SpaceX Craters & Propping up the Yen (ft. Apollo’s Torsten Slok)

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Disney, lending its magic to TikTok, we break down a new IP deal and which licensed characters may be coming to your vertical feed. Torsten Slok, the brilliant partner and chief economist of Apollo Global Management brings big energy to the studio today, with his views on today's market drivers. And SpaceX, the Rockets, Telecom and AI juggernaut beat earnings expectations at least on the top line. So why are shares crashing? We have the latest as a lockup unlock looms. For Wednesday, August 5th, it's Brew Markets Daily and I'm Ann Berry.
More market details to come, but first, SpaceX literally and figuratively crashing into the moon, making headlines this morning as a discarded Falcon 9 opera stage that had been drifting through space for months, allegedly slammed into the moon at roughly 5,400 miles per hour, creating a new impact crater. Well, scientists stress that the event poses no danger to Earth. But what a well-timed metaphor for a tough first earning season that is cratering SpaceX stock. Last night, Elon Musk's tech giant topped analyst estimates with its quarterly revenue. So that was good news, up more than 90 percent year over year, surging on strong growth from Starlink, commercial launch services and the AI business. The company also reported a smaller than expected loss, suggesting that its core businesses continue to expand rapidly. But despite those headline beats, investors hit the sell button as soon as the release hit the wire. Shares were down sharply in early trading and after hours yesterday. That's over concerns that SpaceX's AI-related capital spending exploded to more than $18 billion during the quarter, blowing through far more funding than Wall Street had expected. Raising alarm bells on whether SpaceX will deliver returns on the cash poured into data centers, AI infrastructure and its long-term vision of space-based computing. Well, a SpaceX stock ticked down around 10 percent today, also weighing on investors' minds, has been tomorrow's lockup expiration, which would allow early investors and insiders to sell hundreds of millions of shares, increasing supply and potentially adding even more pressure to that share price. A dynamic, by the way, that has weighed on SpaceX even before now, that's as shareholders have tried to sell ahead of this window coming up. Well, SpaceX market cap today hit $1.57 trillion, down nearly 30 percent from the triumphant IPO at 2.1 trillion. That lockup tomorrow, it's going to be a big day. We're going to keep on watching.
Well, coming up in a moment, I'm joined in studio by Torsten Slok, partner and chief economist at Apollo.
But first, this episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab.

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**Ann Berry** (3:58)
Torsten Slok, known to retail and institutional investors alike as king of the charts, that's for his snappy daily visual reports on macro trends and market shifts. Few people can present complex economic data as simply but substantively as he does. So I was absolutely thrilled, I have been so excited for this for weeks, to welcome Torsten to the studio today to break down why the United States is propping up the Japanese yen, his optimistic view on the impact of AI on jobs and Kevin Warsh's new approach to forward guidance, bad timing or good medicine. Well here it is, my conversation with Torsten Slok, partner and chief economist at Apollo Global Management.
Torsten Slok, delighted to have you here in studio. And there's one topic in particular that is top of mind. And that is what is going on with the Japanese yen.
Why has the United States stepped in to help bail it out? And why are not more people talking about it?