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President Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuela is shaking up Wall Street—but investors aren’t expecting it to derail the rally. Markets remain focused on domestic economic strength, supportive fiscal and monetary policy, and artificial-intelligence-driven earnings growth that many believe can extend the bull market into a fourth year.

Geopolitical risks could still weigh on sentiment at times, but investors are betting that a resilient U.S. economy, policy tailwinds, and AI-driven earnings growth will outweigh overseas uncertainty.

The S&P 500 recorded an impressive gain of around 18% in 2025, powered by a 37.4% rally from early April lows, when markets were rattled by Trump’s initial tariff rollout and fears of a renewed inflation spike.

Wall Street is expecting another year of double-digit advances for the benchmark, with the median price target from its biggest banks and investment firms pegged at around 7600 points, powered by expanding corporate profits, interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, and tax and spending tailwinds tied to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“The S&P 500 can see another year of solid performance supported by continued solid economic growth, modest cutting from the Fed, and an eventual cooling of inflation, driven by earnings growth rather than price-to-earnings expansion,” said Lori Calvasina, head of U.S. equities at RBC Capital Markets.

None of those drivers is likely to be affected by Maduro’s ouster in the near term, though concerns remain about U.S. ambitions to expand its military reach in the Western Hemisphere.

Around 40% of global crude output is produced in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, giving Trump unprecedented influence over production, pricing, and distribution in the coming years.

“The equity market is more than capable of shrugging off oil price volatility, especially given the shift in the U.S.’ net oil export position over recent decades,” said Thomas Mathews and Jonas Goltermann of Capital Economics.

Lower or more stable energy prices would also support domestic inflation trends—an important plank of the administration’s affordability agenda heading into this year’s midterm elections—but geopolitical spillovers could ripple through global supply chains, posing longer-term risks for U.S. equities.

“If the U.S. asserts itself unilaterally to advance economic or political objectives, it may set precedents that reverberate across other regions,” said Alex Veroude, head of fixed income at Janus Henderson Investors. “It also makes it harder for the U.S. to condemn similar actions by others in the future.”

China, a key purchaser of Venezuelan crude, could be incentivized to assert greater pressure on Taiwan, tightening Beijing’s grip on semiconductor shipments from the region.

That has obvious implications for the technology sector, which accounted for the lion’s share of last year’s S&P 500 gains.

And for a market that relies on both tech and artificial intelligence performance—while trading at historically expensive valuations—that could be a problem.

“S&P 500 earnings for the last several years have been concentrated in two themes: Tech/AI and a resilient U.S. consumer,” said Savita Subramanian, Bank of America’s head of U.S. equity & quantitative strategy.

“But if AI reduces demand for professional service employees, this poses risk to the U.S.’s consumer-driven economy,” she added. “The trillion dollar question becomes: if this Tech revolution is like others, what new jobs will be created by AI? We find this question difficult to answer for now.”

John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, sees it differently. He notes that while the market’s six biggest tech stocks—Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta Platforms — are likely to contribute around 50% of the S&P 500’s anticipated 15.6% in collective earnings growth, that’s down from around 70% in 2025.

“This implies the market is pricing in healthy acceleration outside of tech vs. strong growth though decelerating trends in tech,” he said.

Belton also argues that the so-called Mag six are “still seeing robust growth, reasonable valuations, positive earnings revisions, and seemingly conservative forward estimates.”

“Not a bad starting point in framing investment outlooks,” he added.

Write to Martin Baccardax at martin.baccardax@barrons.com

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