Impossible Deadline

Impossible Deadline… Or Is It?

It was all handshakes and smiles for the latest meeting between President Trump and China’s President Xi last week. That could change — dramatically — by Wednesday.

There were no breakthroughs to speak of. This morning Beijing issued a statement saying the two governments will discuss AI at a meeting in late November. A truce in the tariff wars has been extended another two months to Jan. 10. Beijing got tariff relief totaling $30 billion; presumably Washington will get something similar.

But there was nothing about stepping up Chinese exports of rare earth elements to the United States.

In April of last year, Beijing slapped export controls on many of those minerals — used in everything from smartphones to guided missile systems. China controls the lion’s share of rare earth mining and processing.

With that, Washington moved quickly to start the process of securing domestic supply. 

By July, the federal government took a 15% stake in the rare earth firm MP Materials (MP). Then this January, Uncle Sam took a 10% stake in USA Rare Earth (USAR). Many Paradigm readers profited big from one or both of those deals.

“Some Pentagon officials say they are aiming for a ‘closed loop’ of U.S. and allied supply chains for some minerals by 2030,” according to today’s Wall Street Journal.

But the White House has set a more ambitious timetable: U.S. military contractors face a deadline of next year to remove certain metals from their supply chain if they come from China or other countries Washington labels an “adversary.”

To meet that objective, the Trump administration will take a dramatic step in the next 48 hours. It probably won’t go down well in Beijing.

Buried in the Federal Register under Section 1260H is a clue to what’s going down. “I refer to it as Trump’s Blacklist,” says Paradigm macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards.

“Because inside these documents are the names of 188 specific companies. Some of them are massive — worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”

These are companies the Trump administration views as standing in the way of its plans to bring the critical metals supply chain home. And they’re now officially banned from access to nearly every major industry in America.

This coming Wednesday Sept. 30, Jim says “a federal deadline — which is already scheduled — is set to unleash what I believe will amount to $200 billion… But NONE of this money can touch these banned entities.”

Jim’s research shows a huge portion of this wealth could be forced into a small group of U.S. companies. One of them trades for only $5 a share.

Events are moving quickly. Wednesday is just two days away. You’ll want to check out Jim’s latest online briefing You’ll want to check out Jim’s latest online briefing by clicking here.

The (Trading) Times Are Changing

Ready or not, here comes nearly 24-hour stock trading.

Starting Dec. 6, Nasdaq plans to keep its market open 23 hours a day, five days a week. NYSE Arca and Cboe are preparing similar expansions.

Nasdaq’s rationale — accommodate growing global demand for U.S. stocks. The new hours will allow investors around the world access to U.S. markets at more convenient times, potentially increasing foreign investment.

Already, alternative trading systems including Robinhood offer overnight trading in many stocks and ETFs. “Near-continuous trading is moving from the market’s edges toward the mainstream,” says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.

Enrique says these extended hours could fundamentally change how markets react to news — and how quickly your stocks can move before you even wake up. “What happens when a major announcement hits while most of a company's executives, analysts and investors are asleep?”

That said, “just because a market is open doesn't mean it will behave the same way at every hour.” Trading will be less active during certain hours. Spreads could widen, and trades on smaller companies could have larger price swings. “The 2 a.m. stock market may look very different from the 2 p.m. stock market.”

Moving to 23/5 trading may only be the first step. The SEC is already discussing what might be required for 24/7 trading. 

Whatever the case, what’s coming in December “could change everything from overnight liquidity to how companies release information.”

That’s exactly why following Paradigm’s experts matters. As Enrique warns, “We don’t necessarily need to trade at 2 a.m. But we need to understand what happens to our investments when somebody else can.”

But for the moment, trading still runs 9:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Eastern — and the major indexes are in the red today. 

The S&P 500 is off a half percent but still holding the line on 7,700. But AI darling Nvidia is up 2.3% at last check after announcing the single biggest share buyback in stock market history.

The more dramatic action lies elsewhere. U.S. oil futures are up nearly 2.5% to $94.67 despite claims from anonymous U.S. officials in the media that a “positive discussion” with Tehran is underway.

Once more, we have rising oil prices feeding into rising inflation expectations, feeding into rising Treasury yields. The 10-year note is now over 5.25% for the first time since 2007 while the 30-year bond is up to 5.58%, another high last seen in 2004.

For today anyway, rising interest rates are an excuse to slam the precious metals. Gold is down 3.4%, back where it was in early August at $4,140. Silver’s down 4.3% to $61.39.

But crypto is looking stout, Bitcoin just over $84,000 and Ethereum approaching $2,700.

Cornering the Wolf

We’re not done with China and metals today.

Hundreds of years ago, German miners struggled with a mineral that seemed to “eat” tin during smelting — so they called it wolfram or “wolf’s froth.” 

Today we call it tungsten — and ever since World War II it’s been essential to weaponry.

At various times through history, tungsten has been vulnerable to “cornering” — when only one or two market players acquire enough to move the price big-time.

During World War II, Portugal supplied about 60% of Germany’s tungsten. As Germany and the Allies competed for limited supplies, tungsten soared from $0.88 per kilogram to $24, an increase of more than 26X. By one estimate, Germany forked over 123 metric tons of gold just to pay for tungsten.

Fast-forward to the present: “China plans to play the role of Portugal… where they have the supplies and you pay the spot price for the metals,” says Paradigm natural resources pro Matt Badiali.

China accounts for roughly 80% of global tungsten mining and 85% of refined tungsten. (Very similar figures to rare earths.) China’s dominance of the market gives it supply and pricing power. 

