🔔 The Opening Bell
Good morning—and welcome to Stocks & Income.
The tariff tide keeps rising, and markets are feeling it.
Stocks have had a rough ride this week as President Trump announced a slew of new tariffs, including a 50% copper tariff that sent copper flying to an all-time high.
And we’re covering the great coffee clash today: Starbucks vs. Luckin, and how Starbs looks as an investment (as well as a look at another US-based coffee brand stock).
Speaking of alt investments, today’s partner enables you to invest in one of the most alternative investments we’ve seen—walnut trees, from seedling to harvested walnuts to mature (and profitable) timber.
🌳 Invest in Walnut Trees
And harvest profits for 40 years.
The Walnut Fund lets you finance actual walnut trees that produce high-quality nuts for decades, and get a share of profits from harvested walnuts, processed products (like walnut oil and walnut butter), and eventually, the mature timber itself. 🪵
How it Works
You fund planting. Your capital funds the planting of walnut trees on pre-vetted farmland in Serbia.
Hands-off, passive investing. The Fund handles everything: Maintenance, harvesting, sales, and logistics.
Get dividends for 40 years. You receive annual payouts starting year ~5. These continue for up to 40 years
Get a final share of proceeds. At the end of their life, the trees are harvested for timber.
Why Invest in Walnuts?
Walnuts are a durable, high-demand crop with an exceptional shelf life.
They’re less water-intensive than almonds
Far less volatile than coffee or cacao
Sell for over $2,500/ton on global markets (This is 2x higher than palm oil)
The timber is valuable too — it’s prized for furniture and interior woodwork, with mature logs fetching up to $12,000 per tree.
Express Interest
This is one of the most interesting and unique deals we have seen all year.
The trees are insured, and even replaced if they fail to take root. You just share in the upside.
Express interest below.
Both accredited & non-accredited investors are eligible.
☕ The Ideology-Based Coffee War
Starbucks built a lifestyle. Luckin built a machine. And now, they’re going head-to-head for dominance.
Starbucks’ new “Back to Starbucks” campaign is a return to form led by its new “miracle worker” CEO Brian Niccol: handwritten cups, in-store vibes, and freshly baked pastries. It’s about slowing down.
Niccol has brought brands like Taco Bell and Chipotle back from the brink of death, but people aren’t sure he can do it for Starbucks. AltIndex doesn’t either—$SBUX ( ▼ 0.48% ) is posting lower net income and lower employee sentiment, among other troubling signals. See Starbucks’ bleak data and stock rating here →
But Luckin is all about acceleration:
Digital-only orders
No cashiers
Bare-bones cafés
30% cheaper drinks than Starbucks in China
Growing fast
It’s not without baggage. A 2020 Luckin fraud scandal wiped out the CEO and led to a $180M SEC fine. But Luckin clawed back and now leads Starbucks in China. This week, it opened two stores in NYC—its first US expansion since the scandal.
Luckin’s no longer a punchline. It’s a high-speed retail machine with tech DNA—and it’s hunting global growth.
Two observations on the two competing companies:
🧑💻 Luckin’s approach resembles a tech startup more than a café.
🍵 Starbucks is betting on familiarity, warmth, and a full retail experience.
Both strategies have risks, and Starbucks definitely doesn’t look like a stellar investment at the moment. But there’s also a third way: Dutch Bros. It blends Starbucks’ experience-driven brand with Luckin’s digital efficiency—and Wall Street loves it: 90% of analysts rate Dutch Bros as a buy right now (even though AltIndex gives it a “hold”).
📰 Market Headlines
Markets slipped Tuesday as new tariffs loomed. S&P 500 ticked down, Dow fell 0.4%, Nasdaq held steady.
Trump’s new tariff announcements:
14 letters to countries outlining new tariffs.
25%+ tariffs on Japan and South Korea (starting Aug. 1).
30–40% on Myanmar, Laos, South Africa.
Copper imports hit with 50%, sending copper to a new all-time high.
A 200% pharma tariff threat gives companies ~18 months to move production back to the US.
🌊 Flooding in Texas worsens. At least 110 dead, 161 still missing in Kerr County. RFK Jr. declares public health emergency.
