💫 Gold’s meme shine

High-flying retail favorite Oklo reported a wider-than-expected loss after the close Tuesday but still finished Wednesday up almost 7% as analysts gave the company credit for making regulatory progress on its plan to develop smaller modular nuclear reactors that use different technology than traditional water-cooled nuclear power plants.

• These so-called “experimental breeder reactors,” or EBRs, use liquid metal — in Oklo’s case, liquid sodium — to cool metallic fuel made of uranium alloys, rather than the typical form of fuel used in nuclear reactors: ceramic-covered uranium pellets contained in fuel rods that are cooled with vast amounts of water, making them nearly impossible to build compactly.

• The company is currently building its first product, a reactor it calls Aurora, at the US Energy Department’s primary nuclear energy research and development center, the Idaho National Laboratory. 

• Analysts recognized Oklo for hitting recent milestones, including receiving Department of Energy approval of a safety plan for the facility it will use to make the fuel for its reactor in just two weeks. Bank of America analyst Dimple Gosai wrote that the “rapid two-week approval of Oklo’s INL Fuel Fabrication Facility NSDA reflects strong agency backing.”

The reactor is expected to be completed sometime in late 2027 or 2028. The company broke ground on the project in September.

The Takeaway

Separately, in its earnings results Oklo highlighted that it received approval for its Pluto A test reactor to pursue authorizations for building its experimental reactors through the Department of Energy without having to wait for full commercial approvals of its reactors from the Nuclear Regulatory Council. 

“Oklo continues to see regulatory acceleration for its projects with the DOE authorizing an approval to construct and operate a nuclear facility creating a modern pathway to get new nuclear plants built quickly,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote.

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A ton of volatile retail darlings got crushed on Wednesday, and the hot momentum-seeking money seems to be flowing out of those speculative pockets of the market and back into gold.

• Daily call volumes in the SPDR Gold Shares ETF outstripped 1 million by 1:10 p.m. ET on Wednesday, roughly triple their 334,000 average over the previous 10 full sessions.

• As of 1:30 p.m. ET, retail traders had poured $82.4 million into commodity ETFs, per JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain — inflows that are in the 95th percentile relative to their one-year average.

• Retail had been exiting gold in late October, JPMorgan data shows, after a torrid run in the price action and trading activity in precious metals were exactly what you’d expect from a meme stock.

This comes as retail traders seemingly aren’t eager to buy the weakness in single stocks the way they used to be, as we saw in the recent market downturn. It appears they’ve found somewhere to stash their cash.

The Takeaway

This is a bit of a historical return to form for gold, which has always been an attractive store of value and a shiny object to keep around for the very sake of it being a shiny object. When in doubt, investors tend to throw their money at rocks; though obviously the mineral of choice lately has been silicon, gold’s been on a rebound.

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What would a 50-year mortgage mean for homebuyers?

The typical first-time homebuyer in the US is 40 years old — the highest on record. That’s a problem, and it’s one that President Trump believes could be alleviated with a longer mortgage. We broke down how long it would take to pay the first $100,000 on a $400,000 loan with a 15-, 30-, and 50-year mortgage.

See it charted

• 🏈 NFL: The luckless New York Jets are at the ascendant New England Patriots tonight for Thursday Night Football, and markets are currently heavily favoring the Pats, pricing in around an 85% chance of victory. 

• ☀️ Solar: Despite federal incentives to install solar panels falling to the wayside, traders nevertheless think the US will finish 2025 with a lot more installed capacity, with prices indicating a 95% chance of at least 30 gigawatts direct current (GWdc) installed this year, a 70% chance of at least 40 GWdc, and even a 21% chance of more than 50 GWdc.

• 🌎 Trade: The current rate of US tariffs on China is 20%, and markets generally think it’s going to stay that way through at least the end of the year. Traders are pricing in a 46% chance that the tariff rate remains where it currently is, between 20% and 29.9%; an 18% chance it’ll be in one of the lower tranches; and a 36% chance that it will go higher.

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

The average American driver now spends 63 hours a year stuck in traffic, but in which three US cities do commuters face the scariest traffic jams? (Answer below.)

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