Novo Nordisk shares in Europe appear to be forming a base after a 5.5-month bottoming process, following a mid-2024 peak and a subsequent 71% collapse.

Goldman analyst Faris Mourad is telling clients this week that “obesity drugs narrative sentiment is on the rise” and “it’s an opportunity to buy the dip.”

Mourad explained:

The relative performance of the Obesity Drugs basket (GSHLCBMI) to the S&P 500 (SPX) is lagging its narrative sentiment. The basket is down -2 standard deviations today and we think it’s a good opportunity to buy the dip.

We flagged the obesity drug theme yesterday: We like going long our global obesity drugs basket (GSHLCBMI) since it provides exposure to the leading companies (LLY and NVO) as well as potential emerging leaders in this space: market is moving beyond the dominance of a few key players, with new entrants and diverse therapeutic approaches intensifying competition. Large pharmaceutical companies are actively engaging in M&A and licensing deals to replenish pipelines and acquire next-generation obesity assets, as evidenced by Pfizer’s acquisition of Metsera and Roche’s deal with Zealand Pharma in late 2025.

We notice equity investors are also focused on the industries that could face challenges as obesity drugs become more popular. We consider a handful at risk: junk foods, alcohol, tobacco, and health care companies that may be impacted in the medical tech, tools, services, and managed care space. We created a basket that combines all: global unhealthy lifestyle (GSCBUHLT) that can trade $200m in one day at 10% of volume.

Our research team highlights 2026 as a pivotal year for the development of obesity market, with the launch of NVO’s Wegovy pill (approved by the FDA in late Dec25 and expected commercial rollout in early 2026) and Lilly’s Orforglipron (expected FDA approval in 2026), together with the initial unlock of the Medicare population, potentially significantly increasing the addressable population for obesity medications. We expect the focus in the first half of the year to be on the launch dynamics for the Wegovy pill and orforglipron, with sales estimates 25-35% ahead of company consensus for 2027-29. That being said: street consensus estimates show no changes to 2026 and 2027 revenues driven by Oral obesity drugs and the group traded below earnings expectations for the majority of the last year.

GS research is significantly ahead of consensus on the revenue potential of oral Wegovy:

Meanwhile street consensus estimates show no changes to 2026 and 2027 revenues driven by Oral obesity drugs:

Obesity drugs traded below earnings expectations for the majority of the last year:

Related:

Novo Undercuts Lilly’s Obesity Drug Price, Now Cheaper Than Car Payment

Medicare Secures 71% Price Cut On Novo’s Anti-Obesity Drug As Part Of Broad Affordability Push

Novo Nordisk Plunges After Ozempic Pill Fails Alzheimer’s Trials – Shares Suffer Worst Year Ever

Goldman, UBS React To Novo Nordisk Axing 9,000 Jobs, Slashing Guidance Amid GLP-1 Headwinds

“Much-Needed Win”: Novo Shares Jump Most In Nearly Two Years After US Approval Of Wegovy Obesity Pill

Will 2026 be a rebound here for Novo?

Authored by William Murray via RealClearEnergy,

It can be hard to explain to a general audience how important the release of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) is to policymakers, energy companies and investors who make hundreds of billions of dollars in investment decisions worldwide each year.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the Outlook included a Current Policies Scenario (CPS) that forecast future oil and natural gas demand over the coming decades based on current laws and government energy policies. This scenario was then used by banks and companies to extrapolate how many billions of dollars they must invest to satisfy coming energy demand. 

The IEA’s all-star reputation made the CPS the benchmark for global energy supply and demand forecasts for decades – until recently. 

In 2020, under its long-time Executive Director Fatih Birol, the IEA decided to abandon the CPS, “in part due to pressure from European nations and green campaigners,” according to Bloomberg energy analyst Javier Blas. Most of these green campaigners were interested in using climate policies to permanently displace oil and coal production.

To do this, IEA inserted new scenarios that considered policy ambitions and aspirations that had not yet become law. This analytical misdirection allowed Paris Accord-era net-zero emission goals to become a concrete forecasting reality. As a result, these forecasts showed peak global oil demand only an additional 3 million to 106 million barrels a day by 2030 before permanently declining.

Riding on IEA’s reputation, these forecasts helped the Davos crowd churn elite public opinion toward the Net-zero and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework in the early 2020s, which played a role in the ultimate suppression of billions of dollars in investment in carbon and hydrocarbon resources.

The IEA reinstated the Current Policies Scenario for 2025 after pressure from the Trump administration, while confirming that no peak in global oil demand should be expected until at least 2050. This is a welcome decision, but not before much damage was done, according to a recent report published by the National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA). 

The report, written by Neil Atkinson, a NCEA Visiting Fellow and the former head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets division, and Adam Sieminski, former administrator for the U.S. Energy Information Administration, found that while reinstatement of the CPS in the 2025 WEO “has gone a long way toward answering that its scenarios are divorced from reality,” the IEA must still do more to reverse past mistakes.

The latest critique found that the IEA is still making a series of unsupportable market assumptions, including:

Electric Vehicles: Forecasts of electric vehicle adoption remain overly optimistic, leading to overestimates of oil demand destruction for light-duty vehicles.

