Andrew here. For years, I’ve written about how many mass shooters buy their weapons legally using credit cards, and how financial institutions could flag unusual purchases if they tried. That reporting eventually pushed the payment industry to create a dedicated merchant code for gun stores, before a backlash by several red states effectively outlawed the practice.
Now, a little-noticed rule proposed by the Trump administration could change how guns are purchased in a different way. It would allow customers to be vetted for firearms and buy them online, and have the weapons delivered directly to their homes — instead of picking them up in store after an in-person check. Critics warn the rule will make it easier for problematic buyers to bypass human scrutiny. We have more details below.
“Forced buying”
Shares in SpaceX are falling in premarket trading, extending a weekslong slump.
It comes even though Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company is officially joining the Nasdaq 100 index of tech heavyweights on Tuesday. The milestone — achieved via a new fast-track rule — has automatically set off a buying spree by index funds.
The underwhelming run so far by SpaceX as a public company is raising warning signs, Niko Gallogly reports.
Becoming part of a major index is supposed to lift a company’s shares. Its stock price often pops because index-tracking funds buy up the company’s shares.
A recent study by two Harvard Business School researchers, Marco Sammon and Chris Murray, found that companies that gained fast entry on the CRSP index run by Morningstar saw their shares jump an average of 5 percent.
SpaceX drew some alarm by getting fast-tracked for entry into several big indexes. Nasdaq, FTSE Russell and CRSP changed their rules ahead of SpaceX’s I.P.O. last month, making it eligible for early inclusion. (S&P Dow Jones Indices, which runs the S&P 500, declined to follow suit.)
Such moves could create a volatile “forced buying” event, Hanno Lustig, a finance professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, wrote on his Substack last month. He predicted that by Monday, passive investors would have purchased 18.5 percent of SpaceX’s publicly traded shares.
Yet that “forced buying” hasn’t benefited SpaceX. Sammon, one of the Harvard Business School researchers, told DealBook that he expected to see SpaceX shares rally each time large tracking funds bought large blocks of the company’s stock over the past three weeks.
Instead, he said, “the price has been relatively stable.”
What’s happening? Hedge funds and other large investors who got in early on the SpaceX trade may have done so with an aim to quickly sell, or flip, their shares to index funds, Sammon said. Millennium Management is said to have made $3.7 billion last month with “index-rebalancing” trades that sought to capitalize on forced buying moments involving index funds, Bloomberg reports.
Investors are also focused on other hot assets. Those looking to cash in on the artificial intelligence trade are increasingly focused on the stocks of memory chip makers. A big event this week is the U.S. trading debut of SK Hynix, the Korean chip giant whose existing shares have soared 238 percent in Seoul trading this year.
SpaceX “is a mere side note,” Ivan Cosovic, the managing director of Breakout Point, a market data firm that tracks investor sentiment, told DealBook.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Questions arise over control of the Senate. Top Democrats have rescinded their endorsements of Graham Platner, the party’s nominee to challenge Senator Susan Collins in Maine, after a woman publicly accused him of rape. (Platner denied the allegation but said he would “reflect” on his path forward.) The development raises questions about the race and whether Democrats can win back control of the upper chamber.
Greek companies reportedly made nearly $4 billion from shipping Russian oil. Businesses including Dynacom Tankers and the Onassis Group moved the petroleum despite efforts by the Group of 7 nations to curb Moscow’s revenue from oil sales, according to The Financial Times. (Sales are allowed if they comply with a G7-mandated price cap.)
Big banks are said to be weighing a deal to help get around fee caps. Lenders including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are studying a deal to buy a card network owned by Fiserv, according to The Wall Street Journal. The relatively small potential transaction could help them avoid limits on fees they charge on debit cards, though it’s unclear whether any of the banks will follow through.
Intervention from Washington fails to help the U.S. in the World Cup. The men’s team lost to Belgium 4-1 on Monday. That’s despite the presence of Folarin Balogun, the American star who played after senior Trump administration officials petitioned FIFA to overturn a red card that would have barred him from the match. The move by FIFA drew sharp criticism, including from those who noted the close relationship between President Trump and Gianni Infantino, the organization’s leader.
A boost for the “Amazon of guns”
Americans may soon be able to buy guns online and have them shipped directly to their homes, thanks to a potential federal rule that could transform the firearms industry.
