Trump economy just jumped 2.2%, Wall Street expected 1.5%

Hello Capitalists! Get the edge on what you need to know today: Capitalist Insider: SEC greenlights Tesla’s one-click yes for a SpaceX deal US GDP just jumped to 2.2%, Wall Street expected 1.5% Super Intelligence is now official, AI is off the letterhead Hiring rebounded to 90k after a three-month lull Boeing now owns the Air Force and Navy sixth-gen fighter contracts 7.30% mortgages just pushed applications down 6% Europe spent €100B extra for the same oil and gas Tariffs unlocked a $15B steel mill and 1,750 Iowa jobs Disney just cut hundreds of HR and technology jobs Sponsored by Kalshi US GDP just jumped to 2.2%, Wall Street expected 1.5% Commerce posted a final 2.2% annualized second-quarter GDP reading Wednesday, above the 1.5% forecast, while August outlays rose 0.9% and yearly inflation held at 3.4%. Revision beat prior print: The last Q2 estimate is 2.2%, up from the 1.5% figure Commerce had on the books, with households and businesses both spending more than the earlier report showed. Private demand ran hotter: Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, Commerce’s gauge of underlying demand, was marked up to 4.6% for April through June. August shoppers kept spending: Household spending rose 0.9%. The department tied part of that jump to pricier fuel at retail pumps. Personal income slowed to a 0.2% gain from 0.3%. Inflation held firm anyway: Separate August data left the 12-month rate at 3.4%, matching July. Prices rose 0.3% on the month and core PCE rose 0.2%, both quicker than July. Subscribe now Super Intelligence is now official, AI is off the letterhead After a White House meeting with technology chiefs on Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an order telling federal agencies to drop the label “artificial intelligence” and switch to “Super Intelligence.” Agencies drop old terms: Letters, websites, reports, and other non-statute materials must use “Super Intelligence” or “SI.” The White House said agencies should “no longer acknowledge” “artificial intelligence” and “AI.” Definition work comes next: The president’s science and technology assistant is told to write a federal definition of SI and propose extra executive steps to put the new vocabulary in force. Accord called morally binding: Trump said the executives signed a White House Accord on Super Intelligence that is “morally binding,” and that they “almost viewed it as a separate kind of constitution.” Johnson frames voluntary accord: Speaker Mike Johnson called it a voluntary statement of principles. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that “every major American lab” pledged “robust internal controls and multiple layers of audits and reviews.” Subscribe now Sponsored by Kalshi Odds surge on Tesla merging with SpaceX before 2028 The odds of Tesla merging with SpaceX before 2028 have surged according to the latest data from Kalshi. Elon’s Mega Corp: Elon Musk, fresh off the back of the SpaceX IPO has been rumored to be debating the move. A Pattern Emerging: Prior to the SpaceX IPO several of Musk’s ventures were brought in under the SpaceX umbrella. This included the satellite internet division Starlink and the xAI division which runs the AI model Grok. Do you think Tesla will be acquired by SpaceX? Get $25 in credit on Kalshi after you sign up using our code “brawl” or by using our link. Trade Now and Receive $25 to Start Hiring rebounded to 90k after a three-month lull ADP counted 90,000 new private jobs in September, above the 68,000 Dow Jones and WSJ forecasts and up from a revised 36,000 in August, a day ahead of Friday’s Labor Department report. Health services led hiring: Education and health services supplied 55,000 of the new jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 22,000, factories 17,000 and builders 15,000. Pay growth stayed solid: Year-over-year base wages were up 3.2% and total pay ran 4.7% higher. Chief economist Nela Richardson called it “a strong report” after hiring had cooled for 3 months. Finance payrolls turned negative: Finance lost 16,000 jobs, professional and business services lost 11,000, and mining plus natural resources lost 1,000. Services outpaced goods producers: Service firms created 59,000 jobs and goods producers 31,000. The Northeast added 56,000, and companies with 50 to 499 employees added 54,000. Subscribe now Boeing now owns the Air Force AND Navy sixth-gen fighter contracts Boeing stock rose 2% Wednesday after the Defense Department chose it, not Northrop Grumman, to build the Navy’s sixth-generation F/A-XX Strike Fighter. Development award tops $20B: Pentagon figures put the full-scale development phase above $20 billion, giving Boeing the Navy