Aviation: A forecast for even a small reduction in aviation fuel use remains overly aggressive.

Marine shipping: The IEA continues to present overly aggressive forecasts of a significant decline in crude oil use for global oceangoing shipping.

Even if the IEA fixes its methodological problems and appoints a new Executive Director, damage from the five-year absence of the Current Policies Scenario could last for a long time. Sieminski and Atkinson estimate that as much as $1.5 trillion of underinvestment in oil and natural gas exploration is expected over the next decade. Underinvestment in the oil patch leads to supply shortfalls, which inevitably brings about a spike in energy prices and a new, much higher price plateau.

By projecting a 2030 demand peak for oil, the IEA sacrificed its credibility, giving succor and elite air cover to organizations like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-backed group whose members topped out at 140 banks with trillions of dollars in assets, pledging to align their portfolios with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

It is unknown exactly how much international investment banks withdrew from funding Arctic oil and coal resources, but many went on the record saying they did. The collapse of the Banking Alliance in the fall of 2025, driven by a combination of political pressure and market realities, will not make up for the consequences of a self-inflicted, years-long supply-demand lag.

The report’s authors do not go so far as to directly accuse the IEA of sneakily undermining the investment climate enough to create future recession-causing price spikes, but energy experts know that similar production shortfalls in the past have done exactly that. 

In the 1970s, a barrel of oil went from $4 to a new plateau of about $32 a barrel by 1981, a seven-fold rise in the nominal price that crashed many national economies. In the super-spike era between 2004 and 2013, long-term oil prices roughly tripled while playing an underappreciated supporting role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. 

If another major upward price correction arrives in the coming years, don’t forget to include the IEA’s willful errors when making a list of perpetrators. All government institutions are political, no matter how much structure is insulated from direct influence. Let’s hope the IEA has learned a lesson or two about the costs of believing there is a “right side of history” to be on.

William Murray is a former chief speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the past editor of RealClearEnergy from 2015-2017, and has covered energy and environmental policy in Washington D.C., as a journalist and analyst for the past two decades.

A new bombshell report in Financial Times says that US officials have held recent talks with Canadian separatists seeking to break Alberta, Canada’s oil-rich western province, away from Ottawa.

“Officials in the [US President] Donald Trump administration discussed loaning Alberta $500 million to break up Canada and make it the 51st state,” one source told the FT.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

This follows on the heels of Trump earlier this month posting a fictitious map showing Canada as part of the United States. The report also comes days after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos before the World Economic Forum (WEF). He called out President Trump for creating a “rupture” in the existing world order.

Carney has also told his parliament, “The world has changed. Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal in the US now – that’s the truth.”

Trump famously fired back: “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements” while adding that Carney “wasn’t so grateful” and that Canada “gets a lot of freebies from us.”

Recall too the words of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at Davos: “Alberta is a natural partner for the US. People are talking. People want sovereignty. They want what the US has got.“

And now the FT article, along with other media, claim Trump is destabilizing Canada by these secret meetings between the Canadian separatists and “very, very senior” officials in the US administration.

Jeff Rath, legal adviser to the movement in question – the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) – has gone so far as to proclaim that Washington is pushing for an “independent” Alberta.

APP leaders are now seeking follow-up meetings with the US State and Treasury Departments next month to request a $500 million credit facility to bankroll secession, while also pressing for US recognition and new pipeline routes that would bypass Canadian federal approval, according to the reports. They are said to be ‘taking advantage’ of the ongoing friction between the US and its northern neighbor. 

Sources briefed on the discussions told the Financial Times that representatives from the province, where it turns out Carney himself was raised, have met with US State Department officials in Washington on no less than three separate occasions over the past nine months.

Per The Daily Beast, a State Department spokesperson has admitted that the meetings took place but suggested nothing has been agreed to, stressing that “no commitments were made.”

That same report cites Carlo Dade from the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary think tank, who described: “The Americans are more than happy to continue to play Canadians off each other.”

Border czar Tom Homan said on Thursday that federal immigration authorities have made “a lot of progress” in recent days in Minnesota, signaling a possible shift in enforcement tactics as tensions remain high following deadly shootings and protests tied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

Border czar Tom Homan speaks during a news conference about ongoing immigration enforcement operations on January 29, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. [Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP]

Speaking at a press conference early Thursday at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Homan said he has been in the city since Monday overseeing intensified immigration operations that began last month.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last few days,” Homan said, describing efforts to “remove threats” from the community. He added that he plans to remain in Minnesota until “the problem’s gone.”

Homan said he traveled to Minneapolis “to regain law and order in the city beloved by me and work together to remove threats from the community,” and emphasized that his visit was focused on negotiation rather than public relations.

“I didn’t come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines,” Homan said. “I came here to seek solutions, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Homan also addressed Republican pushback to engaging with Democratic leaders in Minneapolis and Minnesota, but defended those discussions.

