the Maduro years of cronyism and all of that, maintenance being not done properly. But it was a surgical precision strike. The US wants that infrastructure operational because they want the oil flowing. Venezuela has 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. That's 17% of all the oil on the planet. The Saudis are like, what about us? Canada hasn't got that much, Iran, Iraq, Russia, anyone. No one's got as much oil as these guys. And I've seen people on X saying, look, great. We'll just extract all this oil. We'll sell it and we pay off our 38 trillion national debt and get rid of income taxes. But what most people don't understand about Venezuelan oil, it's heavy crude oil, tar sands. This is the most expensive, most difficult oil to extract on the planet. Think of it like this. Middle Eastern oil is like sticking a straw in the ground and it just comes squirting out and it does a belly dance. Venezuelan oil is like trying to suck peanut butter through that same straw without the belly dance. It's thick, it's gooey, it requires massive infrastructure to extract and refine. Now, at peak production, Venezuela was doing about 3.5 million barrels per day. Today, less than one million, which is what happens when you let a thousand generals run the country. So the infrastructure is 25 years old. So it's like driving a 25-year-old, I don't know, what would be a terrible 25-year-old car? I can't really think of one, actually. I'm just handing in a Toyota today, which is almost 20 years old and that actually drives perfectly. But anyway, you get the idea. It's decaying, right? Experts estimate this is going to cost $58 billion, maybe even $100 billion to restore to previous levels. Now, Trump says we're going to do this in 18 months. Industry experts say it's going to take years, years, right? Here are Trump's exact words. I think we can do it in less time than that, but it'll be a lot of money. A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and oil companies will spend it and then they're getting reimbursed by us all through revenue. So the U.S. government may actually subsidize American oil companies to rebuild Venezuela's energy industry. We're talking Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips. I'll tell you which one is the one I like out of those. And Trump has just announced Venezuela will transfer 30 to 50 million barrels of high quality oil to the United States in medium... Is that the word? I don't know and it's true because Chevron has already contracted 11 tankers scheduled to arrive at Venezuelan ports later this month. So they're just going to pick up some money, basically, and that money is going to get spent on U.S. or Venezuelan interests. My guess would be more American interests than Venezuelan. Maybe they're a lie. Maybe they're a lie. Before you now rush out and buy oil stocks or you kind of don't understand the gold and silver level yet or how it's impacting specific sectors, here's what most people miss. And this is so important the yellow glasses have to come on. So why does Venezuela actually matter for a second? In the 1970s the U.S. recalibrated its Gulf Coast refineries to process heavy crude because they were expecting light oil to run out. It didn't. Fracking gave the U.S. plenty of light crude oil. But those refineries are still set up for the heavy crude and switching them back would cost hundreds of billions. No one's going to do it. So today 70% of U.S. oil imports are heavy crude. Comes mostly from the snowmakers again. Sorry, the Canadians. That's a joke. Don't be offended. If there is, you know, hope for this germant of a sense of humor, you can also find one. 60% of U.S. heavy crude supply comes from up north. Now Venezuelan heavy crude is a direct substitute for moose oil and the same processing, the same refineries can handle it. So if Venezuela comes back online, the U.S. can reduce Canadian dependence and it can lower energy costs. That's actually one of the key investment opportunities here, once you understand that. And maybe you're thinking, Felix, I don't really believe this. Well, let me show you this tweet from the official White House X account. I've just been informed that Venezuela is going to be purchasing only American-made products with the money they receive from our new oil deal. These purchases will include, amongst other things, American agricultural products, American-made medicines, medical devices and equipment to improve Venezuela's electric grid and energy facilities. In other words, Venezuela is committing to doing business with the United States of America as their principal partner. A very wise choice. So this is basically a colony now, right? You get that, right? This is colonialism at its finest. Hopefully it'll be better than Maduro for the Venezuelan people, but that's basically what we're talking about here. Before we proceed, let me give you 30 seconds of why this matters. I learned how to manage my money and how to invest and therefore retire in my early 40s from my