Apple’s “Secret Supplier”

Apple’s “Secret Supplier”

People laughed in 2011 when our James Altucher forecast Apple would become a $1 trillion company.

At the time its market cap was barely a third of that total. The iPhone was already becoming a mature product. How could the company possibly triple in size from there? 

But triple it did — reaching that lofty $1 trillion milestone on Aug. 2, 2018.

Here in 2026? AAPL is valued over $4.6 trillion. 

“I think they’re about to be the first $10 trillion company,” James says now. 

OK, James isn’t sticking his neck out here the way he was 15 years ago. The company basically has to double to reach that target. Still impressive, though.

The catalyst for that growth, you ask?

Well, that comes back to what we covered here yesterday — the run-up to WWDC, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference next week.

Apple is about to turn the AI world on its head in two ways…

• It will make “agentic AI” simple and accessible. As colleague Chris Campbell described it last week in Altucher Confidential, AAPL is “throwing its ecosystem open to AI agents that reach into your apps and actually do things—book the Uber, edit the photo, compare the prices”

• It will perform essential AI tasks on your device — doing the hard work with only minimal input from a distant data center. That meets the Apple standard of simplicity, elegance and privacy.

Of course, you can buy Apple shares and wait patiently for the price to double over the next few years.

Or you can achieve far bigger gains much sooner by investing in a “secret supplier” to Apple — a company without which Apple will never achieve its lofty AI ambitions.

Which is exactly what James Altucher has done in the past. Only last year, in fact, he recommended shares of BTQ Technologies — a tiny stock in Apple’s ecosystem — to a special group of his readers.

Shares shot up 1,025% in six months.

And it’s about to happen all over again with Apple’s big AI reveal next Monday at WWDC.

Only this time, James thinks the profit potential is much bigger. “Over time, over the next handful of years,” he says, “I think shares could soar as high as 23,519%. That’s enough to turn $10,000 into $2.3 million.” (How does he come up with such an exact figure? Watch here.)

As mentioned yesterday, subscribers to James’ Microcap Millionaire service already know what company he’s talking about. And they’re scooping up shares — positioned for maximum profit once this company’s identity becomes something “everyone knows” next week.

There’s still time to act ahead of the keynote at WWDC next Monday. Click here and James will walk you through the urgent details.

Labor Day?!

U.S. oil futures are over $95 for the first time in nearly two weeks as it becomes evident that global oil flows won’t normalize anytime soon.

In fact, Donald Trump himself acknowledged as much this morning in a rambling Truth Social post. He said the U.S. Navy blockade of Iranian ports might be lifted by… Labor Day.

As we’ve tried to emphasize in these daily missives, the world doesn’t have anywhere near that much time. 

Even the legacy media are acknowledging as much now. Here’s a Bloomberg chart…

The U.S. situation is better than the world situation, but that’s not saying much. “Based on current trends,” tweets SoFi chief market strategist Liz Thomas, “the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would reach operational minimum levels around August.”

Later today the Energy Department releases its weekly U.S. inventory figures. GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan says inventories of distillates (diesel, jet fuel) will likely sit at 20-year lows.

California — whose plight we’ve chronicled now and then in recent weeks — is on track to hit “tank bottoms” for diesel and jet fuel by July 4. As one wag says on X, “California is going to be a fun place to be on America’s 250th birthday.”

Speaking of America’s 250th birthday, here’s one more reminder that our “America 76/26” event headlined by Jim Rickards is coming tomorrow.

It will come to you live from Philadelphia, a short distance from Independence Hall.

The fuel situation will surely be at the top of the agenda — along with the economic “stagflation” reminiscent of the 1970s. Jim and crew will also tackle precious metals, the rest of the commodity complex and the defense sector.

“We will share actionable STOCK PICKS throughout the event tied directly to these trends,” Jim promises. 

And we will not try to sell you on one of our premium advisories. 

Our exclusive livestream gets underway tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. EDT. To see the full agenda, check out our special event page at RickardsLive.com.

Climbing the Wall of Worry

Yes, the stock market is at all-time highs… and here’s the most powerful indication that it’s on track to move still higher.

The headline is totally factual. But the fact CNBC brings it up suggests that even after 3½ years, this bull market is still climbing the proverbial “wall of worry.”

The fact you’re seeing all manner of references to the 1999 dot-com bubble in the corporate media? Ironically, that suggests the market still has legs.

It’s when the media stops fretting over a bubble that you should start to worry. 

In late 1999 and early 2000, no one outside a handful of cranky contrarian newsletter editors thought the party would ever end. 

But end it did in early 2000… and the Nasdaq ground down 78% by late 2002.

For today, the bull is taking a breather.

All the major indexes are in the red as we write, but not much: The S&P 500 is down a third of a percent, back below 7,600.

➢ Congratulations are in order for Greg Guenthner’s Trading Desk readers — who rode the revival in software stocks to 365% gains yesterday playing call options on Zeta Global Holdings. Not bad for less than a week!

Rising oil prices are feeding through to rising inflation expectations and thus rising Treasury yields: The 30-year bond is once more knocking on the door of 5%.

Gold is sinking to its lowest since late March at $4,451. Silver is testing recent support at $73.56.

The relentless punishment of crypto continues: Bitcoin is below $67,000 for the first time in two months and Ethereum is down to $1,858.

Meanwhile, traders are still trying to make heads or tails of Donald Trump’s latest executive order and its impact on the AI industry.

As we chronicled throughout the month of May, the Trump administration was revisiting its promise last year of a hands-off approach to AI regulation. An executive order was in the works, set to be signed with great fanfare on May 21.

But then the president nixed it at the last minute — concerned that it went too far and would hamstring the industry’s ability to compete with Chinese AI.

Yesterday, amid zero fanfare, he signed an executive order that appears to be scaled down from the original. 

In a way, it’s a continuation of a Biden-era policy in which major AI firms share their models with the feds before they’re released to the public.

It appears to be voluntary. The feds have a 30-day review period, down from an original 90-day proposal.

Venture capitalist David Sacks, previously the White House AI and crypto czar and an advocate of a hands-off approach, says he’s pleased with the outcome: “It allows our AI labs to comply with the voluntary framework without delaying new model releases.”

Others aren’t so sure: One former Trump AI adviser frets to The Wall Street Journal that the government is going down the slippery slope toward a scheme in which AI models will have to get a federal license before release. Ugh…

Sign of the Times

We present the following with no further comment…

Mailbag: Only 5 Bullets?

“Thanks for the sidearm (even though it's not a six-shooter),” says a note of praise from a new reader.

“I really enjoyed the updates in the new briefing. I also appreciate that it is available for free to subscribers of one or more of your publications.

“It is a great gesture that shows you care about your customers—a detail that is often overlooked by other sources.”

Dave responds: You’re too kind. And for any other newcomers who want to learn “who we are and what we’re all about,” there’s this.

Funny about the firearm reference: After this e-letter adopted its current name in 2022, a reader wrote in to say something to the effect of, “Only 5 Bullets? What, you’ve got California-level limits on magazines?”