“Bottom line is, you can’t fix problems if you don’t have discussions,” he said – noting that he met with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who told him that county jails may notify ICE of release dates for criminals deemed public safety risks. Homan said such cooperation would allow ICE to take those individuals into custody more safely.

“Give us access to illegal alien public safety threats,” Homan said. “It’s common sense. It’s safer for the community. It’s safer for the agent.”

🚨 BREAKING: Tom Homan confirms Minnesota county jails will now NOTIFY ICE when public safety threat illegal aliens are being released, so they can be transferred to ICE agents

This is HUGE!

That’s why President Trump deployed Tom Homan.

“AG Keith Ellison clarified for me… pic.twitter.com/F6d4lDHu4I

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 29, 2026

Homan also said that the administration agreed that ICE “was a legitimate law enforcement agency that has a duty to enforce the laws enacted by Congress that keep this community safe,” but stressed that he disagreed with state and local officials who want to be directly involved in enforcement.

“I didn’t ask them to be immigration officers,” he said. “I’m asking them to be cops working with cops to help us take criminal aliens off the street.”

He argued that jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities “are sanctuaries for criminals.” 

Homan said he has held meetings with federal law enforcement managers, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers, as well as state and local officials, to convey “the president’s expectations with regard to federal immigration enforcement efforts.” He also made it clear that ICE officers would continue conducting “targeted enforcement operations.”

“We hit the streets, we know exactly who we’re looking for,” Homan said.

At the same time, Homan acknowledged imperfections in federal enforcement efforts amid protests and unrest.

“No organization is perfect,” he said, adding that administration officials, including President Trump, “have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made.”

Homan said he has directed ICE and CBP to work on a “drawdown plan” that would reduce street operations in favor of enforcement actions at jails and prisons.

“More agents in the jail means less agents in the street,” Homan said. “This is common-sense cooperation that allows us to draw down on the number of people we have here.”

“Yes, I said it,” he added. “Draw down the number of people here.”

“DRAW DOWN”: Tom Homan says increased cooperation with ICE in Minneapolis will mean less agents in the city. pic.twitter.com/C9NNV2xdHO

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 29, 2026

Homan called on state and local officials to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with federal agents, urging them to “tone down the dangerous rhetoric and condemn all unlawful action against law enforcement community.” He said local officers have described responding to 911 calls when protests turn violent, placing officers in dangerous situations.

“There are many ways your voice can be heard, express your feelings and affect change in the country across that line,” Homan said. “Political and other disagreements in this room should not at the expense of public safety and safety of federal law enforcement officers.”

Homan said federal resources would be withdrawn only if cooperation increases.

“As we see that cooperation happens, then the redeployment will happen,” he said.

🚨 BREAKING: Tom Homan confirms *ALL* illegal aliens in Minnesota remain eligible for deportation — not just those with a “criminal record”

“Prioritization does NOT mean they’re off the table!” 🔥🔥

“If the message we send is you can enter illegally and don’t worry about it!?… pic.twitter.com/iYRg8dSoPx

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 29, 2026

Addressing the recent fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Homan declined to offer specifics, saying, “Do I have an opinion? Yeah. A personal opinion. I’m not going to share that with you.” He added, “We’ll let the investigation play out.”

He stressed that he does not want further loss of life during immigration operations.

“I don’t want to see anybody die, even the people we’re looking for,” Homan said. “I say a prayer every night that everybody was home safe.”

He also slammed Democrats for doing nothing…

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. Tom Homan just CALLED OUT the outraged Democrats in front of millions

“Where were THEY, the last 4 years, when women and children being s*x trafficked reached an ALL-TIME HIGH?”

“Where were THEY when a quarter million Americans DIED from fentanyl coming across… pic.twitter.com/5rKFWOYLNe

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 29, 2026

Homan also warned that individuals responsible for organizing attacks on federal officers would face consequences.

“The organization and funding of attacks on ICE – they will be held accountable,” he said. “Justice is coming.”

Tom Homan: “About the organization and the funding of the attacks on ICE… they’ll be held accountable. Justice is coming.” pic.twitter.com/mjeqKzarWn

— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) January 29, 2026

He reiterated that ICE operations nationwide would remain focused on specific targets.

“All operations will be targeted,” Homan said, adding that agents are prioritizing “criminal animals, public safety threats, and national security threats.”

“We got a lot of them,” he said. “We got a lot of them that keep us busy.”

Homan rejected the idea that shifting tactics represented a retreat.

“We are not surrendering our mission at all,” he said. “We are just doing it smarter.”

Meanwhile, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he would travel to Washington, D.C., to press federal lawmakers to halt the enforcement effort.

“Minneapolis may be where we’ve seen one of the largest ICE deployments in the country, but it will not be the last if we fail to act,” Frey said. “I’m going to Washington to make the case for ending this strategy and replacing it with approaches that build trust, improve safety, and put our residents first.”

The competing messages underscore the political and operational tensions surrounding federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota, as negotiations continue over the future scope and scale of ICE activity in the state.

Watch the entire press conference below:

WATCH Tom Homan Press Conference in Minneapolis https://t.co/pKKNC6M5W5

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 29, 2026