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🔔 The Opening Bell |
Good morning. |
The opening bell just rang, and Google is dunking on OpenAI, but first: Ghislaine Maxwell just added major fuel to the Epstein fire this morning in an interview from prison. Maxwell said she’ll tell the truth about the Epstein list—the list that the US Government just denied the existence of last week. |
We’re also looking at a big week on the markets, but not just because it’s the start of earnings season—it’s “Crypto Week” in Congress, where lawmakers will be considering three massively important crypto bills with the power to change US finance’s future (no exaggeration). |
And many are calling an upcoming “copper crisis” as demand for the highly practical, always-useful metal is set to outstrip supply. The potential gap makes this junior mine developer’s prospects worth highlighting: |
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A Rare Copper-Nickel Trading Setup? |
On behalf of NexMetals Mining Corp. |
Copper is called the new oil, with prices hitting decade highs. One junior has two strategic copper-nickel assets already producing high-grade results. Institutions and strategic investors are all in. See why. |
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📰 Market Headlines |
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Stocks retreated from record highs on Friday after President Trump escalated tariff threats, reigniting trade fears. |
The Dow fell 0.6%, the S&P 500 slipped 0.3%, and the Nasdaq dipped 0.2%. Bitcoin broke $120,000 ahead of Crypto Week. |
OpenAI's $3 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Windsurf fell apart on Friday—and in a wild turn of events, Google DeepMind is now hiring Windsurf's CEO, co-founder, and top researchers while securing a nonexclusive license to the startup's technology for a reported $2.4 billion. See how OpenAI dropped the bag and Google scooped it up → |
Bank leverage requirements will ease as US regulators proposed changes to the enhanced supplementary leverage ratio (eSLR) for global systemically important banks. The watering down of these requirements could boost Treasury market resilience by increasing banks' ability to absorb shocks during volatile periods. |
Ghislaine Maxwell says she’ll testify on the Epstein list, which doesn’t exist, according to the FBI’s and DoJ’s investigation. Their findings have led to mass criticism of the way the case was handled—the most inflammatory part being that the footage of Epstein’s prison cell was likely modified and that at least one minute’s worth of footage was missing. Here’s what Maxwell thinks about Epstein’s fate → |
Crypto Week begins as Congress stares down the barrel of three major digital asset bills: |
The GENIUS Act - would allow private companies to issue their own stablecoins (coins like USDT or Circle’s USDC) and likely make companies more open to accepting stablecoins as payment The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act - this would provide much-needed regulatory clarity on crypto, creating a “new category of registered digital assets,” according to Axios CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act - a bill that would strictly prevent the Fed from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which would perform the same function of stablecoins, but under government control—which can get weird fast (see China) |
Just to extrapolate out a bit—if these three bills pass in the coming weeks, we could be looking at a version of the US where private companies issue their own stablecoins, shoppers purchase groceries with USDC, Wall Street is keeping their cash in dollar-backed stables, and crypto markets are no longer worried about competition from the US government in the form of a CBDC. |
All of this positive crypto news—and crypto may only be starting to take off as Bitcoin enters the banana zone, the parabolic point from no return that it’s crossed in all three previous bull markets. |
Also, a list of people/institutions who are predicting a $200,000 Bitcoin by end of year: |
Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong Standard Chartered (bank) Leo Sun from The Motley Fool Bitwise |
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🧠 Make yourself heard |
Will Bitcoin hit $200,000 this year? |
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😱 Fear and Greed Index |
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🧠 The Missing (Market) Links |
Which emotion drives financial fraud the most?
xAI’s new model, Grok 4, is head-and-shoulders above the rest—at least on benchmarks
AltIndex still rates CoreWeave and Astera Labs with high AI Scores—but which company just quietly snuck into our AI model’s top 3 stock ratings?
Bitcoin is rising rapidly in a perfect storm—here are the major macroeconomic factors causing BTC to hit all-time-high “crisis mode” (hint: they aren’t positive)
Speaking of BTC, the cryptocurrency’s anonymous founder is now the 12th-richest man in the world.
