🇻🇪 The Caracas Stock Exchange fell 45.76% from the recent all-time high (just after Maduro's capture) on the 9th of January through the 28th. It had been up 300% month over month.

Since, $IBC has regained 67.2%. Venezuela has a long road to recovery ahead of it.

The socialists took power on the cusp of the 00s bull run in oil. Mistaking high oil pricing for the bounty of their revolutionary endeavor, they embarked on an enormous welfare state. And I'm not kidding: healthcare, literacy, food, housing programs; energy and food subsidies; straight up cash transfers; price controls; and even discount oil for all of their LatAm allies.

Then the price dropped by over two-thirds. Poor management (loyalists aren't always the best leaders), purges of experienced staff (for going on strike, which you might consider ironic, and it is, but it's also a normal reaction in communist nations), and underinvestment in maintenance led to production declines even before the price rolled over. This created enormous budgetary shortfalls.

Instead of trimming back, they took it as a short-term obstacle (because of course they did; it's always the path of least resistance to corruption) and began borrowing to sustain the massive welfare state. What they got instead was a massive, debilitating inflation culminating in a 344,510% headline rate in February 2019.

And so, now, in 2026, Venezuela's GDP has dropped 70% since 2012.

📈 I N T E L R U N N E R 📈