US stocks bounced Tuesday as investors positioned ahead of Nvidia's earnings. The Dow rose 0.3%, the S&P 500 gained 0.3%, and the Nasdaq climbed 0.6%.

But the bigger story is SpaceX committing $100 billion to a second Starbase in Louisiana. The physical infrastructure for the next wave is being built right now. One spaceport can't service the pipeline anymore.

Today:

📰 Stocks bounce ahead of Nvidia earnings, Canada retaliates
🤖 OpenAI challenges Nvidia, Anthropic's ambitious TAM
⚙️ VW cuts 100,000 jobs

Let's get started.

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

SpaceX announced a multibillion-dollar Louisiana spaceport dedicated to Starship launches. This isn't hedging. This is expansion because demand justifies it. Texas Starbase wasn't enough. Neither will Louisiana be in five years.

The space economy is no longer theoretical. It's capital-intensive and growing. Satellite constellations, deep space missions, lunar infrastructure, all require launches. Lots of them. One spaceport can't service the pipeline.

This signals what abundance looks like: physical infrastructure being built right now. SpaceX isn't waiting for perfect conditions. They're expanding because the market rewards it. That's confidence, not hype.

The Louisiana deal removes regulatory bottlenecks and signals US infrastructure is ready to compete with China on space dominance. The same logic applies to AI infrastructure: regulatory constraints could hand the next 20 years to competitors. SpaceX's $100 billion bet reflects that calculus.

SpaceX expanding launch capacity means more satellites, more supply chains, more abundance compounding through every sector. Musk isn't talking about the future. He's building it.

Sponsored by AltIndex

You know your credit score. You know your net worth. But you've never had a number for how good your portfolio actually is. AltIndex fixes that. Connect your brokerage and every position gets a live 0 to 100 grade, built from hiring, insider, Reddit, and web-traffic data. Rotten Tomatoes for your portfolio.

US stocks climbed Tuesday as investors shrugged off escalating trade tensions with Canada and turned their attention to Nvidia's quarterly results due Wednesday.

Trump said he will increase tariffs on Canadian cars and trucks, as well as auto parts, from 25% to 50% as of 1 January after US-Canada trade talks collapsed with no set date to resume. Canadian officials said the US introduced last-minute unacceptable demands, including a clause limiting which countries Canada could sign trade deals with. Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded combatively, pushing back hard and suggesting Canada should charge more for oil, gas, electricity, and critical minerals.

Nvidia stock snapped a seven-day losing streak, climbing 2% ahead of Wednesday's earnings report. The chipmaker remains the main event this week as investors look for signs that AI demand is holding up despite broader market jitters. Nvidia has been under pressure recently, but analysts still expect blockbuster numbers from the company that's become the bellwether for the entire AI trade.

Bitcoin briefly surged above $80,000 for the first time in three months after the Treasury's intervention in the bond market revived concerns about dollar debasement. Gold also continued its march higher as investors rotated into alternative assets. The move signals that some traders are growing nervous about the dollar's stability amid the trade war chaos.

OpenAI claims its new custom AI chips can outperform Nvidia processors in tests, according to Bloomberg. The announcement comes as OpenAI pushes to reduce its dependence on Nvidia's GPUs, which have become both expensive and hard to source. Whether OpenAI's Jalapeno chips can actually compete at scale remains to be seen, but the claim alone adds pressure on Nvidia heading into earnings.

Anthropic is expected to tell investors its total addressable market exceeds $30 trillion, the Wall Street Journal reported, topping even SpaceX's $28.5 trillion estimate from its May IPO filing. The Claude chatbot maker is projecting 2028 revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion, with its IPO valuation hinging on those forecasts. To justify the massive TAM figure, Anthropic is looking at the full scope of work that could be completed with AI models.

DICK's Sporting Goods (DKS) stock sank 30% before the bell after the retailer missed second quarter expectations and cut its full-year outlook, citing challenging conditions in the athletic marketplace. The stock's decline underscores the pressure facing consumer discretionary names as cost-of-living headaches weigh on shoppers.

Consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since January as new home sales also dropped, according to data released Tuesday. The weak readings set the stage for Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole speech later this week, where markets will parse every word for clues about the rate path. Warsh has emphasized inflation-fighting credentials since taking over the Fed, and the trade war's potential impact on prices adds another layer of uncertainty.

Iran and Oman are pushing for talks on an interim reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Bloomberg reported. Any progress on normalizing oil flows through the critical waterway could ease energy prices that have been volatile since hostilities escalated earlier this year. Oil held relatively steady Tuesday as investors weighed the diplomatic developments.

Intuit and Zoom report earnings Tuesday, offering reads on enterprise software demand, while Nvidia's results Wednesday will be the week's main event.

Your feedback matters to us! Let us know what you liked or didn’t like about today’s edition.

That’s all for today. Did we miss anything? Smash the reply button to let me know.

Cheers,
Brandon & Blake of Invested Inc