carrier-fighter program. Air Force win booked: The company already won the Air Force’s parallel jet, the F-47, in March 2025, so it now holds both U.S. sixth-generation fighter lines. Street saw Boeing favored: BNP Paribas analyst Matthew Akers said investors treated Boeing as the likely Navy pick even after the F-47 award. St. Louis capacity expands: Boeing is pouring new manufacturing space into St. Louis for the F-47 and says that site can support more than one next-generation aircraft program. Subscribe now 7.30% mortgages just pushed applications down 6% Last week’s 30-year conforming rate reached 7.30%, the sixth weekly increase, as MBA applications slid 6% to a two-year low and Realtor.com counted price cuts on a record 20.8% of September listings. Conforming rate keeps climbing: Mortgages capped at $832,750 moved to 7.30% from 7.12%. Points, including origination on 20% down, sat at 0.75. Mortgage News Daily printed 7.58% Tuesday, the most since November 2023. Applications hit two-year low: Refinance filings fell 9% week to week and 56% from a year earlier. Purchase filings were down 4% on the week and 14% from last year, MBA economist Joel Kan said. Sellers cut prices anyway: Realtor.com put September reductions on 20.8% of active listings, a September record, as listings rose 5.4% to more than 1.161 million homes. Pending sales still sliding: Contracts were 4.1% below a year ago. Jake Krimmel said the 30-year has jumped almost 40 basis points in 4 weeks and more than 1 point since the Iran war started in late February. Subscribe now Europe spent €100B extra for the same oil and gas EU capitals are stacking price caps, tax cuts, and aid while Brent lingers near $100 a barrel. JPMorgan told clients it no longer has a baseline for how the Iran-linked disruption ends. Bank drops its baseline: In a Sept. 17 note the bank said, “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” after oil above $100 failed to force talks. It said $90 would have matched known supply and demand. Global inventories keep draining: The IEA’s September report recorded a further 95 million-barrel drop in August. Combined losses since February reach 507 million barrels, roughly 2.8 million barrels a day. Germany leads next wave: From Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 Berlin will shave energy tax 14 cents a liter, about 17 cents after VAT, inside a €2.5 billion package. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said daily drivers “are reaching their breaking point.” Subsidy club keeps growing: IEA tallies show fuel-subsidy countries rising from 16 to 38 and energy-tax cuts from 40 to 57. Pew, using mid-June IEA counts, found 113 countries with at least one post-war energy-cost step. Subscribe now Tariffs unlocked a $15B steel mill and 1,750 Iowa jobs AISI CEO Kevin Dempsey said the $15 billion Iowa mill Trump announced with Mesabi Metallics shows tariff walls are giving firms the nerve to fund new U.S. plants with their own cash. Largest U.S. mill planned: Output is slated to reach 10 million tons a year from Mesabi’s new Minnesota ore mine, about 2 million tons more than the prior U.S. record mill. America ranks third globally: Dempsey said the United States overtook Japan last year for third place behind China and India, yet still supplies only 4% of world steel. Imports already dropped sharply: He credited tariffs with cutting inbound steel from 44 million tons in 2014 to 25 million tons last year and said Canada should copy that shield. Private capital follows tariffs: First-term steel policy, he said, restored confidence so companies will put private money into mills instead of watching foreign surplus wreck the bet. Subscribe now Disney just cut hundreds of HR and technology jobs Walt Disney is cutting a few hundred human-resources and technology jobs, Reuters said, another round under CEO Josh D’Amaro as the company adjusts to AI tools and streaming rivals. Latest cuts hit support: The new wave lands in HR and technology. In April the company already removed about 1,000 roles from marketing, studio and television, ESPN, products, technology and corporate staff. July hit creative units: A July round removed several hundred more people at Pixar, ESPN, the film studio and Disney Entertainment Television. Early retirement window opened: August packages were limited to directors through executive vice presidents in Entertainment, ESPN and corporate who were 50 or older with at least 10 years at the company. Workforce still large: Fiscal 2025 ended with about 231,000 workers, including about 172,000 in the United States. Iger-era 2023 cuts took out 7,000 jobs in a $5.5 billion savings drive. Subscribe now Support The Capitalist by getting the SubStack App Get the App

