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Good morning.
Inflation has its stamp of approval. The price of a US Postal Service first-class forever stamp could rise from 78 cents to 82 cents as soon as Sunday, if federal regulators give their approval. The first-class forever stamp, which never expires and covers the mailing of one standard envelope, cost just 55 cents in 2020.
USPS has steadily hiked its price to offset the organization’s ongoing, structural budget crisis. Americans send far fewer letters today than in previous decades, but USPS is still required by law to deliver to 169 million addresses six days a week and is dealing with rising costs. Last year, the agency temporarily stopped paying employer contributions to a governmentwide pension plan in order to avoid running out of cash. It all makes for an especially tough time for philatelists (and an annoying few seconds for those of you Googling what a philatelist is right now).
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The times they are tentatively, not with any certainty, maybe a-changin’.
In a move borrowed from the founding members of the Justice League, a group of big US banks reportedly talked about banding together to buy their own payments network. They’re looking for a way to get around a controversial 15-year-old federal cap on debit card fees charged to retailers. There’s plenty of reason to doubt it will go ahead, although plenty of evidence it might benefit consumers.
Let Me Be Dodd–Frank
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and PNC are among a group of banks that have discussed acquiring a network from struggling fintech Fiserv to route their debit card transactions. That would allow them to avoid federal caps on the merchant fees large banks collect from debit transactions routed through outside networks, put in place under the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act via what’s commonly referred to as the Durbin Amendment.
Capital One set a precedent when it acquired payments provider Discover. Later this month, the bank is set to begin migrating its debit cards from the Visa and Mastercard networks to its own, where it will be exempt from federal fee caps on interchange fees paid by merchants. Advocates and experts say it could help lenders and consumers:
- The Electronic Payments Coalition, a lobbying group for banks and credit unions, has said issuers have lost tens of billions in revenue because of the fee cap. The group’s credit unions and community banks, which were supposed to be exempt from the rule, said they lost a quarter of their debit card revenue.
- Last year, both the liberal Progressive Policy Institute and the conservative National Taxpayers Union found the cap has hurt American consumers by prompting financial institutions to reduce free checking accounts (from 60% of consumers at affected banks to 20%, according to an NYU study).
The winners, according to the Progressive Policy Institute, have been large retailers, which captured savings from the lower fees while consumers ended up with higher banking costs. “The very people these policies were intended to help end up paying more,” said Institute co-founder Robert Shapiro.
  Not Worth the Hassle? Don’t expect change any time soon. Some banks that were involved in the discussions have already backed out after determining they weren’t interested in the Fiserv network, the Journal said. Others, the paper added, are worried that proceeding with a move would anger politicians, regulators or merchants.
Written by Sean Craig
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Photo via Sprott
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It’s copper. And it’s quietly powering the megatrends defining life on Earth in 2026. The chips (not Tostitos), data centers and EVs: All of them run on copper, and demand is projected to be moving in one direction.
Copper has historically been very difficult to own directly for all of the obvious reasons, so many investors have settled for owning miners (which come with their own risk profiles).
Now there is a way to isolate direct exposure. Sprott Physical Copper Trust (SCOP), the world’s first and largest physical copper fund**, holds roughly $200 million of the metal and lets you own copper outright.
There’s no heavy lifting — it’s professionally stored and looked after for you, though you can redeem some for yourself, should you wish to keep a few sheets of the red metal on the mantelpiece.
Own the metal powering all of today’s megatrends.
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In space, no one can hear your bear case. On Tuesday, the banks behind last month’s gargantuan SpaceX IPO exited the post-listing liminal space ready to tell the world what they really think of Elon Musk’s unwieldy tech conglomerate. Some of them seemed to be channeling Gene Roddenberry.
With lips no longer sealed after the “quiet period,” analysts from Wall Street’s biggest firms became some of the most bullish voices in the SpaceX coverage choir. Analysts from Deutsche Bank, one of the IPO’s many underwriters, boldly went so far as to proclaim SpaceX “the apex of civilizational ambition … bending the arc of history.” Maybe investors weren’t listening: SpaceX tumbled nearly 7% on Tuesday, closing about $11 below its debut price less than a month ago.
Bull Casework
Opinions ranged from “bullish” to “extremely bullish” among the four big banks that led the IPO, which each initiated coverage on Tuesday with the equivalent of a “buy” rating. Goldman Sachs analysts gave the stock a $205 price target, while JPMorgan estimated $225 and Bank of America analysts projected $235. Morgan Stanley came in hot with a whopping $300 price target, saying its base case projects revenue will rise from $45 billion this year to $319 billion in 2030 and $3.3 trillion in 2040. From Goldman to Morgan Stanley, the difference in enthusiasm amounts to a $1 trillion valuation gap.
