Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, December 17th, and this is your FD News briefing.

Donald Trump's involvement in Venezuela has bond investors hopeful, and J.P. Morgan Chase is having a field day with U.S. Treasuries.

Plus, despite all the ups and downs, investors are remaining bullish on American AI stocks.

We'll tell you why.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Investors are snapping up Venezuela's defaulted debt. The country's bonds have rallied recently to

33 cents on the dollar. That's a 40% rise since the start of October. Now, you might have

picked up on the word defaulted earlier and are wondering why investors would want to go anywhere near

Venezuelan debt?

Good question.

Well, U.S. President Donald Trump is putting military pressure on the country,

and if Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro gets ousted,

investors think Caracas might actually pay back its debt.

Analysts are pouring some cold water on all this, though.

A chaotic downfall of the Maduro regime could trigger a civil war

instead of IMF-backed restructuring talks.

J.P. Morgan Chase has withdrawn almost $350 billion in cash from its account at the Federal Reserve

since 2023. And the bank has plowed a lot of that into U.S. government debt. The move is a way

to defend itself against rate cuts that could eat into its profits. Here to tell us more is the

FTs U.S. banking editor, Josh Franklin. Hey, Josh. Hi, Mark.

So just explain to us what exactly is going on here. J.P. Morgan is essentially lowering its cash reserves

and investing that money into U.S. treasuries. Exactly. So U.S. banks, big U.S. banks, they have accounts

...