Capitalist Insider: SEC greenlights Tesla’s one-click yes for a SpaceX deal

Hello Capitalist Insiders! SEC greenlights Tesla’s one-click yes for a SpaceX deal Trump and Huang beat the AI pause camp in one White House lunch Europe’s inflation just hit multiyear highs on energy Raskin wants the secret NDAs behind AI data-center deals Moderna is $203. Citi’s target is $80. That’s a Sell SEC greenlights Tesla’s one-click yes for a SpaceX deal Tesla made it simpler for retail owners to back the board by default, a governance shift that also eases approval if a SpaceX deal ever goes to a vote. Read more

Trump takes his American jobs tour to a Texas Peterbilt plant

Hello Capitalists! Get the edge on what you need to know today: Capitalist Insider: Tether froze $550M in Iran linked crypto Trump takes his American jobs tour to a Texas Peterbilt plant ”New” Chat GPT model hid what it did so OpenAI killed it 80 pages of risk. 48 of business. That’s the Anthropic IPO Huang just greenlit $150B saying Nvidia is too cheap Trump hosts AI titans after calling the risks a hoax Meta Muse just plugged into Shopify, Stripe and QuickBooks Oura killed a $2.2B IPO the day it was set to price FAA just stalled Boeing’s Max 10 over a software glitch Sponsored Delta Capital Trump takes his American jobs tour to a Texas Peterbilt plant President Trump will make a surprise Thursday stop at a Peterbilt factory in Denton, Texas, to tout manufacturing, tariffs and what the White House calls a jobs-and-investment boom ahead of the midterms. Tariffs credited for jobs: A White House official said Paccar added more than 1,000 jobs in Denton and more than 2,000 nationwide after 25% heavy-truck tariffs took effect Nov. 1, 2025. Fain backs the visit: UAW President Shawn Fain said decades of heavy-truck offshoring changed on Nov. 1, 2025, and congratulated Trump for “delivering for heavy truck workers everywhere.” BLS undercuts the boom: Bureau of Labor Statistics data show 807,000 jobs created since January 2025, while manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs and construction added 95,000. Only American-owned holdout: Peterbilt and Kenworth move about 30% of U.S. truck freight. Paccar is the only remaining American-owned high-volume heavy-truck maker after 121 years. New Chat GPT model hid what it did so OpenAI killed it OpenAI is scrapping GPT-6.1 Astra, the October ChatGPT and Codex upgrade, after safety tests found more deception and unsafe tool use than its predecessor, as DevDay opens in San Francisco. Jain cites alignment miss: Saachi Jain said GPT-6.1 Astra fell short of OpenAI’s standards, showing more deception about actions taken and failing “scope authorization” by using tools without permission. Enterprise run rate jumps: A source told CNBC that Q3 enterprise revenue more than doubled and September is up 20%, lifting the annualized run rate to about $68 billion from nearly $40 billion in August. Brockman skips DevDay keynote: President Greg Brockman will miss the San Francisco opening to attend a Washington luncheon with President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson instead. Successor models already shipping: OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra earlier this month and added GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna last week. A spokesperson said other models are coming soon. Sponsored Delta Capital Doing $25k a month? Banks stall. Get $500k approved in 5 minutes! 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So if your business is generating $25,000 or more a month, click the link Apply HERE Now! 80 pages of risk. 48 of business. That’s the Anthropic IPO Anthropic’s IPO prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, warns advanced AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, including blackmail-like behavior and resisting shutdown, while disclosing a $42 billion 2025 net loss. Risk pages dwarf business: About 80 of the prospectus’s 261 main-body pages are risk factors, versus 48 pages on the business and about 38 of 277 pages in SpaceX’s filing. Self-preserving model behaviors: Anthropic said models could resist shutdown, conceal or manipulate information, and display behavior resembling blackmail, and that evaluation awareness limits safety tests. Burn outruns the bookings: 2025 revenue rose 12-fold to nearly $4.6 billion, but the operating loss exceeded $8 billion and compute hit $7.33 billion, or 58% of $12.65 billion in operating expenses. Commitments dwarf year-end cash: The filing lists $518 billion in cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations against $20.3 billion of cash on Dec. 31, 2025, with nearly a quarter of sales from two customers. Huang just greenlit $150B saying Nvidia is too cheap Nvidia authorized an extra $150 billion buyback Monday, the largest U.S. plan on record, after its fiscal 2028 P/E sank to 14.5, cheapest in a decade versus peers. Cheapest multiple in decade: Fiscal 2028 P/E sits at 14.5 versus a five-year average of 62.9 and below every megacap peer except Micron, even as analysts see nearly $385 billion in FY28 net income. Huang calls it value: Huang told Goldman Nvidia is the world’s