mentors. Those are guys who worked on Wall Street. Those were market makers, guys who worked and managed big hedge funds. And what I've been doing for the last few years is giving you guys access to those very mentors. Now, there's always a limit to how many students we can take because we teach one-on-one, literally but we've just opened up 30 spots for our Wall Street Protocol which has been closed. So if you are interested in potentially learning from people who understand this to a higher level than almost anybody in the world, book a freedom call as I call them to find out if learning from my Wall Street mentors might be right for you. There's a link down below. It is felixfriends.org freedom and my hope is that some of you guys will find the same freedom that I found. So check that out and we shall proceed, right? Put in the comments if you booked a call, by the way, and I can see that that is actually working here for you. Now, that call, by the way, it's free, zero risk. We're going to walk you through exactly what we do, how we do it. You can ask us a million questions, see if this is a good fit for you or not. There's a big warning here. Back to the Venezuela story. This is a two-year minimum investment theme, this one here. We're going to go back to gold and silver. That's a little bit quicker, but this is not a quick flip. This is not a trade you make on Monday and you sell on Friday. Why? Because it takes time to get oil production online. It takes time to dig for gold. It takes time to build infrastructure. So if you're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, this isn't it. Actually, this channel is never unsubscribed now. Block me. Please go away. If you're looking for a multi-year investment theme that could define the next decade, the obvious winners here are the US oil majors that will be involved in rebuilding the oil infrastructure. So who have we got? We've got Chevron, CVX. They are already operating in Venezuela. They're the only oil supermajor that maintained operations there. Everybody else left and got confiscated, basically, communized or whatever you call it. They've got 11 contracted tankers arriving in January. They have existing relationships, they have existing infrastructure, and they're definitely first in line because they're there. Second, so this is numero uno, numero dos is Exxon. Massive capital, global expertise in heavy crude operations. So if the US government is subsidizing this rebuild, Exxon will want a piece and I think they're going to get it. And then numero tres is COP, ConocoPhillips. This is the one I'm watching actually most closely. They have a very significant experience in heavy crude and they're positioned to benefit from increased US production and also refining. Now these companies won't just benefit from Venezuela directly, they benefit from the entire shift in heavy crude supply chain. So here's where it gets interesting. There is a loser in this trade that most people aren't talking about. So let me show you the losers. Canadian oil companies have been the darling of energy investments for the past years. The narrative has been Canadian oil is going to boom in 2026 and in 2027. Now I'm approaching that with some skepticism since last weekend and I'll tell you why. Canadian heavy sour crude oil is basically the same thing as the Venezuelan heavy crude. It's completely substitutable. Same requirement for processing, same refinery setup, basically same end product. So Venezuelan production ramps up and we're talking here years, right? I mean I would say two to five years is probably a more realistic outcome. Canadian oil companies are going to face some serious competition from a country that is basically US-owned and it's closer to the US Gulf where the US coastal refineries are. So it's actually cheaper to transport than to bring it in from a moose country up north. I love Canadians. You're amazing. You're wonderful people but sometimes I have to take the piss out of somebody. There's no French people in this video so I had to pick on you. So I'm not saying dump your Canadian energy stocks tomorrow. Some of them pay really nice dividends and that could be quite attractive as interest rates come down. But what's the path there? The stock market is forward-looking. So if you're heavily in Canadian oil producers, if you're Canadian, you understand this could have hurt them quite badly. But let's talk about the stuff that really matters and what nobody really seems to be understanding or discussing. This is the deflation play. This links into the whole reset talk. This links into gold and silver. This links into the value of the US dollar. This is a decades-long deflation play. When you increase oil supply, you lower the cost of everything else. Gasoline, heating, transportation, manufacturing, plastics, petrochemicals, and yes everything is basically wrapped in plastic. So pretty much everything in the world gets cheaper. Plus Venezuela is also burning enough natural gas which is a side product, by-product