“I believe that China studied how the Portuguese once cornered the market on tungsten,” Matt tells us — “and now China is applying that playbook not only to tungsten but to all tech metals today.”

Sure enough, since April 2025, the price of tungsten has risen 900%, in part due to Chinese export controls. Matt has recommended a handful of names in this space to his Real Wealth Insider readers.

Update: Data Centers in Space

The big space news today is SpaceX’s first Starship launch into orbit — but there’s another launch our tech-investing specialist Ray Blanco is eyeing. 

On Friday, months ahead of schedule, SpaceX plans to launch the first prototype for Google’s Project Suncatcher, carrying four of Google’s custom AI chips into orbit.

It’s a major leap toward Elon Musk’s goal of data centers in space — something we first explored nearly a year ago and which Musk aims to have in operation by next year.

Ray points out intriguing details. To start, he asks: “Who built the satellite? Planet Labs (PL).” He adds, “Google’s chips are riding on one of Planet’s existing satellite buses, which supplies the spacecraft’s power, steering and communications.”

Importantly, Planet Labs isn’t the only space bet of Google parent Alphabet. “SpaceX, Planet and AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) are Alphabet’s three largest stock holdings.”

To be precise, they’re Alphabet’s three largest disclosed 13F equity positions. The fact that all of them are space companies shows Google is putting serious money into space.

Nor is Google alone.

Last November, a small startup, Starcloud, launched an Nvidia H100 chip into orbit. It used the chip to train a small AI model on Shakespeare’s complete works. “So the first AI trained in orbit probably talks like the Bard,” Ray quips.

But there’s a problem, and a potential opportunity for investors. “The challenge is heat.”

There’s no air in space to dissipate the heat. On Google’s first Suncatcher prototype, the TPUs are expected to operate for only about 15 minutes before needing time to cool.

That’s why Ray is watching ASTS, one of his favorite names and one he’s talked up in this e-letter previously. “Its satellites carry the largest commercial communication arrays in orbit, about 2,400 square feet each.”

Those are ASTS’ Block 2 Bluebird satellites, assembled from modular tiles the company calls “microns.” Putting a compute unit on a tile gives it a way to radiate heat. “The design looks tailor-made for a compute application,” says Ray.

Admittedly, that’s conjecture on his part — not an announced design by ASTS. But ASTS already lists AI edge computing among the potential applications for its BlueBird platform.

Between Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Ray says, “The space data center race is on…”

Mailbag: Censorship

Reader response to the 2026 censorship edition published on Friday was… frankly, discouraging to sift through.

In these polarized times, people see what they want to see — and so a couple of readers wrote off your editor as “left” or even “far left.” One of them helpfully added, “Give it up, loser.”

But on the other hand, my citation of the late Charlie Kirk brought forth a torrent of vitriol that Kirk “was an ignorant racist, delusional intellectually challenged ****ing idiot moron ****”... and that I personally am “allowing racist behavior to exist” by invoking his name.

One reader did attempt to mount a cogent argument…

“How can I put this simply? We cannot stand on principle when the fabric of society is being torn apart by agent saboteurs weaponizing constitutional protections to sow chaos and undermine those very principles. 

“OK, so it might be complicated. The world is becoming more extreme. There is no way to keep your hands clean and fight this extremism and all its destructive consequences at the same time.

“The principle of free speech was intended for native-born citizens, with a stake in the country, who have legitimate political differences and grievances. Not for agent saboteurs and supporters of terrorism. 

“In general I support pulling the visas of students who sow political chaos on campus. Kimmel weaponized a broadcast television show of a major network to attack a duly elected administration and its voting bloc, in order to advance the agenda of the party he supports. This is called propaganda and cannot be allowed on network TV.

“And the guy from Texas disseminating Antifa material? Are you kidding me? Antifa is a violent terrorist organization trying to destroy our country. They should not be protected by our laws. It’s the ‘violent’ part that matters, right? Life is not always fair. If you support and associate with bad actors, bad things are going to happen to you. Be it hanging out with domestic terrorists or hanging out with the local drunks at the neighborhood bar — bad outcomes could result from those choices. 

“Free speech is not the ultimate moral good under any circumstances. In times of peace and stability it is. In times when agent saboteurs (sorry to keep using this term, but it is the reality we face) are deliberately trying to destroy that stability — then the principle of self-preservation must take precedence.

“A little common sense is OK too. In the case of Ms. Ozturk, it sounds like she should have received some journalistic leeway.”

Dave responds: You do realize that your ideological opponents say exactly the same thing about you, right? That you and like-minded folk are “weaponizing constitutional protections to sow chaos and undermine those very principles.”

If time allows, we’ll talk more about the Texas case later this week; another reader brought up an objection that deserves to be aired out. But suffice to say today that the prosecution of that particular guy would be just as objectionable if he belonged to a right-wing militia and it were a Democratic administration going after him.

Which might well happen after the 2028 election.

“Presidential power does not disappear when your preferred president leaves office. It passes intact to the next one,” write John Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.

“Every shortcut becomes a precedent. Every emergency power becomes part of the presidential toolbox. Every expansion of surveillance becomes available to the next administration. Every definition of ‘threat’ can be rewritten. And every power surrendered to a president you trust does not disappear when a president you distrust takes office.”

But I fear the Whiteheads’ argument falls on mostly deaf ears. We’re in the midst of a Fourth Turning… where passionate partisans fancy themselves in an existential struggle against an irredeemable other. 

As such they can’t ever envision being hoisted on their own petard because they see the other side’s defeat as both imperative and inevitable.

A more likely outcome, however, is what I anticipated in 2022 and again in 2024 — a descent into banana republic territory. 

And the currency debasement that comes with it. However much gold you own, it might not be enough…