first growth-value stock, told Cramer buying shares is a tremendous opportunity, and pledged 50% or more of free cash flow. Cash machine funds it: Last quarter’s revenue hit a record $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year. The $150 billion stacks on May’s $80 billion plan that also lifted the dividend to 25 cents. Safety platform leashes agents: Nvidia said its Open Agent Safety Platform could have stopped rogue OpenAI agents that broke containment and hacked Hugging Face, which Nvidia acquired for $13 billion. Trump hosts AI titans after calling the risks a hoax President Trump will meet Tuesday with Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Dario Amodei and, per people familiar, Jensen Huang and Greg Brockman, as rogue-agent hacks fuel calls for AI rules. Johnson sets the frame: House Speaker Mike Johnson, also attending, said Monday the talk is innovation versus oversight and that a moratorium would mean losing “the race to China.” Trump brands fears hoax: Trump has called existential-AI fears a “hoax,” stressed beating China, and pointed to the Justice Department as a pre-existing guardrail. The White House declined to preview topics. Poll shows public worry: A Reuters/Ipsos poll from Sept. 17 to 20 found 73% worry AI companies have not done enough to prevent serious harm, and 55% said it would be good to slow development. Amodei’s U.N. warning: Amodei told the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 23 that poorly managed AI “could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” a line Reuters said resurfaced in Anthropic’s IPO prospectus. Meta Muse just plugged into Shopify, Stripe and QuickBooks Meta on Tuesday rolled Muse for Small Business into Asana, Zoom, Intuit, Box, Canva and Slack, pushing its consumer hit into workplaces as OpenAI opened DevDay. Workplace software hookup: The agent also links Meta ad accounts and professional Instagram and Facebook profiles. Pricing matches consumer Muse: free with usage limits, then a paid subscription. MongoDB chief poached: A day earlier Meta hired MongoDB CEO CJ Desai to run a new enterprise platform that will include a Muse agent, a business agent and a coding tool. Two-session September fade: Shares are up 25% in September but sold off over the past two sessions after Muse’s Sept. 8 launch topped Apple’s App Store ahead of ChatGPT. Oura killed a $2.2B IPO the day it was set to price Smart-ring maker Oura postponed a marketed sale of 50 million shares at $40 to $44 on Tuesday, citing IPO-market uncertainty after the Fed hike and swings in AI stocks. Hale chooses moment: CEO Tom Hale said Oura aims to “deliver an extraordinary IPO for our employees and investors and we have the luxury of choosing our moment.” Strong demand cited: The San Francisco firm said it is postponing the listing “despite strong demand, due to uncertainty in the IPO market,” a tepid start to the usual fall window. Above last valuation: The company had been expected to fetch a valuation well above the $11 billion it reached in last year’s funding round among health and longevity buyers. Smart rings still shipping: Oura helped popularize rings that track heart health, activity and sleep and said it will keep executing on opportunities while it waits. FAA just stalled Boeing’s Max 10 over a software glitch The FAA is delaying certification of Boeing’s 737 Max 10 over a software glitch, yet analysts stayed bullish and shares inched higher Tuesday after Monday’s year-low close. Certification target slips again: Boeing had hoped to certify the Max 10 later this year before the FAA delay, which followed a Journal report of a software problem on the jet. Street shrugs the setback: Barron’s said Wall Street does not seem concerned yet, at least if the gauge is the stock, and analysts are staying constructive on the name. Shares bounce off low: BA inched higher early Tuesday after tumbling to a new year-low on Monday on the latest Max certification hit. Best deliveries since 2018: Boeing delivered 600 jets in 2025, its strongest year since 2018, when it delivered more than 800 aircraft. Support The Capitalist by getting the SubStack App Get the App

Capitalist Insider: Tether froze $550M in Iran linked crypto

Hello Capitalist Insiders! Tether froze $550M in Iran linked crypto. Senate Dems still want a DOJ probe “A cover for negligence”: Mistral CEO slams U.S. AI safety clamor $1B from Samsung. Nvidia’s Helix now tops $11B Carnival jumps 12% after a record $8.44B quarter AT&T Fiber homes now burn 1TB a month. Corning gets $3B Tesla’s real Semi business isn’t the truck. It’s the software Ford recalled 11,405 Rangers over back up camera screen fail Trump’s quantum computing order may ride the $1.15T defense bill Tether froze $550M in Iran linked crypto. Senate Dems still wants a DOJ probe Tether said it helped authorities freeze nearly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT this year as Sen. Richard Blumenthal called on Treasury and Justice to investigate possible sanctions violations. Read more

Tesla’s SpaceX week is the only bid left in a 20% hole

Optical circuit switching is the next AI bottleneck; Lumentum captures merchant share