of the oil, to power the entire country. So the US is going to give them that gas capturing infrastructure and that's going to lower energy costs even more because Venezuela isn't going to need any of their own energy basically. It's going to be just free energy. What is the US going to do with this? Well the US has 38 trillion in debt. It pays a trillion annually just in interest, more than defense spending. Although Donald Trump said the defense budget next year should be 1.5 trillion. Right, that's taking care of that problem isn't it? So we'll work on a defense. We actually just did a defense stock research report that came out a little while back in the community. Link also down below if you want to check that out. Now what are they going to do? They're going to inflate the debt away. I keep saying this. JP Morgan confirmed in their 2026 outlook that policymakers will effectively inflate the debt away by driving inflation and lower religious rates. This little sentence here. This comes from JP Morgan, the lord and savior himself. But they need to control energy prices to keep inflation from, well, getting out of control and from stop you from getting pissed off with them. So the consumer, particularly in the US, measures inflation mostly at the gas stage. People see it. People notice it immediately. So what do you do? Well you flood the market with Venezuelan oil. The government can keep headline inflation manageable while keeping the real inflation quiet and no one's going to really notice it. So you can print all that money like they did after COVID and the rich get incredibly richer because asset prices go through the ******* moon. Sorry, excuse my French, but the man on the street isn't going to notice that his salary isn't going to take him very far in terms of assets. So we've seen this before. After World War II, the US had 106 percent of GDP, the economy, in debt. By 1974, it was just 23 percent. How did they do that? They inflated it away. The Fed capped their bond interest rates at two and a half percent. Inflation was running at six and a half percent. So investors on those bonds lost four percent per year. They lost 55 percent over 20 years, which is pretty extraordinary. And savers lost. Retirees lost. Who won? The government and asset owners. Yes, the rich. They got richer and richer and that's happening again. So how do you position yourself on the winning side this time now that you know this is happening? Well it's a golden opportunity. Central banks have been buying over a thousand tons annually in gold since 2022. That's double the average of the last decade. In October 2025, last data I have, they bought the most gold during a price pullback just one month after the first US strikes on Venezuelan boats. After the US froze Russian assets in 2022, coincidence there on the 2022, right? Central banks around the world realized whatever they hold in the US or in US government bonds, it could be stolen instantly. And maybe you think it's right that we steal, you know, the Russians' gold or whatever. That's neither here nor there. But you must realize that every other country in the world is like, they can just do that. Have we got anything in dollars? Yeah, we've got most of our stuff in US debt and gold, but he stored in New York. Well, let's do something about that, right? So this is triggering a massive de-dollarization. And Venezuela was part of this. They joined the BRICS. They moved away from the dollar. China became the largest oil buyer. And now the US controls their oil completely. In fact, they're literally just taking it. They're just picking it up, right? So what's the message to our country? Buy more gold. Gold has overtaken the dollar as the leading reserve asset for foreign central bank. And this trend accelerates. I'm not telling you this on financial advice. It's just my humble opinions. Obviously, go away and do your own bloody research, but that's what we're talking about. Second, we have silver. Extreme supply tightness. China just implemented export controls. Can't bring the stuff out any more easily. We've got industrial demand from solar, from electronics, from AI. Plus the paper market is breaking down. COMEX, who are the monkeys who are running the paper market, they used to have 378 bits of paper for every physical ounce of gold. So when they can't deliver physical metal, the paper price becomes kind of meaningless, right? So the physical price is taking over and the physical price is higher than the paper price. So short term, prices may pop again because of uncertainty. Now, there is this rumor out there which is being spread by the banks that there's going to be a massive silver sell-off. And sometimes you spread a rumor, things can happen. So what actually happened there? Well, there is a Bloomberg silver index and they're going to have to sell off some silver because it's like a rebalancing thing they do at the end of the year. Now, everybody knows that. So everybody's expecting silver to go down. So therefore, everybody