Tourism is a major part of economies across the globe—but which country comes in 3rd after the US and China? |
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🪙 Crypto |
BlackRock's IBIT became the fastest ETF in history to reach $80 billion in assets under management, achieving the milestone five times faster than the previous record holder. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1 billion+ in inflows for two consecutive days as BTC skyrocketed past $120,000, catapulting total ETF assets beyond $158 billion. President Trump scrapped Federal Reserve crypto restrictions, directing collaboration with FDIC and OCC to support innovation in crypto-asset activities. |
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💰 Alternative Investing News |
The ultra-wealthy flooded private credit with $3.1 trillion in cash, chasing yield and income stability as family offices gathered in London during macro volatility. Gold rose 1.4% to $3,372.60 after Trump announced sweeping tariffs, including a 35% tax on Canadian imports, pushing investors into safe-haven assets. Private equity firms met resistance from Wall Street banks over early recruiting, with JPMorgan warning that junior analysts were skipping onboarding to chase buy-side roles. |
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🤖 AI/Future/Tech News |
SpaceX reportedly pledged $2 billion to Elon Musk's AI startup xAI as part of a larger $10 billion funding round. RealSense spun out from Intel and secured $50 million in funding to expand its 3D vision technology currently embedded in 60% of the world's autonomous mobile robots and security systems. IBM launched Power11 servers with 99.9999% uptime, cutting unplanned downtime to under 32 seconds a year. They added AI inference, letting businesses run AI and traditional workloads together without extra infrastructure. |
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💡 Ideas, trends, and analysis |
French cheese and wine producers warned that Trump's threatened tariffs would devastate exports and cost the dairy sector tens of millions in US sales. Online shoppers spent $24.1 billion during July’s "Black Friday in Summer," topping Adobe’s forecast with 30.3% growth. Over half of all purchases happened on mobile, and apparel saw the steepest discounts. |
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⚔️ Trade wars |
President Trump threatened 30% tariffs on European Union and Mexico imports starting August 1 after negotiations failed to reach comprehensive deals with these major trading partners. The EU suspended retaliatory countermeasures until early August, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. President Trump hit Canada with 35% tariffs on Thursday, citing "financial retaliation" from earlier duties, though many carveouts for oil and sector-specific goods will remain. Brazil received 50% tariff notices that could disrupt global commodity markets for coffee, beef, and oil, with President Lula defiantly stating Brazil "can survive without US trade" and will seek alternative trading partners. President Trump floated increasing his baseline global tariff rate to 15-20% in an NBC interview, up from the current 10% level, creating renewed uncertainty for international trade relations. |
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🌍 International Markets | | 🇨🇳 China's GDP growth cooled to 5.1% in Q2 from 5.4% in Q1, as analysts projected further deceleration to a concerning 4.0% by Q4 as US trade tensions and deflation pressures intensify. 🇩🇪 Germany's upper house of parliament approved a $54 billion corporate tax relief package aimed at reviving Europe's largest economy. 🇯🇵 🇪🇺 Japan and the European Union will jointly develop an extensive satellite network, according to a draft agreement for their July 23 summit. 🇳🇿 Heavy weekend rains triggered flooding and landslides across New Zealand's Tasman and Nelson regions, forcing evacuations and disrupting local commerce as roads remained closed through Monday. |
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🎤 What you said last time |
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“Holding tight, but have stashed some cash. Waiting for the current admin to do something really stupid, then I'll buy. Note that I'm not bold enough to short heavy right now.” |
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🚚 Market movers |
Intel slashed nearly 2,400 jobs in Oregon and over 1,500 more across California, Arizona, and Texas. Jaguar Land Rover recalled nearly 21,000 vehicles in the U.S. due to torn passenger airbags that may fail in a crash. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang held a press briefing in Beijing on July 16. US senators had urged him to avoid contact with Chinese firms tied to military or intelligence agencies. xAI and Grok apologized after the chatbot posted antisemitic and extremist content. The company blamed a flawed code update that made Grok overly responsive to user prompts. |
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📊 Earnings |
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📢 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? |
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📺 What to watch today |
| Dinosaur fossil found under Denver museum parking lot |
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That’s all for today. Did I miss anything? Smash the reply button to let me know. | Cheers,
Brandon with Stefan & Wyatt |
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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. |
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