Intelligence Pulse
On September 28, SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy reached orbit for the first time, relit one of its engines in flight, and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites —its first real operational payload (CNN). It wasn’t Falcon Heavy —which has flown successfully for eight years and has its next mission, the classified NROL-97 for the National Reconnaissance Office, scheduled for October 1 alongside Crew-13 (NASASpaceFlight)—: it was Starship, the vehicle SpaceX needs to make its most ambitious bet, Mars, financially viable, and in the near term, massive satellite constellations and heavy-lift government contracts. For investors, the read is infrastructure, not spectacle: every successful launch lowers the marginal cost per kilogram to orbit, reshaping the economics of telecom, defense, and —increasingly— space-based computing. SpaceX remains private, so public markets can’t buy the story directly, but they can buy the companies that sell it components or compete for the same contracts: Rocket Lab, L3Harris, Iridium.
AI Frontier
Nvidia announced on September 28 a US$150 billion increase to its share repurchase program, bringing total authorization to US$235 billion —the largest buyback in US corporate history, surpassing Apple’s US$110 billion record set in 2024 (CNBC; NVIDIA Newsroom). The move follows Nvidia nearly doubling profits in its second fiscal quarter, to almost US$60 billion, driven by AI chip demand. Why buy back stock instead of paying bigger dividends or building more capacity? Because Nvidia generates more cash than it can efficiently deploy into capex, and a buyback returns value more tax-efficiently while offsetting dilution from employee stock compensation. In balance-sheet terms, it shrinks the share count —which, if the price paid is reasonable relative to intrinsic value, boosts earnings per share for remaining holders.
Signal vs. Noise
The noise: on Reddit, Micron (MU) leads today’s mentions with a bullish tilt; on X, SanDisk (SNDK) and AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) stand out, both tied to the AI-driven memory-shortage narrative (AltIndex WallStreetBets; Adanos).
The signal: AltIndex’s Fear & Greed Index reads 44 —”fear”— with volume and mentions falling despite rising prices (AltIndex); this is social sentiment, not verified market data —treat it as noise until confirmed by real quarterly results. In commodities, gold hovers near US$4,150/oz, a two-month low, and Brent slips toward US$100 on higher Saudi supply (Yahoo Finance); bitcoin holds above US$83,000 (Yahoo Finance). In the US Congress, recent activity skewed more selling than buying, concentrated in energy and industrials (AltIndex Congress Trading).
Quote of the Day
“The math isn’t complicated: when the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up. Every small bit helps if repurchases are made at value-accretive prices.”
—Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter (Nasdaq).
Exactly the bet Nvidia just made, at a scale never seen before.
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