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☕️ GM Munchers! Planned to hide from the red market at home this weekend, but got dragged to a party and then my in-laws. Three different kinds of pain in 48 hours has to be some kind of record.

On today’s menu:

• 🥇 Gold Just Broke A Major Floor

• 🍟 The McRib’s Secret Bitcoin Signal

• 👀 This $5 Stock Could Hit $50 by January

• 💳 Amex Is Crushing It, So Why Is The Stock Down?

• 😬 Did Elon Musk Just Issue A Major Warning?

Friday’s numbers:

BREAKING NEWS

🥇 Gold Just Broke A Major Floor

Something significant happened in the gold market on Friday. The yellow metal fell below $4,000 an ounce for the first time since late July, a level traders had been watching closely. It’s a striking fall from grace for an asset that was the darling of early 2026. The culprit was a fresh wave of fear: escalating tensions between the US and Iran sent oil surging and the dollar climbing, and gold got caught in the crossfire.

• ⚔️ War fears lit the fuse. Brent crude oil surged above $117 a barrel, its highest since March, on worries the US will renew strikes on Iran. Brent is now just a couple of dollars from breaking above its high of the year.

• 💵 A stronger dollar hurt gold. Rising oil pushes inflation expectations higher, which strengthens the dollar and lifts bond yields, with the 10-year near 5%. Gold pays no interest, so it looks less attractive when yields climb.

• 📉 The fall has been brutal. Gold is now down almost 30% from its all-time high of about $5,600 an ounce set back in January. That is a genuinely massive drawdown for an asset many consider the ultimate safe haven.

A silver lining in the calendar

Here’s a detail worth knowing. Gold has a well-documented seasonal pattern, and it tends to perform well late in the year, particularly in November and December. That strength is often tied to year-end demand and heavy jewelry buying around festivals in big markets like India. So history suggests the back half of the year has frequently been kind to gold, which makes this timing interesting for anyone with a long horizon.

The Munch Take: We’ll be straight with you. Long term, we think a beaten-down asset like this is a genuinely interesting opportunity, and at these prices we really don’t think you could go wrong with a long-term holding of gold. It just went on a deep discount while everyone panicked, and that seasonal tailwind heading into year-end does not hurt. That said, if we had to choose where to put fresh money, we would still rather own Bitcoin, for a whole list of reasons we would love to walk through. If you want that breakdown, just reply to this email with “Hey, I want to know more,” and we will put together a full deep dive on gold versus Bitcoin. None of this is financial advice, of course. Fear creates discounts, and discounts are where patient people go hunting.

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STORY OF THE DAY

🍟 The McRib’s Secret Bitcoin Signal

Fire up the grill and pull up a price chart. McDonald’s is bringing back its legendary McRib sandwich starting October 27 in select US cities, and a very strange corner of the internet is paying close attention. For years, crypto traders have joked about the “McRib Indicator,” a tongue-in-cheek theory that Bitcoin tends to rally whenever that saucy pork sandwich returns to the menu. Silly? Absolutely. But the timing has lined up often enough to keep the meme alive.

• 📈 The correlation is real, sort of. After the McRib’s return in late 2020, Bitcoin surged more than 250% within a year, and after the 2023 comeback it climbed over 100%. McDonald’s own marketing director once joined the joke, calling the timing hilarious.

• 🤨 But it’s far from reliable. Of the last seven McRib returns, Bitcoin only doubled after two. Following the 2021 return it topped out days later and lost two-thirds of its value, so treat this as fun lore, not a crystal ball.

• 🍔 The sandwich itself is a marketing legend. The roughly 500-calorie McRib is boneless pork pressed into a rib shape, and McDonald’s has yanked it on and off the menu for decades, including multiple dramatic “farewell tours,” purely to keep fans hungry for its return.

