☕ The “SpaceX” of banking + best-in-class dividend, smart investors will know what to do
Oct 12, 2026Howdy! 👋
It’s a mixed bag this morning with the Dow higher – a classic defensive move – while both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are lower.
I don’t expect things to remain that way for long.
Missing opportunity is always more expensive than trying to avoid risks you can’t control!
Here’s my playbook.
1 – The “SpaceX” of banking, smart investors will know what to do
I sat down with the super savvy David Asman, and he asked me two very timely questions about two super timely stocks (Watch):
People believe that investing must be complicated to work.
Not true.
Keith’s Investing Tip: Buy the best, ignore the rest!®
2 – Micron is eating its own cooking, all $35.16 billion of it
Micron’s board has authorized a share buyback totaling $35.16 billion. It’s the biggest in company history, and it kicks off December 9. (Read)
Cue the buyback brigade, most of whom don’t understand how buybacks work. Not surprisingly, the stock is leading tech lower as I type.
Good!
Smart investors will recognize the opportunity, and I trust you’re one of ‘em because you’re here reading along! 😃
Smart investors LOVE buybacks for 5 reasons:
- Buybacks are a sign that management thinks its own stock is undervalued.
- Buybacks reduce the number of outstanding shares and that tends to be great for shareholders.
- Buybacks can be the most efficient use of capital, better, in fact, than comparable investment opportunities.
- Buybacks are not recurring commitments, so they can provide tremendous flexibility when it comes to management's ability to respond to changing market conditions. Dividends, by contrast, are a pre-planned, pre-committed outlay.
- Buybacks tend to be more tax efficient because they can be taxed as capital gains rather than dividend income for many investors.
Keith’s Investing Tip: If management doesn’t think enough of its own stock to constantly buy it back, then why on earth would you buy it to begin with? Just sayin’.
3 – The Dragon’s parked in Paris and Stellantis wants a tow truck 🐉
Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa told CNBC ahead of the Paris Motor Show that Europe needs a “level playing field.” He wants regulation that “incentivizes, rewards, and protects” car makers who design and build cars in Europe.
Not.
What European car makers actually need to do is very simple… build cars that their customers want more than the competition and at price points consumers find attractive enough to whip out their wallets.
I’ve been talking about this story for more than a decade, ever since I returned from a trip to China and saw Chinese cars that made my jaw drop at a time when the West dismissed the raw ambition that I observed firsthand. Now the next leg is playing out.
It’s one of the most basic laws of business.
Quotas might buy time but they won’t buy customers.
There are only a handful of car makers on the planet capable of truly competing on a global scale and you can probably guess who’s at the very top of the pile. Yeah, him.
The chart, btw, suggests that stock is ready for a breakout after a long sideways FUD-filled period.
Keith’s Investing Tip: You can have results or excuses.
4 – Two Tans, one warning
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan (no relation) both told a conference in Singapore that capital – yep, money – may become the biggest constraint on the AI boom. (Read)
Yes, building AI costs a fortune, so did every big transitional period in history.
People are grousing about the cost of capital because conventional wisdom says that rising rates will kill tech, but as I have repeatedly noted to the OBA Family, the best companies will likely have access to all the money they need. It’s the lesser players on the periphery that won’t.
Oh and btw, don’t miss the headline buried inside the headline.
“There is more demand for compute infrastructure than we can supply,” Hock Tan said. He thinks that imbalance could last through 2029, maybe even into 2030. Similarly, Lip-Bu Tan doesn’t see a significant slowdown over the next two to three years.
Now let’s see if the banks narrow the playing field by restricting lending or financing. 🤷
MyPOV: Comments like this tend to presage announcements tied to the companies making ‘em … in this case Broadcom and Intel.
Trade Idea: Makes me wonder if a few speculative Putskies – meaning buying – could be interesting if there’s a pullback in one or both names this earnings season.
Hmmm. 🤔
5 – This stock has returned 965.80% over the past decade – I hope you’re on board
Microsoft unveiled its third-generation in-house Maia 300 AI accelerator today that’s positioned as the primary inference system for Microsoft products and services (including Copilot and other AI workloads), with claims of ~40% better tokens per megawatt versus leading GPU systems and higher rack-scale throughput.
Translation?
Satya Nadella has called the move the company’s “biggest bet yet” on its own silicon.
I agree.
The move is framed as reducing long-term reliance on Nvidia/AMD chips and improving AI economics/efficiency, but what it likely does is free up more Nvidia/AMD chips that’ll be snapped up by everybody else who can’t get enough of ’em.
So much for yet another round of naysayers who insisted up, down and sideways that Microsoft wasn’t a player. 😎
Keith’s Investing Tip: People can fight what’s happening all they want and a lot do. But there are times when it’s very definitely better to be long than wrong – meaning owning stocks rather than sitting on the sidelines and watching ‘em pull away from you like a lot of investors are doing at the moment.
MSFT, btw, has returned ~965.80% over the past decade while the SPY, a popular indexers' choice, has returned ~326.43% by comparison. Yep, nearly 3 to 1.
Many investors tell themselves that they’re “okay” with that … until they’re not.
Totally fixable.
I’ve helped make it easy for people to buy great stocks for decades and I’ll be here if that’s of interest.
Bottom Line
If you’re not investing in the best, you are gonna get left with the rest.
No two ways about it.
Just ask the Palantir haters who carpet-bombed my email with very nasty notes about how I was wrong, an idiot or a whole lot worse language I can’t use here… the stock has returned ~95.22% off its 52-week lows of $106.37 just a few short months ago.
Now I’m being besieged with emails from people who missed the run.
Never fails!
Keep your emotions out of the equation because they will cost ya big time over time!
You got this — I promise.
As always, let’s MAKE it a great day and start the week strong!
Keith 😀
