Hello there.

Ahoy, landlubbers. It be Monday, and there be pirates in these waters. Avast! Look there, on the horizon…

The Dread Captain Hormuz! Admiral Dimon, what be your orders? To keep reading? Aye, aye, that we will. 👇

In partnership with Piere…

While microcaps are disappearing, JPMorgan is doing their own version of playing it safe - Government contracts. Jamie Dimon just committed $24 million to revive shipbuilding at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, including backing a new submarine manufacturing facility.

B4. Hit! 💥

The funding includes loans and grants to build out facilities, support maritime suppliers, and train workers. And it’s all because the US hasn’t exactly been dominating shipbuilding lately. The American merchant fleet has shrunk dramatically over the past few decades, and now defense spending and geopolitical tension (hint: Rhymes with… wait, what rhymes with Hormuz?) are forcing a rethink.

Dimon called it reigniting the “arsenal of democracy.” The ever-dramatic Dimon. But the money is real. The investment helps finance a 95,000-square-foot submarine manufacturing site expected to create hundreds of jobs, and undoubtedly, a hefty return for the bank.

The horizon on this is obviously not next week, but still, this is a reminder of something simple: when governments start caring a lot about national security, domestic manufacturing and defense supply chains usually get a tailwind.

Shipbuilding isn’t flashy like AI chips or meme stocks. But if billions in defense dollars keep flowing, companies tied to infrastructure, heavy industry, and skilled trades could quietly benefit.

Not everything in your portfolio needs to be the next SpaceX. Sometimes it’s the brutal reality of the military industrial complex and a big bank writing checks.

For the past few years, tiny foreign companies were popping up on US exchanges like SoundCloud rappers in 2017. They’d run a quick IPO with big hype, and send the stock vertical… then gravity would kick in, and the suckers left holding the bag would lose the family farm.

Regulators finally said “enough.” After a wave of pump‑and‑dump schemes that torched retail investors, IPOs of tiny foreign firms have basically vanished. Only 13 microcaps have gone public in the US so far this year, compared with almost 80 by this point in 2025.

Basically, the penny stock casino is closed.

Nasdaq tightened listing rules, the SEC started freezing sketchy tickers, and the social-media-fueled moon missions suddenly seeing the light of reason wasn’t great for PR either. Turns out, many of the smallest IPOs since 2023 showed signs of WhatsApp-fueled price spikes before crashing, which pushed exchanges to add stricter screening tools.

For those of us not playing the stock market equivalent of scratch-offs, this is low-key good news. Fewer lottery-ticket listings means fewer chances to get rug-pulled by a company with three employees and a very aggressive Telegram group, and hopefully, an overall less volatile low-cap market.

The downside is that legit small companies now have a harder time going public. But if you’re building wealth the boring way with solid companies or index funds, you were never supposed to be gambling on $5 million market-cap mystery firms anyway.

Less chaos, fewer viral pumps, and probably fewer “I swear this was going to 10x” stories at Thanksgiving. Hey, in 2026, we’ll take all the stability we can get.

Elected officials have had a tremendous amount of success in the market recently.

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We want to keep you updated on what they’re trading and when so you can leverage that intel as you plan out your own portfolio.

Remember to always DYOR.

That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake with Invested Inc.