💰 The Cookie Jar Is Open

THE MAIN EVENT
The Cookie Jar Is Open 🍪

Last week, we broke down SpaceX's $1.77 trillion IPO. This morning, it actually begins trading, but that’s not the whole story.

SpaceX raised a record $75 billion, the largest IPO in history, drawing roughly $300 billion of investor interest. That's $75 billion of cash getting vacuumed out of the market in a single listing.

The raise is so big that some are calling it a drain on market liquidity. There are only so many dollars to go around, and SpaceX just grabbed an enormous scoop.

Now look at who else is reaching for cash:

• Google is selling $80 billion of stock to fund its AI build-out, including a $10 billion check from Berkshire Hathaway.

• Oracle plans to raise $40 billion in fresh debt and equity, on top of the $43 billion of debt it already raised this fiscal year. Its $638 billion backlog looks unstoppable, but it burned $24 billion in free cash flow getting there.

• Super Micro announced a $7 billion raise to turn a wave of AI server orders into actual revenue, and the stock fell 28% in a day.

• Smaller players are piling in too: quantum-computing firm Quantinuum raised $1.7 billion, and data-center power maker ERock pulled in $600 million.

Plus, the next two giants haven’t tapped the market yet.

OpenAI and Anthropic are widely expected to be coming soon, already locked in a price war that's torching profits, and you can bet they'd rather grab funding before the market turns.

That’s a lot of hands reaching for the same cookie jar at the same time. The question is what it's telling us.

The Bear Read: This Is What A Top Looks Like 📉

When everyone rushes to sell you a piece of their company at once, history says pay attention. Heavy issuance into a hot market is a classic late-cycle tell: insiders raise when they think their stock is dear, not cheap.

And valuations are full by any honest measure.

• SpaceX priced at 92 times sales.

• OpenAI's own plan, $145 billion of revenue by 2029, would require 108% annual growth for five straight years, something that has never happened across 19,000 large companies.

• Roughly 70 U.S. stocks now trade above 10x sales, a bigger share of the market than at the dot-com peak.

Short seller Jim Chanos summed up the mood this week: "Bull markets put a premium on promises. Bear markets put a discount on reality."

The Bull Read: It's An Arms Race, Not An Exit 🏗️

Here's the flip side. This isn't a group of fading companies cashing out. It's a group of winners racing to fund the most expensive build-out in corporate history.

The most expensive build-out ever

AI data centers cost tens of billions, and the capital pool is finite. If you're Google, Oracle, or OpenAI, the nightmare isn't overpaying. It's letting a rival lock up the chips, power, and dollars first.

In that light, the "race to raise" looks rational. Grab the funding while it's cheap and available, because whoever hesitates gets out-built. It's the same competitive logic that's driven the whole AI trade.

Both things can be true at once. Valuations are stretched, and these companies need the cash to compete.

The Takeaway

A market top and a capital-hungry arms race can look identical right up until they don't.

The move isn't to call the top. It's to watch the quality of the raise.

Are companies funding from strength, while demand is real and cash flow is healthy? Or are they funding from need because the numbers still don’t pencil?

The three tells are free cash flow, debt loads, and IPO reception.

If the spending starts paying for itself, the bull case gets stronger. If balance sheets stretch and new listings stumble, the market is telling you that the cookie jar is running low.

MARKET MOOD
Markets Want Proof, Not Promises 🔍

Winners

Applied Materials ($AMAT) - Market Cap: $438.8B (Week-to-Date: +22.0%)

Applied Materials makes the machines that make chips, which puts it near the base of the AI supply chain. Revenue hit a record $7.9B, and adjusted EPS popped to $2.86. Management also said its chip-equipment business should grow more than 30% in 2026, as memory makers add capacity for AI workloads.

Cava Group ($CAVA) - Market Cap: $10.3B (Week-to-Date: +21.6%)

Cava jumped after UBS upgraded the fast-casual Mediterranean chain to Buy with a $90 price target, betting its traffic strength can hold up. Last quarter, same-restaurant sales rose 10%, driven by 7% traffic growth. Consumers might be cutting back elsewhere, but they're still lining up for Cava.

