| Swan Dive — July 10, 2025 Nvidia's Moon Landing Moment Addison Wiggin Yesterday, a chipmaker became the most valuable company in human history.
Not a car company. Not an oil behemoth. Not even a phone in your pocket.
No, the brains inside the machines took the crown — Nvidia became the first company ever to touch a $4 trillion market cap. Briefly. It closed the day just shy of it, at $3.972 trillion. Still enough to make Steve Jobs roll over in his minimalist grave.
Founded in 1993, Nvidia started out hawking graphics cards to sweaty teenagers gaming in their parents’ basements. Now it powers the core infrastructure of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, surveillance systems, and financial prediction models no human trader can beat.
Here’s the climb: - $1 trillion – May 2023
- $2 trillion – Feb 2024
- $3 trillion – June 2024
- $4 trillion – Yesterday
- $5 trillion – Send us your guess. Winner gets bragging rights and a printed copy of this email.
At the start of this year, CEO Jensen Huang looked like he was going to get beat to the $4T mark by Apple, which entered 2025 worth $3.9 trillion. But Huang didn’t just catch up — he threw a wrench in the gears of every analyst’s model.
Despite DeepSeek — a lean Chinese AI challenger — threatening to undercut Nvidia with low-cost, chip-independent models in January... despite tariffs... export controls... and a 37% drop in Nvidia stock by April... Huang is standing on the summit.
The stock’s rallied nearly 74% since April and is up tenfold since early 2023. The Copper Tariff That Shook the Earth Your kitchen remodel just became a geopolitical event.
While Nvidia reached the stratosphere, another story spiked straight out of the commodities pits — copper prices logged their biggest one-day jump in history, up 13% to a record $5.69 per pound.
The reason? A single sentence from President Trump.
On Wednesday, he threatened a 50% tariff on copper imports, catching markets off-guard. The bet had been for 25%, and not until the fall. Trump, true to form, jumped the gun.
Now domestic copper trades at a 25% premium over the global benchmark. Copper hoarders are sitting pretty. And if you recently installed copper gutters or pots in your kitchen, congratulations: you now own collectible assets.
The White House says tariffs may begin “end of July, maybe August 1.” Treasury expects tariff revenues to exceed $300 billion this year, up from $6.2 billion just two years ago. For context, that’s the biggest tariff intake since 1934.
But here’s the catch: America imports nearly half its copper, mostly from Chile, Canada, Peru, and Mexico. And ramping up domestic production takes years — maybe decades. Meanwhile, copper is the plumbing of AI and clean energy. If you want a functioning data center, EV, or modern home? You need copper. And you’re about to pay a lot more for it.
Copper stocks like Freeport-McMoRan and Southern Copper are suddenly looking like this cycle’s oil majors. If copper is the new crude, you might want to own the wells.
Bloomberg just leaked details of a secret project Steve Jobs set in motion before his death. After more than a decade under wraps, Apple is finally preparing to unleash this breakthrough — one that could reshape a $9 trillion industry overnight. Click for full details.
Speaking of Strategic Metals The Defense Department announced this morning, they will become the largest shareholder in rare earth miner MP Materials. Cost to Mr. Hegseth? A scant $400 million.
MP Materials owns the only operational rare earth mine in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California, about 60 miles outside Las Vegas. “Proceeds from the Pentagon investment will be used to expand MP’s rare earths processing capacity and magnet production,” CNBC reported about the investment.
Shares of MP Materials were last up about 50% on the news. Markets Float Up, FOMC Fizzles, and Trump Targets Brazil The stock market behaved like a helium balloon tied to a toddler’s wrist — gently drifting higher despite Trump issuing another round of tariff threats, this time targeting Iraq, Libya, Brazil, and five others for good measure.
Brazil’s sin? Prosecuting former president Jair Bolsonaro, which Trump labeled a “witch hunt.” Retaliation: 50% tariffs starting August 1.
Meanwhile, the Fed released minutes from its June meeting, and nobody agrees on anything. Ten members want two or more rate cuts this year. Two want just one. Seven want none at all.
But the market heard “cuts coming eventually” and hit the buy button. Goldman Sachs to Junior Bankers: Swear Loyalty Quarterly This is a weird one in the age when AI is threatening jobs on all rungs of the corporate ladder. Goldman Sachs announced yesterday, they will now require junior bankers to certify every three months that they haven’t lined up a job elsewhere.
Why? Private equity firms are poaching kids before they’ve even unpacked their Bloomberg terminals.
Heh.
Good timing for our Grey Swan Live! conversation with Matt Milner (below).
JPMorgan followed Goldman’s lead, threatening to fire any analyst caught accepting a future job offer before serving their full 18-month sentence.
Apollo, surprisingly, opted out of this talent war entirely, announcing they won’t recruit next year’s class at all.
The AI era hasn’t just disrupted truck drivers and radiologists. Even the white-shoe banks are sweating. Bitcoin Had A Historic Moment of Its Own Bitcoin broke through $112,000 for the first time. Futures are suggesting the next stop may be $120,000.  In 1969, Americans tuned in to watch a rocket land on the moon.
In 2025, we watched a chipmaker eclipse Exxon, Apple, and the Bank of England combined — and a copper tariff threaten to derail the next phase of the digital economy.
And a digital currency backed by energy sucking algos is challenging the once almighty dollar.
It’s a hell of a time to be an investor. Or a plumber.
~ Addison P.S. Today’s Grey Swan Live!: Musk’s Private Empire
At 11 A.M. Eastern, I’ll be sitting down with Matt Milner — a rare breed of investor who went from Lehman Brothers to founding and selling companies, and now holds equity in SpaceX and over 50 private firms.
We’ll talk SpaceX, Starlink, xAI… and how Musk’s empire of private ventures may be hiding the biggest investment opportunities of this new economic cycle. Think hundredfold returns — the kind Wall Street doesn’t let you touch.
Watch your inbox for the Zoom link.
Your thoughts? Please send them here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
How did we get here? Find out in these riveting reads: Demise of the Dollar, Financial Reckoning Day, and Empire of Debt — all three books are now available in their third post-pandemic editions. You might enjoy one or all three. 
(Or… simply pre-order Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed, now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or if you prefer one of these sites: Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million or Target.)
Please send your comments, reactions, opprobrium, vitriol and praise to: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com |
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