How the banks arrived at their projections varied. JPMorgan called the company’s Launch unit its “key enabler and differentiator”; Morgan Stanley considered the Space unit a small piece of the company’s value proposition. Goldman’s slightly more conservative outlook projects SpaceX will become free cash flow positive in 2031, four years prior to the projections of even more optimistic Morgan Stanley.
Despite the wide range of numbers proffered by the big banks, outliers exist at both ends of the spectrum:
- Analysts at MoffettNathanson have given SpaceX a “neutral” rating and a price target of $131, declaring SpaceX’s claim of a total addressable market of almost $30 trillion to be “absurd.” The firm also noted that “sufficient material inputs will not exist” to meet CEO Elon Musk’s 2029 goal of annually launching 100 gigawatts’ worth of orbital data centers into space.
- Raymond James, which initiated coverage Tuesday, gave a “Strong Buy” rating and a price target of $800 (yes, you read that right). The analysts dubbed SpaceX’s space, Starlink and AI services “the most significant infrastructure convergence since the advent of the Internet.”
Merging Lanes: So what’s next for SpaceX? Probably not the much-rumored acquisition of Tesla, JPMorgan analysts said. While a tie-up would be “strategically coherent on paper,” the bank’s analysts warned that regulatory and governance roadblocks would likely stand in the way. In 2026, massive M&A is simply too pie in the sky, even for the company penciling in a few moonshots.
Written by Brian Boyle
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Photo via Fiat/Stellantis
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Stellantis is looking to fill a small niche in America’s car market. A very small one.
On Tuesday, the automaker announced that its Fiat Topolino, a two-seat electric vehicle that weighs just 1,073 pounds and is only about 8 feet long, is coming to the US. The low-speed vehicle, technically classified as a quadricycle rather than a car, is more on par with a golf cart than what you’d actually see out and about on most roads. It can go up to 19 mph (or 25 mph with a low-speed vehicle conversion kit needed to make it street-legal). With a $13,995 price tag on the EV, Stellantis aims to convince Americans that bigger isn’t always better.
Two Americas
The Topolino’s journey to North America comes as drivers in the US may very well be looking for a less expensive way to get around. Car prices have surged in recent years as companies focus on developing pricier high-end vehicles as opposed to the budget-friendly ones families drove for decades. Higher price tags are also partly due to automakers dealing with the aftermath of shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. The average price for a new vehicle was $49,220 in May.
As a result, customer demand is shrinking. Tack on the fact that carmakers around the world are struggling to compete with China, and it’s no wonder that companies like Stellantis are looking for new ways to fill gaps:
- Toyota appears to be taking the opposite approach by doubling down on larger vehicles. The company just announced a $3.6 billion expansion of its San Antonio manufacturing campus to move production of its Tacoma midsize pickup truck from Mexico to Texas. The move will result in 2,000 new jobs.
- Rivian, meanwhile, is going cheaper with its R2 mid-size SUVs. The direct competitor of Tesla’s Model Y began heading to customers last month.
Beep Beep: So what if the Topolino, which means “little mouse” in Italian, is more appropriate for retirement communities and small downtowns than cruising the highway? More and more towns are becoming golf-cart friendly, paving the way for Fiat’s offering.
Written by Mallika Mitra
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- Picking Planes: NATO announced tens of billions in arms deals Tuesday including the selection of Sweden’s Saab over Virginia-based Boeing in a $4.5 billion plan to acquire new surveillance planes.
- Market Cap Slap: Meta said four states are seeking an “outlandish” $1.4 trillion over claims it designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to minors; the company’s entire market cap is $1.5 trillion.
- Strike While the Copper’s Hot. AI, EVs and the grid all run on it, with demand projected to increase by 50% by 2040*. Sprott Physical Copper Trust (SCOP) lets you own the metal directly. Explore the world’s first physical copper fund.**
*Partner
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Disclaimers
*https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/special-reports/copper-in-the-age-of-ai.
Sprott Asset Management LP is the investment manager to the Sprott Physical Copper Trust (the “Trust”).
Important information about the Trust, including the investment objectives and strategies, applicable management fees and expenses, is contained in the prospectus.
Please read the document carefully before investing. You will usually pay brokerage fees to your dealer if you purchase or sell units of the Trust on the TSX or the NYSE. If the units are purchased or sold on the TSX or the NYSE, investors may pay more than the current net asset value when buying units or shares of the Trust and may receive less than the current net asset value when selling them. Investment funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently, and past performance is no guarantee of future results.
**Based on Morningstar’s universe of listed commodity funds. Data as of 6/30/2026.
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