🛸 China’s SpacePlane, Caught

The War Production Board shut this gold mine in 1942, and with gold fixed at $35 an ounce it never came back. Gold now trades above $4,000. A tiny company valued under $20 million owns it and started drilling again this summer. Get the free report and the ticker.

Get the Free Gold Report

The Pentagon just leaked a photo of China's secret spaceplane.

A satellite snapped it in 2024. The US is only showing it off now. Classic "we've been watching you" energy.

The image shows the Chinese craft docked to another spacecraft with its solar panels fully deployed. Two vehicles holding hands in orbit, and nobody outside Beijing knows why.

A spaceplane is a jet and a spacecraft in one body. It flies like a plane in the atmosphere, then works as a spacecraft once it's up there.

Only four have ever reached orbit and come home:

According to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), China has two models: Shenlong and Tengyun. Which one is in the photo? Even the DIA can't say.

Shenlong has flown four missions since 2022. There's no evidence it carries weapons.

So why is Washington sweating?

Spaceplanes are reusable and far more manoeuvrable than a normal satellite. That makes them better suited to certain missions, says the DIA.

China says the tech is about "more affordable round-trip methods" for peaceful use. The DIA reads it differently, warning space threats could climb over the next decade if Beijing cracks reusability.

Then there are the lasers. China already has multiple ground-based laser weapons that can disrupt or damage satellites in low Earth orbit.

They can blind imaging satellites, leaving them unable to track forces on the ground.

And by the late 2020s, China may put directed-energy weapons in space itself. We are, for reference, in the late 2020s.

Beijing is playing peacemaker. In September it told the US to stop its military buildup in space, after the Pentagon confirmed America has deployed weapons up there.

Last week, China called for global rules to prevent a space arms race. Two superpowers pointing at each other shouting "they started it." Very reassuring.

Here's the stat that matters. In 2016, the US and China each launched exactly 22 rockets. Dead heat.

By 2025:

China more than quadrupled its pace. The US went nearly 9x. One of these countries discovered reusable rockets and never looked back.

China's program is still second only to America's, both in size and in private money pouring into space companies. Big names include state-owned CASC, rocket maker LandSpace, Galactic Energy and Space Pioneer.

Space is sliding out of the science budget and into the defence budget. When governments start treating orbit as a battlefield, spending on satellites, launches and space defence tends to follow.

The flip side: satellites quietly run GPS, communications and a lot of financial plumbing. If they become targets, that's a risk the whole economy carries, whether you own a space stock or not.

AI is moving into the physical economy.  

Elon is building it. Jensen sees it in Agriculture. Washington is backing it. And DIT AgTech is already putting it to work in livestock. 

Most investors haven’t connected the dots yet. 

At $1 a share, you still can.

Connect the Dots

Beat earnings. Stock drops. Welcome to tech right now.

Only 25% of AI tech companies that beat earnings have actually traded up on the news, according to Raymond James strategist Matt Orton.

And a quarter of those names? Down more than 5%.

Here's what's going on.

Orton's diagnosis: investor expectations have become almost impossible to clear.

Alphabet $GOOG ( ▼ 1.45% ) is exhibit A. Its cloud business grew, but results still missed the sky-high bar the market had set.

Even chipmakers are getting no love. Semis are beating estimates with demand visibility through 2029 and into 2030.

They traded down anyway.

When "booked solid for four years" can't lift a stock, you know the trade is crowded.

The other worry: big tech is burning serious cash to build AI capacity.

Amazon posted $42 billion in negative free cash flow on a trailing 12-month basis. That's roughly $115 million out the door every single day.

Orton isn't sweating it. He's "generally okay" with negative free cash flow because he sees it as temporary.

Build now, cash later. That's the bet.

Microsoft gets the gold star. Orton says it's been disciplined about protecting cash flow and isn't expected to go negative, pointing to its recent workforce adjustments as proof.

Microsoft is the friend who splits the bill to the penny.

The good news: the market is broadening beyond tech.

Hiding in utilities feels safe. It also feels like watching paint dry.

The catch: Orton says tech still has to do the heavy lifting to push the broader market higher. The generals still have to lead the army.

Orton's playbook this year: don't chase rallies, use the dips opportunistically.

His read is that the sell-off hurts, but the fundamentals are still strong. The pain is coming from crowded positioning and expectations nobody can meet.

The bigger lesson? A great earnings report doesn't guarantee a pop when everyone already owns the stock. The good news was priced in before it arrived.

Silver just broke below $50 an ounce.

First time since November 2025. The shiny metal has officially lost its shine.

Front-month Comex silver slid 4.31% in a day to $49.89. That's a lot of sparkle gone before lunch.

The cleanest scoreboard here is the gold-silver ratio. It tells you how many ounces of silver one ounce of gold can buy.

That ratio just jumped above 76, the highest since December.

Over the summer it sat comfortably between 60 and 70. So one ounce of gold now buys roughly 6 to 16 more ounces of silver than it did a few months ago.

And Metals Focus thinks it has room to run. The 2020-25 average is 82, so the ratio is still below its "normal."

Silver's little brother energy is showing.

Gold has bodyguards. Central banks keep buying it, and long-term investors use it as a panic room for geopolitical and economic chaos.

Silver has... factories. And speculators.

Because silver is heavily tied to industrial demand, it lives and dies by manufacturing. When factories slow down, silver feels it first.

Speculative money doesn't help either. Fast money arrives fast and leaves faster.

Gold gets a security detail. Silver gets a job.

On Thursday, US GDP came in stronger than expected.

Great news for the economy. Terrible news for metals.

Why? A hot economy means traders expect interest rates to stay higher. Gold and silver pay zero interest, so when cash and bonds pay more, shiny rocks look less exciting.

Both gold and silver futures fell on the news.

Analysts are saying silver's next move depends on whether better industrial demand and tight supply can outmuscle tight US monetary policy.

It's an arm-wrestle between factories and the Fed. Right now the Fed is winning.

If you think of silver as "cheap gold," this week is a useful reality check.

Silver trades more like an industrial metal than a safe haven right now. Manufacturing data and rate expectations move it far more than headlines about global chaos.

Two things worth watching:

Silver can absolutely bounce. It just needs the factories to pick up the slack first.

HubSpot's CRM is so smart, it now updates itself. Calls get logged and summarized the moment they end. New leads get researched and a first outreach drafted, automatically. Deals move forward on their own, with next steps flagged before you have to ask. 

Even the one repetitive task you've been meaning to fix can now run itself, no code required. Customers using it are already seeing the difference. 

This isn't the CRM you have to work hard to figure out. It's the one already working before you log in.

Get a Demo