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IonQ dips after raising $2 billion through a creative sale of stock and warrants

IonQ is falling in early trading after announcing plans to raise nearly $2 billion from the sale of stock and warrants to Heights Capital Management, an affiliate of Susquehanna that focuses on investing in high-growth firms.

The terms of the financing may look pretty odd, at first blush.

IonQ is selling:

16.5 million shares at $93 — a 20% premium to its closing price on Thursday!
Pre-funded warrants at $93 per share that enable the buyer to accumulate another ~5 million shares within seven years.
An additional set of seven-year warrants that allow for the purchase of an additional ~43 million shares, which are exercisable at a price of $155 — double where the shares closed on Thursday!

What’s going on here: Heights Capital is paying IonQ more than its shares are worth right now in order to get cheaper optionality to the stock going up over 20% or more than doubling over the next seven years.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a major bet by Heights Capital — if the stock does cross the $155 threshold within the next seven years, exercising all of the (now profitable) warrants would cost ~$6.7 billion.

There’s some definite ingenuity in the financing, but thanks to OpenAI, this isn’t even the oddest arrangement we’ve seen this week.

While quantum computing is a white-hot investment theme, pure-play companies are in relatively early stages of their commercialization, and as such, require some injections of capital from time to time. Earlier this week, Quantum Computing tumbled after announcing plans to raise $750 million through a private placement of stock.

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J. Edward Moreno

Lilly Endowment unloads about $600 million in Eli Lilly stock during early October

The nonprofit still owns about 10% of the company, a stake now worth about $80.9 billion.

Pharmaceutical Company Eli Lilly Headquarters

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Global automakers sink as Trump implies the trade war is heating back up

Shares of several major automakers with large footprints in China sank on Friday following President Trump’s threats to massively increase tariffs on goods from China in response to what he called “hostile” export controls.

Chinese EV titans like BYD, Nio, and XPeng plunged after Trump’s Truth Social post, along with automakers like Tesla and Stellantis that heavily rely on revenue from sales in the country.

EV makers like Rivian and Lucid, which source raw materials and or batteries from China, were also down following the post.

The move comes at a rocky time for US automakers, with the end of the EV tax credit expected to heavily ding sales for the rest of the year.

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Matt Phillips2h

Rare earth stocks spike after Trump says China should not be allowed to hold the world “captive” on rare earths

Shares of rare earth metal producers soared Friday after the president published a Truth Social statement decrying what he describes as Chinese efforts to control the pipeline of the sought-after minerals.

Companies such as MP Materials — which the US government recently took a stake in — USA Rare Earth, and Critical Metals jumped, suggesting investor bets that the the administration could play a bigger role in ensuring US access to rare earths.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

Companies such as MP Materials — which the US government recently took a stake in — USA Rare Earth, and Critical Metals jumped, suggesting investor bets that the the administration could play a bigger role in ensuring US access to rare earths.

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US stocks sink after Trump says he’s considering a “massive increase” of tariffs on Chinese imports

More tariffs might be back on the menu.

US stocks reversed lower after US President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post that he is considering a “massive increase” on tariffs of Chinese imports.

Trump said he’s mulling higher levies as well as “many other countermeasures” because of “the hostile ‘order’ that they have just put out” restricting the export of rare earth metals. He also seemingly canceled his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea in two weeks, saying “now there seems to be no reason to do so.”

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF, Invesco QQQ Trust, and iShares Russell 2000 ETF all gave up early gains to fall more than 1%. A basket of stocks compiled by Goldman Sachs of US companies that have significant revenue exposure to China is off more than 2%.

Wafer fab equipment stocks Lam Research, Applied Materials, and KLA Corp, which all count China as their top market, are underperforming, as is iPhone seller Apple.

Chip stocks Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, Broadcom, and Nvidia are all getting hit on the news, as rare earths are needed components for semiconductor production. For Tesla, it’s a similar story given its footprint in China and the importance of rare earths for EVs.

There’s also a lot of plain old dumping of recent winners.

Super Micro Computer, Coinbase, and Robinhood Markets are among the biggest laggards since Trump’s post as investors cut risk.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

The rare earth curbs are far from the only recent example of China stepping up its defense of domestic industry and resources. Qualcomm is the subject of an antitrust investigation, stringent checks of semiconductor shipments are reportedly in place as officials look to keep Nvidia’s chips from entering the country, and separate reporting indicates that US ships will be charged an escalating fee for docking at Chinese ports.

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Oklo surges amid heavy activity in call options expiring today

The most valuable pre-revenues company listed in the US, nuclear energy company Oklo, is up double digits on Friday amid heavy call options demand.

Call volumes of 74,230 have already outstripped the 10-day average for a full session an hour into the trading day, and the top three contracts traded are all in options that expire today with strike prices of $150, $145, and $160.

The first two contracts have jumped from out of the money to in the money amid the surge. Volumes transacted on the “ask” side (the lowest price a seller is willing to accept) are running more than 2x higher than on the “bid” side (the highest price a buyer is willing to pay), indicating motivated buyers in the C$150s, the most active contract.

Overall, options activity is firmly tilted to the bull side, with more than two calls trading for every put:

Nuclear energy companies have emerged as retail trader favorites as the power-hungry AI boom continues.

“A new $350 billion US nuclear build cycle could raise capacity 60% by 2050, sparking a renaissance to meet surging energy demand from AI and data centers,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence senior analysts Rob Barnett and Scott Levine. “Energized by bipartisan policy support, the nuclear industry is positioned as a critical solution for securing and decarbonizing America’s power grid for the AI era.”

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