And GrabAGun Digital Holdings, a company backed by Donald Trump Jr. that aspires to become the “Amazon of guns,” stands to profit.
What’s happening: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is weighing a proposal to let licensed gun dealers ship to in-state buyers who pass an online background check. (Under the current law, buyers must pick up guns in person at stores.)
That could benefit GrabAGun, according to The Washington Post and Reuters. Shares in GrabAGun jumped 21 percent on Monday, its first day of trading since the reports were published.
The proposal is subject to public comment until next month. If adopted, it could take effect as soon as later this year.
It could provide a substantial boost to GrabAGun, whose shares have fallen sharply since going public last year.
That said, the company could face competition from other firearms sellers, including GunBroker.com, and big retailers.
The Donald Trump Jr. connection: GrabAGun went public by merging with a blank-check vehicle created by 1789 Capital, an investment firm where Trump is a partner. He is also on GrabAGun’s board.
“This creates an ease of access to be able to get into an otherwise perhaps intimidating space for a lot of people who aren’t as familiar,” Trump told Fox Business last year when GrabAGun went public.
Several groups have concerns:
-
Gun-control groups have cited safety concerns, including the potential for legal buyers to buy guns on behalf of those who are otherwise prohibited from owning firearms, known as “straw buying.”
-
Smaller gun store owners told Reuters they were worried about safety. They added that they could suffer financially by losing out on so-called transfer fees for background checks and ammunition purchases.
-
Government ethics watchdogs have raised questions about companies linked to Trump benefiting from rules made by his father’s administration.
A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. told The Post that he had no role in the A.T.F. decision-making process. And the C.E.O. of GrabAGun told Reuters that neither he nor Trump knew that the potential rule change was coming.
Quote of the day
“These distillation attacks are carried out illicitly, systematically and at industrial scale to harvest U.S. A.I. capabilities across frontier labs and repackage them as their own.”
Anthropic, in a letter to Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren about Chinese rivals unfairly copying its artificial intelligence models, and calling on Washington to intervene.
The tension goes both ways: Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant, recently banned employees from using Anthropic’s models for work purposes.
A Davos comeback?
Klaus Schwab reportedly wants back in at the World Economic Forum.
After leaving the organization last year after an investigation into allegations of misconduct, the forum’s founder has asked its board — now chaired by Larry Fink, BlackRock’s C.E.O., and André Hoffmann, Roche’s vice chairman — for an advisory role, according to Emily Glazer of The Wall Street Journal.
He’s also issuing other demands and legal threats. More from The Journal:
Schwab is seeking to regain access to Forum premises and communication channels as well as farewell visits for him and his wife, Hilde Schwab, to the Forum’s overseas locations, according to the documents. He is also asking the Forum to reinstate personal security for him and cover at least half of his personal legal costs related to the dispute.
Schwab’s recent correspondence lambasts the Forum’s board for deploying money and using advisers to diminish his legacy. The correspondence threatens legal action against the Forum’s trustees.
The Schwabs have already received a pension payment equivalent to about $7 million, as well as a typical Swiss pension, $200,000 to move the couple out of Forum offices and a private executive assistant, The Journal reports.
Part of Schwab’s justification, according to The Journal, is that the board said it had found no “material wrongdoing” in its internal inquiry. But the newspaper adds that the public statement belied findings given privately to the board by outside lawyers.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
-
Proxima Fusion, a German nuclear energy start-up, has raised 411 million euros (about $468 million) in a funding round led by Google, XTX Ventures and the German energy company RWE. (Proxima Fusion)
-
Versant agreed to buy Full Swing, a golf simulation platform, from the investment firm Bruin Capital for about $530 million. (CNBC)
-
In I.P.O. news: Syntiant, an Intel-backed chip and software maker, and Csquare, a data center company backed by Brookfield, have filed to go public. (Bloomberg)
Politics, policy and regulation
-
President Trump is expected to allow Turkey to again purchase F-35 fighter jets, as a major NATO meeting kicks off in Ankara this week. (NYT)
-
Trump hailed a “bold” move by Walmart to lower the price of ground beef, Coca-Cola and other products. He also sought to take credit for the move. (WSJ, NYT)
Best of the rest
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
