Dear Trader,
Wall Street’s handing out passes on big spending this week, and it’s playing favorites.
SpaceX told investors it could spend up to $40 billion this quarter alone, roughly double the last one, and the stock still popped before the bell.
Netflix didn’t get the same treatment.
It spends about $20 billion a year on shows and movies and has shed roughly $300 billion in value while it waits for a hit. Tesla lands somewhere in the middle tonight, with analysts bracing for a $4.5 billion cash burn and Elon pointing everybody toward robots.
Mark Sebastian’s bringing Olivia Voz into the State of the Market room this morning at 10 AM ET.
They’ll sort out which of these bills investors will keep paying for, and what that means heading into Tesla’s numbers tonight (which Licia will cover live at this link.)
Grab a seat with the link below.
Click this link to jump to the State of the Market live room.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SIREN: SpaceX (SPCX) smoked its third quarter and the stock popped premarket, but the earnings call left investors staring at one very large tab. Revenue hit $14.58 billion, up 161% from a year ago and well ahead of the $12.7 billion analysts expected.
Then management guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth-quarter capex (money spent building stuff), roughly double the third quarter. MoffettNathanson flagged a reported $100 billion-plus price tag on a new Starbase in Louisiana, plus a compute buildout that could run into the hundreds of billions.
The CFO swears plenty of lenders want in. Yahoo’s Brian Sozzi thinks it’s time for Elon to dust off his capital-raising charm.
SIGN: Tesla (TSLA) reports after the bell today, and Wall Street expects negative $4.5 billion in free cash flow (what’s left after the bills and the big-ticket spending). A year ago, it was nearly $4 billion in the black.
The money’s going into robots, AI compute, Cybercab and a chip plant Tesla’s building with SpaceX, part of a 2026 spending plan north of $25 billion. Elon says Optimus and Cybercab will make up most of Tesla’s value. That’s convenient, since analysts expect Tesla to keep about 2.7 cents of every sales dollar as operating profit.
Barclays now calls a Tesla-SpaceX merger the consensus expectation. Elon said back in July he won’t talk deals on an earnings call, so don’t hold your breath tonight.
SNEAKER: Netflix (NFLX) has lost roughly $300 billion in market value since last year’s peak, and the FT says it comes down to a shortage of hits. The company spends about $20 billion a year on shows and movies, yet viewing time grew just 2% in the first half of 2026.
So co-CEO Ted Sarandos cut about 1,000 jobs and fired his top TV and film chiefs, the same people running a strategy insiders say he designed. Then he told analysts Tuesday the strategy doesn’t need a fundamental shift. The stock fell nearly 6%.
LightShed’s Rich Greenfield says revenue growth near 10% or lower means real trouble. Netflix sits at 11.8% and just warned it’ll keep slowing.