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In today’s post:
😬 Elon Got Carried Away
💸 Exxon Is Printing Money
📉 -35% And They Want More
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😬 Elon Got Carried Away
Elon Musk has a confession: he "kinda got carried away."
That's his verdict on the 130 days he spent running DOGE inside the White House. Roughly four and a half months of Elon in Washington.
His new ideal timeline? A month or two, tops.
🏛️ The Regret Tour
Musk told biographer Walter Isaacson he should have "focused on AI a little sooner" instead of sticking around in DC, Axios reported on Saturday.
The interview is from Isaacson's new podcast, The Builders with Walter Isaacson, which premieres Tuesday.
His other admissions:
He was "gone for too long" from his businesses
He should have stayed "more in the background"
The whole gig should have lasted a month or two, about a third of the time he actually spent
Hindsight is 20/20. For Tesla shareholders, the rear-view mirror got expensive.
📉 The Bill For The Detour
Quick recap: Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency, which was involved in thousands of federal job cuts.
He formally left in May 2025 after a very public spat with Trump.
Back at Tesla, sales fell 13% in the first three months of 2025 as the backlash against Musk's politics spread through the year.
That's what happens when the CEO's side quest becomes the main storyline.
🤖 The Robots Will Pay The Bills
Musk also weighed in on the US budget deficit, which he'd previously said Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" would make bigger.
His take now: there was "no way" to fix the deficit from inside the government.
So what's the fix? According to Elon, AI and robots.
Conveniently, the exact things his companies are building. Funny how that works.
🧠 What It Means For You
Musk's empire now includes Tesla and the newly IPO'd SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 1.74% ), which does rockets, satellites, and AI.
That makes his attention span a genuine market variable. The fancy term is key-person risk: when one guy's focus moves, the stocks can move with it.
The 2025 numbers showed how costly a distracted Elon can be. His comments suggest he's learned the lesson, and that AI is where his energy is pointed next.
Whether that's a long-term plan or a podcast mood is the bit worth watching.
Was Elon’s DOGE detour worth it?
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An AI chip stock just fell nearly $70 a share in a few weeks.
The trigger? Its biggest customer launched a flagship model on Nvidia chips.
Sounds like a breakup. The CEO says the real reason is much more boring: they were sold out.
That customer still holds a $20 billion deal, the bulk of a $25 billion backlog. And the spare capacity? Already signed away to another buyer.
Here's why that matters. This company sells speed, and AI keeps paying a premium for faster answers. So demand isn't the bottleneck. Supply is, and management is guiding to 600 MW of capacity by end of 2027.
Meanwhile, shares slid from $195 to $127.
So is this a gift, or is the bottom still ahead?
In today's Premium+ deep dive:
How we're approaching the entry, and the signal we're waiting for
The valuation maths the market seems to be skipping
The customer risk that could make this selloff look smart
The one line in November's earnings that matters more than revenue
💸 Exxon Is Printing Money
Exxon's refineries just had their best quarter ever. Probably.
Analysts expect $7.8 billion in Q3 refining profit, according to Bloomberg data. That would be the best quarter in the company's history.
That works out to roughly $85 million a day. Just for turning gloopy black stuff into diesel.
⛽ The Money Printer
On Friday, Exxon filed an 8-K with a big preview.
Higher refining margins could add about $4.5 billion to downstream profit in Q3. That's on top of the $4.1 billion refining already earned in Q2.
The reason? Refining got wildly profitable this summer.
The Gulf Coast 3-2-1 crack spread, the go-to gauge of US refining profits, jumped 28% from last quarter. It hit a record $72.64 on September 22.
Quick decoder: the crack spread is roughly what a refiner pockets for turning 3 barrels of crude into 2 of gasoline and 1 of diesel.
Right now that pocket is very, very deep.
🧾 The Fine Print
Exxon didn't get a clean sweep. The filing flags two dents:
Lower oil prices likely shaved ~$1.3 billion off profits
A $2.5 billion hit from "timing effects", meaning derivative positions tied to cargoes that have shipped but haven't arrived yet
So the refining side is partying while the oil-pumping side takes a knock.
Even oil giants can't have everything. Just most things.
One more detail: the Iran war caused zero volume disruptions for Exxon during the quarter. The barrels kept flowing.
🧠 What It Means For You
Don't own Exxon? Here's why this still matters.
Fat refining margins mean the gap between crude and the pump is wide. Cheaper oil doesn't automatically mean cheaper diesel when refiners are charging this much to process it.
For investors, it shows why the integrated oil model exists. When crude prices slip, refining can pick up the slack. One business hedges the other.
That $2.5 billion timing hit is worth watching too. These effects often reverse once the cargoes are delivered, which could flatter a future quarter.
And record crack spreads rarely stay at record levels forever. The real question is how long this window stays open.
Full results land October 30. Pop the popcorn.
📉 -35% And They Want More
Retail investors just threw a record $3.8 billion at a fund that fell 25% in a week.
Yes, in the same week. While it was falling.
Meet SOXL $SOXL ( ▼ 12.74% ), the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF. Here’s what’s going on.
📉 The Damage
SOXL is a leveraged fund. It aims to deliver 3x the daily move of semiconductor stocks. Great on the way up. Brutal on the way down.
And this week was very much "on the way down":
Down 7.2% by midday Friday
Down almost 25% for the week
Down 35% over the past seven trading days
To put that 35% in perspective: you now need a 54% gain just to get back to where you were a week and a half ago. Gravity is cheap. Climbing back out is expensive.
💸 The Buying Spree
None of that scared anyone off. SOXL pulled in more than $3.8 billion this week, putting it on track for its biggest weekly intake ever.
The previous record? Just over $3.1 billion, set in June. That record lasted about four months.
It's also the third straight week of inflows, the longest streak since May.
Picture a shop slashing prices by a third and the queue going round the block. That's the vibe. Investors saw chip stocks bleeding and went full 🫡 "buy the dip."
🧠 The Sensible Cousins Are Doing It Too
This wasn't just the thrill-seekers. The plain, unleveraged chip ETFs also got showered with cash:
SMH $SMH ( ▼ 3.41% ) (VanEck Semiconductor): $430M+ in inflows, its biggest week since early September, despite falling 8%
SOXX $SOXX ( ▼ 4.14% ) (iShares Semiconductor): $574M+ in inflows, on pace for its second-largest week since August, despite dropping about 9%
So the conviction runs across the board. People clearly believe this chip sell-off is temporary.
But notice the gap. SOXL took in roughly 7x more than SMH and SOXX combined. When retail buys a dip, it likes to buy it with the volume turned up to 11.
🤔 What It Means For You
Leveraged ETFs like SOXL reset their leverage every single day. That matters more than most people realise.
In a choppy market, that daily reset can quietly eat your returns even if the underlying stocks end up roughly flat. Fans call it a turbo button. Critics call it a slow puncture.
So if you're watching these flows and feeling FOMO, it's worth knowing what you'd be holding:
A 3x fund is built for short-term trading, and is generally not designed as a long-term hold
Losses compound fast, which is exactly what this week showed
Record inflows aren't a signal that a bottom is in. They just mean lots of people think it is
Could this dip-buying pay off big if chips bounce? Absolutely. 3x works both ways. The point is to know which way you're betting, and how hard.