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Good morning.
When it comes to stocks and bonds, the CEO of America’s largest bank is keeping his personal portfolio close to the sidelines. JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon told the Master Investor Podcast this week that he hasn’t bought any equities lately and “would not be a buyer” of long-term US Treasury bonds. “I don’t understand what the upside is,” he said of bonds, flagging America’s soaring national debt. Combine the inflationary pressure of global debt with geopolitical risks like US relations with Iran and China, he said, and the economic risks facing the world are “probably bigger than most people think.”
With stocks near all-time highs, he said markets are pricing in a good long-term outcome based on rising profits, “but if you have a downturn, it’s a different story.” Dimon didn’t completely rule out investing in individual stocks, saying when he does buy stocks it’s on a “name by name” basis, describing himself as “not an index kind of person.”
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Novo Nordisk intends to stick it to its main rival.
The heavyweight title bout for GLP-1 supremacy entered the legal ring Tuesday, as the Danish pharma giant sued its duopolistic competitor Eli Lilly, alleging the Indianapolis-based company misled consumers with false advertising claims that its injectable weight-loss drug is superior to Novo’s.
‘Clearly Worried’
Novo was the pioneer in GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and weight loss, a distinction that made it Europe’s most valuable company for parts of 2023, 2024 and 2025. But Lilly seized Novo’s pole position in the market, set to grow to $100 billion by 2030, with shrewd and aggressive expansion. Lilly mass-produced its Zepbound in advance of its 2023 approval, allowing it to blow out of the gates at a time when shortages hampered the availability of Novo’s Wegovy. In early 2024, Lilly dove into the direct-to-consumer market, where it could undercut Novo’s prices. Novo didn’t catch up with its own direct-to-consumer push until more than a year later.
Sales from the first quarter of this year say it all: Lilly’s Zepbound generated $4 billion in sales, while Novo’s Wegovy made $2.7 billion. In its lawsuit, filed in US District Court in New Jersey, Novo claims Lilly’s rapid rise has been aided by a massive ad campaign that violated false advertising and unfair competition laws. Lilly said it stands by the ads, which use results from its 2024 Surmount-5 trial that compared patients on 10 mg or 15 mg doses of Zepbound to others on 1.7 mg or 2.4 mg of Wegovy. Novo plans to seek an injunction if Lilly doesn’t agree to voluntarily remove the ads. Whatever the outcome, Zacks Investment Management chief market strategist Brian Mulberry sees a wounded Novo fighting however it can:
- “I understand that [Novo] feels left behind, but this lawsuit is not around any issues with product or performance — just accusing [Lilly] of false advertising because their product works too good!?!” he wrote. “That does not seem like a decision that comes from a place of strength.”
- Mulberry noted the companies’ earnings per share growth is expected to diverge dramatically next year, with Lilly expected to see 33% growth and Novo forecast to decline 3%.
The market appears to share that assessment: Shares in Lilly rose 2.5% Tuesday, while Novo’s American depositary receipts fell 0.5%.
  Take a Chill Pill: It’s not all gloom for Novo. The company scored a major victory last year when it was the first of the two companies to win FDA approval for a weight-loss pill. Demand for oral Wegovy has since held strong, with Lilly stuck playing catch-up. Last week, Novo duplicated this achievement with European regulators, giving it a head start on its home continent.
Written by Sean Craig
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SpaceX got credit for breaking a lot of records in its market debut last month, including completing the largest-ever public offering and minting the first-ever trillionaire CEO. But while the IPO was one of the busiest trading days in Charles Schwab’s 55-year history, the investing giant is not letting Elon Musk’s rocket company steal all the thunder of its second-quarter earnings beat.
On Tuesday, Schwab posted earnings per share of $1.62 for its second quarter, a jump from $1.14 at the same time last year and above the $1.56 Wall Street was expecting. Revenue hit a record $7.1 billion, also above the $6.9 billion analysts estimated. Customers opened 1.4 million new brokerage accounts in the quarter, and daily average trades hit a record 11.9 million.
While Schwab CEO Rick Wurster conceded that SpaceX’s IPO fueled strong customer activity during the quarter, he said key factors in the firm’s profit and sales growth were expansion of its customer base and broadly heightened excitement about investing.
“It’s a more structural trend of people more interested in investing than they’ve ever been,” Wurster told CNBC.
Retail Boom
Retail investing interest has been surging for years, with the GameStop investing frenzy, soaring prices of stocks like Tesla during the onset of the pandemic and the most recent boom in AI stocks as just a few examples. That’s in part due to a market that keeps rising, low barriers to entry (zero commissions are now the norm) and the fact that people are investing younger and staying invested, Wurster said.
