Hey Snackers,
If you’re a member of Gen X, you might remember the one-two punch of outrage brought on when Steven Spielberg’s PG-rated “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Gremlins” created a new PG-13 rating for those 12-year-olds who … couldn’t handle the terror of a creature that turned evil if it had a snack after midnight? Anyway, now Meta is bringing the same content moderation to Instagram, which will default to the Motion Picture Association rating for teen accounts. Of course, those wily teens will probably find a way around it as they always do, though Meta claims it has ways of detecting a user’s age.
US stocks spent most of Tuesday bouncing back from steep early losses before the S&P 500 careened back into the red late in the day after President Donald Trump posted that he was considering “terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil, and other elements of Trade, as retribution” for “purposefully not buying our Soybeans.” As the saying goes, you reap what you soy.
Tech was the worst-performing sector ETF, dragging down the Nasdaq 100. The Russell 2000 still managed to notch a new record close as small-caps climbed higher.
Rare earth stocks are Wall Street’s hottest trade right now
Rare earth stocks are having a blast at the moment. Small stocks in the critical and rare earth minerals sector — the latest flashpoint of US-China trade relations — have ripped, but the trade went into overdrive to start this week.
After JPMorgan announced on Monday a $10 billion plan to directly invest in key industries like critical minerals, the sector spiked as traders responded to the news and continued to bet on the US government’s ongoing support for the nascent sector.Â
In the announcement, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s CEO, wrote that “the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products, and manufacturing.”
One name in particular, MP Materials, soared 21% on Monday, with an eye-watering $4.7 billion worth of the stock trading in a single session. Ironically, that’s even more than the $3.3 billion that changed hands in JPMorgan stock.
Remarkably, the rare earth trade didn’t seem to be losing any steam on Tuesday.Â
With risk-off sentiment dominating the premarket session — the US and China having just rolled out their tit-for-tat port fees — the one winner from the trade tensions seems to still be the rare earth stocks. Indeed, other names in the industry were also trading higher yesterday, most notably United States Antimony Corp. (up 4.6%), Critical Materials (up 29%), and American Battery Technology Co. (up 23%).
The Takeaway
One of the big themes this year has been “follow the feds” replacing “follow the Fed” as a financial market maxim, with novel economic policies out of Washington having massive ramifications for traders. The reality is, one of the biggest end consumers of these rare earths is the Pentagon and one of the biggest suppliers is China, a situation that was inevitably going to become untenable as the Pentagon ratchets up pressure on, well, China. If you’re an American company with skin in the game on rare earths, traders increasingly seem to think this is your moment.Â
Meanwhile, gold and silver are the new meme stocks
Right now, it’s become more and more evident that among a certain group of highly online retail traders, gold and silver are the new meme stocks.
Momentum. Flows. Options activity. Intense retail enthusiasm. It’s all there. The new shiny toys for traders are the oldest, shiniest perceived stores of value.
In the 12 hours headed into Tuesday’s session, the SPDR Gold Shares ETF and iShares Silver Trust were the two most mentioned and most positively mentioned tickers on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, per SwaggyStocks.
JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain, who tracks retail flows, showed that net buying of commodity ETFs from this cohort were up to $163.1 million as of 4 p.m. ET on Monday, or in the 98th percentile relative to their one-year history.Â
Last Friday, those flows were in the 90th percentile, and nearly in the 80th percentile on Thursday.
The five-day average for call volumes in GLD recently hit a record, while those for its silver peer are at their highest since 2021.
The 14-day relative strength index, a technical gauge of the magnitude and persistence of price movements, is at its highest level since 2020 for the silver ETF. The gold ETF, meanwhile, has seen its 14-day RSI close above 70 (which indicates it’s in “overbought” territory) in all but one of the 30 trading days since the end of August.Â
That’s far and away the highest share of time it’s spent in “overbought” territory over any 30-session stretch since this product was introduced in 2004.
The Takeaway
Precious metals are normally what you turn to when the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And yet we’re seeing it bid up at the same time that the AI trade remains near all-time highs, zero-revenue nuclear energy company Oklo is ramping, and quantum computing stocks are also on fire. Once again, the nature of the assets that are seemingly going parabolic suggests that we’re in an intense bull market in anti-humanity.
The Best Thing We Read Today
The average price of a new vehicle in the US passed $50,000 for the first time ever
If you’re shopping for a new car, buckle up for sticker shock, as the average price for a new vehicle averaged $50,080 in September. Before you rush to blame tariffs, a Cox Automotive analyst noted that while tariffs did contribute, the rise was driven more by a “healthy mix of EVs and higher-end vehicles.”
Yesterday's Big Daily Movers
AMD jumped after reaching a deal to deploy 50,000 AI chips in data centers run by Oracle
Navitas Semiconductor spiked more than 25% after unveiling products “purpose-built” for Nvidia’s upcoming data center architecture
Data center stocks were knocked back amid China stress
Get more details on the biggest movers of the day right when the market closes: subscribe to The Wrap here.
What Else We're Snackin'
Both Apple and Samsung had strong third-quarter shipment numbers, driven by upgrades to their newest phones
So much for “Uptober,” as Metaplanet joins Nakamoto in having a market cap lower than the value of its bitcoin holdings and ethereum investors remain in “waiting mode”Â
Soon, you’ll be able to use ChatGPT to directly buy Walmart products and, well, do some more grown-up stuff, too
Meet the people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks
Snack Fact Of The Day
Amazon Prime now has 200 million shoppers in the US.
Today's Events
Earnings expected from ASML, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Abbott Labs, Progressive, PNC, United Airlines, Dollar Tree, and JB Hunt