has already sold silver, so shorted it. And now as that index actually sells the real silver, they're going to be buying back to close their positions. So in effect, I don't think it's going to do very much unless there might be a bit of fear-driven nonsense by the headlines, which COMEX might be pushing out there, right? So for me, it's always a question of silver. It's not a trading thing. It's something we buy and hold and accumulate, especially on pullbacks. So I'm personally very bullish on gold and silver going into the next year or two because of the structural demand that we have for both instruments. Again, that's my opinion. You're going to come to your own, right? If you want to potentially learn from, say, a market maker who worked the gold and silver market, then he's one of my mentors, then you might want to book yourself that freedom call at phoenixtrends.org slash freedom. Now, there is something even sexier in this. About as sexy as Venezuelan land, it's not very attractive. Not that I've met one, but I'm told they are very attractive. So here's a sector that's about to get a double boost from the Venezuela situation. Mining. Think about it. If gold and silver prices are going to go up, because increased central bank demand, supply tightness, mining companies, all that stuff. What if oil prices are going to go down because we now have more oil? Mining companies benefit even more. Why? Because energy is one of the largest costs for mining. Think about it. You've got to drill into that mountain. You're going to spend a lot of money on energy. So cheaper diesel for mining equipment, cheaper transportation costs, cheaper processing costs, higher profit margin. That's perfect storm for mining stocks, fundamentally strong demand for the metals, and then the costs actually going down. And mining stocks are always volatile, right? So this is not for the faint of heart. But if you look at, say, the junior gold miners here, they've had a pretty extraordinary 2025, right? Where they start somewhere down here, they did 172%, right? So it's kind of hard to be wrong on most gold miners. Is it going to continue? Well, what you're actually going to do is you're going to zoom out. You're going to go back to 2011 and see that these miners were at one point trading way higher than they are right now. We're talking another 46% up. So we're actually trading below 2011 valuations, which is kind of bonkers considering inflation, right? And with the Venezuela situation, it creates both higher metals prices. It lowers energy costs. I think mining stocks could be one of the best performing sectors in the next couple of years. But you need to be selective. Not all mining companies are created equal. You want companies with proven reserves, low production costs, strong management, and a jurisdiction that is safe. So maybe not Venezuela. So this is where you're going to do your homework, right? Now, let me tie this all together and show you exactly how to think about positioning here. This is my playbook. It doesn't have to be your playbook, but it can be the basis of your research. So let's put it together. Here's how I'm thinking about the Venezuela situation from an investment point of view. The theme number one, pretty straightforward. Companies like Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, they're going to benefit from rebuilding the oil infrastructure. They're going to get paid for that. They're going to get all the heavy crude production, which is going to fill their refineries. So these are long-term positions that could benefit from basically just Venezuela. We're thinking fat dividends, you know, if you've The second theme is precious metals. Gold and silver as insurance against de-dollarization, because I can tell you, Venezuela is going to speed up de-dollarization, right? If you're any country in the world, if you are not now buying assets like gold that you can hold in your own vaults, I mean, you've lost the plot, right? So how do we do this? You can just accumulate every month or on pullbacks if you want to be smarter about it. To me, this is kind of an insurance. It's like a long-term insurance against geopolitical risk and everything else. And then thirdly, this is again a trading play. It's mining stocks, major miners, carefully selected junior miners that benefit from them. For my students, I also provide pre-selected lists of those. It doesn't mean you need to buy them, but just narrows down your research a little bit. And that's kind of the leverage here. But you've got to do your research and your homework. Otherwise, you can get hit pretty hard. And then theme number four is avoid the oil moose, because there is now competition in town and the US is obviously going to prefer buying Venezuelan oil over Canadian because, well, they basically own Venezuela. They don't own Canada yet, says Trump. If you own those for the dividends, just understand the risk you're taking. But we also have deflation beneficiaries. And this is energy