He also gave insight into how everyday investors are positioned nowadays:
- Retail investors are buying the dip, with more buying on down days than up days, Wurster said. They’re bullish and wealthier, based on Schwab’s data on total client assets, plus they’re more interested in tax strategies.
- They also gravitate toward the part of the market with the most momentum, Gavin Filmore, CEO of white-label ETF platform Tidal Financial Group, told The Daily Upside. “We’ve even seen some of the fast-money crowd shift from crypto into AI as those opportunities have evolved.”
Another Earnings Beat: Interactive Brokers reported earnings of 69 cents per share and net revenue of $1.90 billion for the quarter, also beating analysts’ expectations. Like Schwab, it’s welcoming newbies: The firm reported 34% year-over-year growth in customer accounts. Robinhood, the Reddit crowd’s favorite trading app, is set to report earnings next week.
Written by Mallika Mitra
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Who says OpenAI lacks agency?
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the mega AI startup is set to announce that its two agentic tools, Codex and ChatGPT Work, are now serving about 10 million users, or double the number from earlier this month. The timing of the big reveal isn’t exactly surprising; the company’s much-awaited IPO has seemingly stalled as competitive open-weight models from overseas grab market share in the US. Whether the US market will remain open forever is another, suddenly pressing, question.
Great Codex-pectations
In March, leaders at OpenAI reportedly urged staff to abandon “side quests” (RIP, video-generator Sora) in favor of money-making agentic coding and enterprise tools amid rising competition. Back then, the company’s main concern was the rapidly rising Anthropic, whose Claude Code and Claude Cowork tools fueled tokenmaxxing.
Whether the new figures place OpenAI in the lead is unclear, but both companies are facing a much more existential threat: open-weight and open-source Chinese models from the likes of Moonshot, Alibaba and DeepSeek, which have sucked up roughly half of US enterprise token usage by proving nearly as powerful and far less expensive. The AI Race is now sparking a policy debate over AI protectionism in Washington … and Beijing:
- The White House is reportedly divided over AI protectionism, according to recent reports from Axios, The Wall Street Journal and others. Protectionist policymakers worry about the competitive threat of cheaper models and warn that open-source AI (which can be downloaded and tweaked) poses a safety and national security threat; opponents warn that walling off Chinese models could dampen the domestic industry’s competitive edge.
- Meanwhile, Reuters reported earlier this month that policymakers in Beijing, who often tout AI as a “public good,” are increasingly viewing China-made open-weight models as a critical national asset and considering strict limits on overseas access.
Meet in the Lobby: Reuters also reported that Beijing and Washington are still planning an AI-focused summit in September. In the meantime, OpenAI and Anthropic are spending big to make sure their voices are heard. Together, the two spent nearly $3.2 million on DC lobbyists in the second quarter, up 23% from the previous quarter, according to recently released federal filings.
Written by Brian Boyle
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- Liberation Day Redux: US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer suggested President Trump will “soon” order new global tariffs, with blanket 10% levies imposed under a 1974 law set to expire Friday.
- Pick-Me-Up Truck: GM beat earnings expectations in the second quarter, growing its profit despite tariffs and volatile energy costs, thanks to persistent demand for expensive SUVs and pickup trucks.
- Final Days to Invest. Backed by 7,500+ investors and in partnership with Stanford and Scripps Research, Cytonics aims to crack a $560B market. They’re developing what could be the first and only potential cure for osteoarthritis. Invest by this month’s deadline.**
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Disclaimers
*An investor should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. To obtain a Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China ETF Statutory Prospectus, which contains this and other information, visit https://sprottetfs.com/rexc/prospectus, contact your financial professional or call 888.622.1813. Read the Prospectus carefully before investing.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are considered to have continuous liquidity because they allow for an individual to trade throughout the day, which may indicate higher transaction costs and result in higher taxes when fund shares are held in a taxable account.
The funds are non-diversified and can invest a greater portion of assets in securities of individual issuers, particularly those in the natural resources and/or precious metals industry, which may experience greater price volatility. Relative to other sectors, natural resources and precious metals investments have higher headline risk and are more sensitive to changes in economic data, political or regulatory events, and underlying commodity price fluctuations. Risks related to extraction, storage and liquidity should also be considered.
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The Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China ETF and the Sprott Active Metals & Miners ETF are new and have limited operating history.
Sprott Asset Management USA, Inc. is the Investment Adviser to the Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China ETF. ALPS Distributors, Inc. is the Distributor for the Sprott ETFs and is a registered broker-dealer and FINRA Member. ALPS Distributors, Inc. is not affiliated with Sprott Asset Management USA, Inc.
1IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025.
2The term “pure-play” relates directly to the exposure that the Fund has to the total universe of investable, publicly listed securities in the investment strategy.
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Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. There is no guarantee of performance. Past performance does not predict future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.
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