September opened true to form. Stocks slipped on day one of the market's historically roughest month, with oil hovering near $90 and traders weighing whether the Fed's next move is a hike.

Then the closing bell rang and Dell stole the show, jumping 10% after hours on a record $60.9 billion in AI server orders. Washington added some calm, clearing a funding bill that keeps the government open into December.

The AI hardware theme gets its next test when Broadcom reports after the bell today. Plus, we break down what a stock buyback actually does for the shares you own.

Today:

📰 September starts red, oil near $90, shutdown averted
💻 Dell's $61 billion AI server order haul
💵 What a buyback actually does for your shares

Let's get started.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.

Sponsored by Stock Earnings

If AI IPO excitement keeps rising this summer, these are the types of names investors may want to have on their radar.

Corporate America spends around a trillion dollars a year buying back its own shares, and buyback announcements have become a fixture of nearly every earnings season. But what does a buyback actually do for you? The mechanics are simple: the company uses cash to purchase and retire its own shares, shrinking the share count. Nothing hits your brokerage account, but your slice of the company gets bigger.

The math makes it concrete. A company earns $10 billion a year with 1 billion shares outstanding, so earnings per share is $10. It buys back 5% of its shares, leaving 950 million. The same profit now divides across fewer shares, and EPS rises to $10.53, a 5.3% boost without the business improving at all. A buyback is effectively a tax-deferred dividend: a bigger ownership stake instead of a cash payment that gets taxed today. Repeat that for a decade and the effect on your returns adds up.

The catch is that buybacks are only as smart as the price paid. Repurchasing shares at reasonable valuations is a company investing in itself; buying at elevated prices spends cash that could have funded growth. Worth checking: whether buybacks are funded with heavy debt, and whether the share count is actually falling or just offsetting shares issued as executive compensation.

If a company you own is steadily shrinking its share count with cash it genuinely generates, that's a durable tailwind, and a five-year look at the share count will tell you. But if the count never actually drops, or the repurchases are debt-funded at record prices, the announcement deserves more skepticism than celebration.

US stocks fell Tuesday to open September, the market's historically weakest month, as oil extended its climb and traders braced for a possible Fed rate hike.

Oil kept rising after the weekend's US-Iran exchange, with Brent futures, the global benchmark, trading above $95 per barrel and the 10-year yield rising to 4.79%, its highest intraday level since January 2025. President Trump warned of a response to Iran's retaliatory strikes, telling a Fox News reporter, "We're going to hit them hard." The conflict remains at an impasse, with Tehran keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed and Washington maintaining its counter-blockade of Iranian ports.

Congress took a government shutdown off the table. The House voted 370-48 to pass a stopgap bill funding the government into December, sidestepping a politically fraught battle weeks before the midterm elections. The measure previously passed the Senate and now heads to President Trump's desk.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said a "mutually beneficial" trade deal with the US is still possible, but not while Washington is publicly mocking Canada: "When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade... we can have those discussions." Talks broke down August 21, when President Trump imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian imports; Canada's retaliatory duties on a roughly equal amount of US goods take effect September 8.

Friday's August jobs report headlines the rest of the week, the last major data point before the Fed's September meeting.

Sponsored by Greenfield Robotics

Howard Dahl spent decades building the machines that feed America. His family invented the Bobcat skid steer. The air drills planting nearly every commodity crop globally? Those too. Now Dahl is manufacturing weed-cutting robots for Greenfield Robotics out of his Fargo factory, and he wrote his own check on top of it. 

Greenfield's current fleet is sold out, with over $1 million in total revenue and robots in the field since 2020. Chipotle’s venture arm and KingsCrowd Capital are also on board. The robots slice weeds with centimeter precision, replacing herbicides linked to environmental damage and rising health concerns among farmers. 

Greenfield is now in Test the Waters under Reg A+. Reserving shares today locks in a 5% bonus that can grow to 20% the week the round opens to the public.

Reserve Your Shares

_{Greenfield Robotics is Testing The Waters under tier 2 of Regulation A. No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response will not be accepted. No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement filed by the company with the SEC has been qualified by the SEC. Any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of acceptance given after the date of qualification. An indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. “Reserving” shares is simply an indication of interest. There is no binding commitment for investors that reserve shares in this manner to ultimately invest and purchase the shares reserved of the company, or to purchase any shares of the company whatsoever.}

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Cheers,
Brandon & Blake of Invested Inc