See the latest news coverage of the disaster →
🧬 A Chinese national was arrested for hacking 60,000+ Microsoft Exchange servers and stealing COVID research.
🧠 See the DOJ’s exposé on HAFNIUM’s hacking spree →
🧾 Mortgage rates dipped—and buyers are back.
The housing market seems to be finally flipping. Mortgage applications are up 9% this week, and are 25% higher than this time last year.
🏡 See what state you’ll get the best mortgage rates in →
💰 How much do you need in savings to improve your life?
🪙 Crypto catches fire again. BNY Mellon to custody Ripple’s stablecoin—boosting XRP’s legitimacy as an investment and as a serious player on the global financial stage. Stablecoin investing is trending among institutions overall.
📊 Why it’s looking like “Stablecoin Summer” →
🧠 Make yourself heard
New tariffs, same playbook. What’s your take?
😱 Fear and Greed Index
🐦️ Twitter Roundup
We’re living through one of the biggest swings from fear to greed that we’ve ever seen →
Carvana: the comeback story of the 2020’s?
Why AI that can continuously learn could be the key to super intelligence—without any more algorithmic progress
🤖 AI/Future/Tech News
Gmail rolled out a subscription manager that auto-sorts senders by frequency and adds one-click unsubscribe buttons.
xAI updated Grok to assume media bias and make “politically incorrect” claims if they’re substantiated.
Corporate-backed startup funding doubled to $129 billion in H1 2025, lifted by record-shattering AI rounds.
Microsoft sealed a strategic partnership with Replit, bringing the no-code app builder to Azure Marketplace and integrating it with Microsoft’s cloud stack.
🪙 Crypto
Trump Media & Technology Group registered a new "blue-chip" crypto ETF with the SEC to hold bitcoin, ether, solana, and ripple.
Bit Digital shifted its treasury strategy to ethereum, selling its bitcoin.
SharpLink Gaming shares surged nearly 26% after boosting its corporate treasury to over 200,000 ETH.
Ego Death Capital raised $100 million to back early-stage, Bitcoin-only companies, showing continued investor interest in the original cryptocurrency.
💡 Ideas, trends, and analysis
New tariff proposals could cost American families $2,300 this year, raising consumer prices by 1.7% and pushing the effective US tariff rate to its highest since 1934.
⚔️ Trade wars
President Trump said the US is close to signing a trade deal with India, after notably leaving India off the list of 14 countries receiving tariff threat letters.
🌍 International Markets
🇨🇳 China’s National Development and Reform Commission unveiled new monitoring tools to track supply chain risks, tech disruptions, and tariff impacts.
🇫🇷 Emmanuel Macron's state visit to the UK focused on repairing the £100 billion trading relationship and forming a united front.
🇮🇩 Indonesia's tech giant GoTo and banking leader BCA rallied to develop local talent as skilled workers increasingly left the country for positions abroad.
🎤 What you said last time
“We all know infrastructure is crumbing across the country. Is there money to be made on repairing all of that? Or will it always just be boring slow returns that are basically bonds repackaged as stocks?”
🚚 Market movers
Apple can’t catch a break—Jeff Williams retired as Apple’s COO after nearly 30 years. Sabih Khan, previously SVP of operations, stepped into the role.
Samsung acquired Xealth to expand its connected care strategy.
Concentra bought Cargo Therapeutics for $4.38 per share plus contingent value rights.
Over 200 indie labels opposed Universal Music’s $775 million bid for Downtown Music in a letter to the European Commission, citing threats to competition.
📊 Earnings
No notable stocks today.
📢 We want to hear from you
We love hearing from you, and we deeply appreciate your feedback.
⭐️ What did you think of today's edition?
📺 What to watch today
That’s all for today. Did I miss anything? Smash the reply button to let me know.
Cheers,
Brandon with Stefan & Wyatt
Examples that we provide of share price increases pertaining to a particular Issuer from one referenced date to another represent an arbitrarily chosen time period and are no indication whatsoever of future stock prices for that Issuer and are of no predictive value. Our stock profiles are intended to highlight certain companies for YOUR further investigation; they are NOT stock recommendations or constitute an offer or sale of the referenced securities. Do your own research.