The Munch Take: We’ll leave the sandwich-as-signal theory where it belongs, in the meme folder, but there’s a real reason we’re smiling at this one. We’ve been transparent that we started building a position in McDonald’s about two to three weeks ago, and this is exactly why. There’s no other brand on Earth quite like it. The stock has actually held up well lately, up almost 5% in the past month, and it pays a 3.11% dividend to keep you company while you wait for the turnaround. It’s still had a rough year overall, down 18%, but that is precisely the kind of world-class, beaten-down brand we love. McRib or not, we’re happy owning the golden arches. The Bitcoin thing is just a tasty bonus.

MARKET OVERVIEW

🍟 Tasty Movers & Shakers

🥇 Free Report: Stay immune from inflation with this AI secret (Ad)

⛽ $SLB SLB jumped 7.08% after beating earnings, lifted by recovering Middle East demand and growing traction in its AI data center business. Turns out the old oilfield giant found a fresh story in the AI boom.

🛡️ $CRWD CrowdStrike rose 8.25% and $PANW Palo Alto Networks gained 7.22% as fresh flaws in widely used PHP software drove demand for cybersecurity. Nothing fills the order books of security firms like a brand-new hole in the internet.

🚀 $SPCX SpaceX climbed 1.89% after PhillipCapital flipped it straight to Buy from Sell, pointing to surprisingly strong growth in its AI business. A rare double upgrade is a loud way for an analyst to admit they were wrong.

📡 $T AT&T fell 7.96%, $TMUS T-Mobile dropped 7.71%, and $VZ Verizon slipped 1.18% as SpaceX’s expansion stoked fears of Starlink muscling into their turf. The old phone giants are learning that competition from space is no joke.

🔋 $BE Bloom Energy sank 11.24% after posting negative free cash flow, even as it raised its full-year earnings outlook. A rosier forecast means little when the cash is flowing out the door.

🔧 $LKQ LKQ cratered 22.47% after ousting its CEO and warning of weak quarterly earnings. A leadership shakeup paired with an earnings warning is about the worst one-two punch a stock can take.

STOCK OF THE DAY

💳 Amex Is Crushing It, So Why Is The Stock Down?

Here’s a head-scratcher. American Express just posted record revenue and raised its outlook for the year, yet the stock is down roughly 16% in 2026. When a company is firing on all cylinders but the share price keeps sliding, something interesting is going on under the hood.

The quarter itself was excellent. Amex pulled in a record $20.1 billion in revenue, up 9% from a year ago, while adjusted profit jumped 13%. Its wealthy cardholders clearly aren’t pulling back, with travel and entertainment spending up 10%, including a 13% jump on flights. The company was confident enough to raise its full-year earnings forecast.

So why did the stock drop? A few reasons stacked up. Revenue came in a hair short of what Wall Street wanted, and when a stock is priced for perfection, even a tiny miss stings. Amex also announced it’s cutting about 5% of its workforce, roughly 3,500 jobs, to “prepare for AI,” and layoffs during a record year made some investors uneasy. Toss in an ongoing regulatory overhang, and the market found reasons to be cautious.

A few extra numbers worth knowing:

• 💵 Shareholders are getting paid. Amex returned $2.2 billion to investors last quarter, including $1.6 billion in buybacks, and has grown its dividend by roughly 58% over three years.

• 🏪 Its network keeps expanding. The card is now accepted at over 190 million merchant locations worldwide, up from 160 million a year ago, closing its old gap with Visa and Mastercard.

• 🎯 New customers are premium. A record 76% of new accounts this quarter were fee-paying cards, exactly the high-spending members Amex wants.

The Munch Take: We think Amex is a world-class brand, the kind with a deep moat and a loyal premium customer base. That’s the same reason we added McDonald’s a few weeks back. A great company posting records while the stock falls is exactly the disconnect we love. This one goes near the top of our watchlist. Quality rarely stays cheap forever.

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Pre-Market Fuel

1. 🤫 Stay immune from inflation with this AI secret (Ad)

2. 😬 Did Elon Musk just issue a major warning?

3. 🇨🇳 China’s stock market is crashing.

4. 😭 Bitcoin crashed below $80,000 over the weekend.

🍪 Munchy Memes

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