Intel ($INTC) - Market Cap: $587.8B (Week-to-Date: +17.9%)

Intel’s foundry dream got a badly needed credibility boost. Google ordered more than 3 million Intel-made AI chips for 2028, while Nvidia is also reportedly looking at Intel as a backup supplier to TSMC. Bank of America piled on with a rare double-upgrade to Buy and a $135 target. For once, the turnaround story has a customer attached.

Losers

Super Micro ($SMCI) – Market Cap: $19.2B (Week-to-Date: -23.2%)

Super Micro builds the servers that house Nvidia’s AI chips, so demand is not the issue. The stock sank after the company announced a $7B equity (and equity-linked) raise to buy parts for roughly $39B of AI server orders. The catch: those orders are not firm commitments, and shareholders are getting diluted today for a payoff that still has to show up.

AppLovin ($APP) – Market Cap: $160.8B (Week-to-Date: -14.1%)

AppLovin runs the engine that decides which ads you see inside mobile games and online stores. The stock fell as investors rotated out of pricey AI software and zeroed in on the risks: Meta and Google pressuring its e-commerce push, an ongoing SEC investigation, and steady insider selling. With a 53x P/E ratio, AppLovin was priced for perfection, and this week the market decided to stop paying up.

Oracle ($ORCL) – Market Cap: $529.5B (Week-to-Date: -13.8%)

Oracle’s AI cloud business is booming, but investors are starting to eye the bill. Cloud infrastructure revenue surged 93% and the backlog hit $638B, but that backlog only turns into revenue after the company builds the necessary data centers. Free cash flow was negative $24B in fiscal 2026. If the AI boom keeps roaring, this massive buildout could look like a generational land grab. If it cracks, shareholders are left holding the bag.

CHART OF THE WEEK
I Just Roasted My Own Portfolio 👀

I just roasted my own portfolio with a tool I’m building, and I realized it’s time to clean house.

The idea is simple: upload your holdings as percentages or dollar values, and it breaks them down by sector, geography, leverage, and what the portfolio is really betting on.

For me, the main thesis was clear: bullish USA, bullish tech, growth-oriented. I’m young enough to take a long-term view, so that part did not shock me.

Still, the readout pushed me to consider a few moves, and I’ll likely do these three:

• Close small positions where I don’t have enough conviction and the upside isn’t meaningful

• Book some wins from leveraged bets before a good trade turns into excessive risk

• Add infrastructure and energy exposure, where demand may be strong enough to offer steady returns (while still benefiting from the AI buildout)

I’m thinking about making this free on the site, but it would be a bit of an undertaking. So I’d love some feedback… 👇

FAST FACTS
From Pumps to Prediction Markets 🎰

🛢️ Gas Keeps Falling: The national average dropped to $4.12, a third straight weekly decline from $4.56 in late May, as crude stays below $100. [Read]

📊 Yet, Inflation Runs Hot: May CPI hit 4.2%, with energy driving 60% of the jump. The projected 2027 Social Security COLA just rose to 4.7%. [Read]

🎰 Sports Bets Go Mainstream: The CFTC moved to allow nationwide sports “event contracts” on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, a fight likely headed to the Supreme Court. [Read]

💳 AI Can Now Swipe Your Card: Visa teamed up with OpenAI, and Mastercard launched its own "Agent Pay." Now, AI agents can make purchases for you within spending caps. [Read]

₿ Bitcoin Bleeds Out: Investors have pulled ~$2 billion from Bitcoin ETFs so far in June, on track to top May's record outflows. [Read]

🎬 YouTubers Beat Hollywood: Two horror films from viral creators (ages 20 and 26) out-earned big-budget sequels. Obsession ($229M) and Backrooms ($216M) account for 20% of the summer box office. [Read]

🚀 SpaceX Gets Its First Analyst: New Street launched coverage with a $165 target, 22% above the $135 IPO price, implying a $2.3 trillion value. [Read] 

⚖️ Big Tech Loses A Round: A California judge denied Google and Meta a new trial in the youth social-media-addiction case. [Read]

WORDS TO REMEMBER
Great Stocks Reward Patient Owners 🧠