costs. So manufacturing companies, transportation, logistics, chemicals, they all have lower input costs as a result of Venezuela. And if you take on top of that the likely impact that AI is going to have on manufacturing, you no longer will need to make your stuff in a low-income country for the cheap labor. You can do it anywhere because robots and automation will do it. So that will actually continue the sort of globalization outsourcing thing, you know, your shirts made in Bangladesh or something because it's cheap there. You can actually now do that in the US because there'll be machines that do it and they're going to reach a very similar cost. So just like we saw in the late 90s when the jeans went from $100 to like $15 or something, that's going to continue. And they're going to do that to keep you and me thinking there is no inflation. But the reality is, look at the stock market, look at gold prices, that shows you what the actual inflation is. And if the stock market goes up like 20% in a year, unless you have a lot of assets in the stock market, you are 20% poorer in comparison to those who have. Your salary is worth 20% less in terms of stocks or in terms of gold or in terms of real estate. That's the real inflation and it's going to hit people really, really hard if they don't understand what's going on here. So get your money out of cash and into assets. Stop thinking about your salary and stop thinking about how you turn your salary into assets fast because cash is officially trash. The government, as confirmed by JP Morgan, the mighty, is going to inflate away the value of your dollars to reduce the debt. And I don't think that's sunk in yet. Asset owners win. You are asset owners. You are cash holders. People who live paycheck to paycheck. Be in stocks, be in real estate, be in commodities. The people who do that actually come out of this smiling, smelling even of roses. Now timeline. Timeline is important here because people have unrealistic expectations about this. So we immediately have this 30 to 50 million barrel transfer to the US. Chevron's picking that up. That's not going to move the needle on global oil markets significantly as a one term thing. Over the next six to 18 months, we're going to have a pretty good idea of what the Venezuelan infrastructure looks like, how much US investment is required, how long that's going to take. Hopefully it'll stabilize politically, especially for the Venezuelans watching. Actually one of my mentors is an amazing guy. He's a finance professor. He's written two books on investing and risk management and he's part of our gang and he lives in Venezuela. So I'm very happy and very much hopeful that life's going to get better for you guys over there. This is the wait and see phase. Not a lot's going to happen here in that phase until we have more clarity on what the new Venezuela is going to look like. And then the medium term, that's the rebuilding phrase. So production starts to ramp up. You get more oil coming out of the ground. The mining stocks benefit from the lower energy costs and that's when things start to play out. Typically we want to be in that a little bit earlier. And then the longer term stuff, well say Venezuela goes back to pumping out three million barrels a day, then that's going to really put on some pressure on oil prices. Deflation is going to flow through the economy. Precious metals will continue to reflect the de-dollarization. And then the very long term, you have this weird world where you get high inflation for the unwashed masses, you and me. Go back. Then you've got this weird environment where you've got high inflation for just assets. Why for assets? Because that's what the rich own. And then you have relatively low inflation, at least on paper, for your food and your oil and your gas and your heating and that kind of thing for the unwashed masses. So you've got to decide which side of the fence you want to be on there. Because if you live in paycheck to paycheck and you continue to do that, you think, oh my social security will bail me out or whatever. You're going to have a pretty tough life. I'm just saying that. Because living standards are going to drop but you'll be able to buy tons of cheap stuff that's made from plastic and phones and large TVs and takeaway meals and that kind of thing. Because they want to keep you calm. Stop you from rioting. Whereas the asset holders, they're going to be in some baths on their yachts having a good time. So if you're serious about thriving, not just surviving in this over the next years to come, find yourself a mentor. It doesn't have to be us. But as I'm saying, we have 30 spots available if you want to learn from my mentors. And you can do that by booking a free strategy call felixfrenz.org freedom. And if you got some value on this video, well, smash the you know what, share it with people, talk about it, spread it, all that kind of good stuff. And I hope it's been of value to you. And I hope you'll have an amazing 2026. All the best.