No rare earths = no fighter jets = no modern war machine.
The U.S. remains heavily dependent on China for critical rare-earth materials, with roughly 70% of rare-earth imports coming from China. And Beijing has increasingly demonstrated its willingness to restrict exports of strategic minerals. The vulnerability goes far beyond fighter jets. Rare earths and related critical minerals are essential for missiles, radar systems, drones, satellites, precision-guided weapons, submarines and advanced electronics. If inventories are already tight, a prolonged disruption in Chinese supply could become a serious bottleneck for U.S. defense production. That creates a striking strategic paradox: America's military-industrial base still depends, in part, on supply chains dominated by its biggest geopolitical rival. China doesn't necessarily need to fire a shot to exert pressure. Sometimes the most powerful weapon is controlling what your opponent needs to keep fighting. Sun Tzu would understand the strategy. Source: Lukas Ekwueme
One of the biggest surprise of 2026 is the COLLAPSE of volatility
We have a war in the Middle East, a volatile oil price, a new Fed Chair and mid-term elections ahead. And yet the VIX, a measure of implied volatility in the S&P 500, has fallen to the lowest level since January. Even implied bond-market volatility is nearly 30% below the 5-yr average. So why are markets so resilient? - AI concerns are easing: Strong Big Tech earnings, accelerating cloud growth and expanding backlogs are increasing confidence that AI investment can generate attractive returns. Markets are becoming more selective, rewarding companies with clear monetization. - Earnings are booming and broadening: Q2 S&P 500 earnings growth is tracking around 48%, versus 24% expected initially. Strength is increasingly spreading beyond mega-cap technology. - The economy remains resilient: Manufacturing has accelerated to its strongest level in more than four years, supported by improving demand, production and industrial activity. - Macro risks are fading: Lower oil prices reduce inflation concerns, while a cooling labor market and slower wage growth have lowered expectations for further Fed tightening. - Record highs are not necessarily a warning: Historically, new highs have often been followed by strong medium- and long-term returns. Source: Liz Abramowicz, Bloomberg
Being short the market can be dangerous
Source: Stockwits
First offices of 6 companies worth a combined $22 trillion.
Source: Jon Erlichman
Cramer said investors should buy SpaceX $SPCX for their kids
Source: Barchart
64% of Young Men Who Trade Stocks Daily Feel Like Failures.
A new study found that daily stock trading is highly correlated with demoralization in young men, with 64% of men aged 18-29 who trade stocks daily reporting feelings of failure (via Family Studies, a pro-marriage think tank) via @SimoneFoxman Source: Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas Bloomberg
The Stock Market is approaching a major top and a possible 1987-like crash, warns Michael Burry, the man who has predicted 60 of the last 2 market crashes
Source: Barchart
SpaceX's first print as a public company (Tue 4 Aug, after the close) was a clean operational beat that the market rejected on cash flow. That gap is the whole story.
The numbers Revenue $7.81bn, +92% YoY from $4.1bn, against ~$6.9bn consensus; EPS: loss of $0.09/share vs -$0.26 expected; net loss narrowed to $541m from $1.0bn; Adjusted EBITDA $3.5bn vs $2.0bn consensus. All three segments beat 🚀 And then: capex $18.37bn, more than six times year-ago levels, of which $15.83bn went to AI — against a $13.22bn FactSet estimates 🔥. Segment split: -> Connectivity $4.29bn (+66% YoY), 1.7m net adds with ARPU held flat at $66, enterprise/government revenue +108%, Starlink now at 12 million subscribers. -> AI $2.6bn (+247% YoY), first quarter of positive segment adjusted EBITDA at $1.1bn, helped by $1.6bn of incremental Colossus cloud services revenue. -> Space only $962m with a $205m EBITDA loss — Starship remains an R&D line, not a business. 🤔 Why the stock reversed Shares closed +9.43% at $125.33, then fell to ~$114.6 after hours — the entire day's rally erased. ➡️ Reuters framed it precisely: the concern is cash flow, or the absence of it, with analysts fearing the burn rate forces a return to markets for equity and/or debt; the bonds have already been weak, and 911.5 million insider and employee shares come free on Thursday. ⚠️ Management guided Q3 and Q4 capex to broadly match Q2 — so roughly $55bn of capex in a single year against a $100bn cash pile, most of which is IPO proceeds. Set against that, Johnsen's claim of a sub-one-year payback on compute deployments, $6.7bn of additional cloud contracts signed in the first weeks of Q3, a $100bn ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) target for December, and the $1trn revenue projection pulled forward from 2031 to 2030. 😎 Classic Musk: the promise lengthens as the cash burn steepens. With 34% short interest on the float, the after-hours move is also positioning, not just fundamentals. ‼️ Market drivers to carry forward - Nvidia exclusivity is the cleanest read-across. Musk committed SpaceX to Vera Rubin processors exclusively, and NVDA rose ~2% after hours. - A target of 15–20GW of power and cooling online by end-2027, deliberately built ahead of GPU supply — that is a bid for turbines, transformers and grid capacity as much as for silicon. - Memory is the bottleneck, and the tape agrees. The Kospi added 4.0% overnight led by SK Hynix and Samsung, shrugging off SpaceX and AMD. 👉 My read: SpaceX is now the purest listed proxy for the AI capex question — a business with genuine cash-generative assets (Starlink at 40%+ segment margins) funding an option on compute at a burn rate no cash flow currently supports. Thursday's lockup is the near-term technical risk; the $100bn December ARR figure is the near-term fundamental test. Anyone who owns this at 1.6trn is underwriting Starship reusability and Starlink V3 economics, not this quarter's numbers. App Economy Insights
