LeBron James Securitizes Himself

Hello and welcome to Alts Cafe.

A curated pour of the week’s most important alt investing stories, customized and brewed to your liking.

Highlights

• International Investing: Alibaba raises $10 billion in ​the largest share sale​ Hong Kong has ever seen
• Startups & VC: Stripe buys OpenRouter for ​more than $8 billion​ and a position in AI billing
• Sports: LeBron James borrowed $300 million against ​his lifetime Nike contract​
• Prediction Markets: Cantor Fitzgerald opens Kalshi to ​thousands of institutional clients​
• Music & Film: Round Hill sues Suno and Anthropic for ​$1 billion apiece​
• Crypto: Bitcoin tops $80,000 as ​the debasement trade returns​
• Collectibles, Culture and Luxury: Ferrari’s first electric car sells for ​$40 million at auction​
• Private Equity & Private Credit: Charlesbank buys a US law firm in ​a $700 million deal​
• Real Estate: US office vacancy drops ​130 basis points​ in a year to 17.7%
• Precious Metals and Gems: Copper’s five-year record squeeze ​collapses in four sessions​
• Artwork: Forgeries proliferate as ​South Asian art booms​
• Farmland: Midwest farmland values fall ​the most since 2016​ in real terms
• Wine, Whiskey & Spirits: Canada’s booze boycott becomes ​a genuine trade weapon​
• Other: A Chinese humanoid robot breaks ​Usain Bolt’s 100m record​

International Investing

Around the world…

1. 🇨🇳 Alibaba raises $10 billion to fund AI infrastructure in​ the largest share sale​ ever by a Hong Kong listed company, having already burned through half of a three-year capex plan, with Michael Burry among the public critics
2. 🇨🇳 Shein finally lists in Hong Kong, raising up to $1.77 billion at ​a $27 billion valuation​, roughly 73% below the mark it carried privately in 2022 after failed attempts in New York and London
3. 🇨🇦 Trump doubles tariffs on Canadian autos, parts and steel to ​50% from January 1​ after trade talks collapsed, with Mark Carney calling the move a miscalculation and promising to match it dollar for dollar
4. 🇰🇷 Korea’s Samsung will return as much as ​$79 billion to shareholders​ this year, its largest ever payout, days after SK Hynix announced a KRW 40 trillion buyback of its own

Why it matters: Alibaba’s $10 billion for AI

Alibaba spent years buying its own shares back. This week it did the opposite, raising ​$10 billion in Hong Kong​ in the largest follow-on any listed company there has ever done

Why? It needs the money for compute.

The company had already run through roughly half of a three-year AI capex commitment, and the math on the rest does not work out of operating cash flow alone.

Every hyperscaler on earth is discovering that the AI buildout is too large to fund from the balance sheet, which is why Alphabet, Amazon and Meta issued roughly $220 billion of bonds this year, why Broadcom is in the market for ​more than $60 billion of debt​, and why Nvidia had to organise a $500 billion financing platform with six asset managers to keep its own customers solvent.

In the United States that bill lands in the bond market. In China, where the corporate bond market is shallower and the state prefers equity to leverage, it lands on shareholders.

Watch how quickly this $10 billion is spent. If the next raise comes inside twelve months, the capex plan is not a plan, it is a treadmill.

Music & Film

• Round Hill sues Suno and Anthropic for ​up to $1 billion apiece​ over AI training on its catalog, and says publicly it is not looking to settle
• Apple Music will stamp ​a “Made With AI” label​ on tracks generated on platforms such as Suno, but pushes the tagging obligation onto labels and distributors
• Spotify introduces an ​AI Persona badge​ for synthetic artist identities and keeps their music out of personalized recommendations by default
• Universal Music signs a global merchandise and e-commerce deal with Apple Corps ​covering the Beatles​, timed to four biopics landing simultaneously in April 2028
• Studios lose roughly ​$75 billion a year​ to piracy on Kearney and Muso estimates, heading toward $125 billion by 2028, after Spider-Man drew 5.9 million views on X in nine hours
• Investment bankers begin shopping New Line Cinema and Warner’s cable networks as ​California calls off settlement talks​, with a $7 million-a-day penalty clock starting October 1
• YouTube offers its biggest creators ​millions to post exclusively​ for a set window, an answer to eighteen months of Netflix paying the same people to post on both
• Netflix and AMC Studios strike a first-of-its-kind co-production deal, starting with Shane Black’s ​spy drama Bannerman​, which airs on AMC before reaching Netflix 90 days later
• Disney orders 20 episodes from Dhar Mann Studios, bringing ​a 170 million-follower creator​ inside the studio system rather than competing with it
• HPS and Oaktree seize Hollywood production supplier MBS Group in ​a $900 million debt-for-equity deal​, handing private credit the lighting rigs behind the world’s sound stages
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day passes ​$2.2 billion worldwide​, the second-fastest ever, dragging August to an all-time record month at the domestic box office
• A Yamaha C3 grand piano played by Freddie Mercury heads to Propstore in October carrying ​a six-figure estimate​, alongside the AKG microphone he recorded on

Why it matters: Round Hill picks a fight it will not settle

Every AI music case so far has ended the same way, with a licensing deal that converts an infringement claim into a revenue line.

Suno has already signed one with BMG. Round Hill is doing something different, suing Suno and Anthropic for ​up to $1 billion each​ and saying out loud that it does not want to settle.

Round Hill is a catalog owner. Its entire asset value rests on the proposition that recorded compositions generate collectible royalties for decades, and a licensing settlement priced today sets the clearing rate for every catalog transaction tomorrow.

If training rights are worth a modest annual fee, catalog multiples will compress across the industry. A verdict reprices the asset class, which is why a mid-sized publisher is willing to spend years litigating.

Apple Music will ​label AI tracks​ and Spotify will badge synthetic artists and bury them in recommendations. Sue first, then make the infringement countable.

Watch whether the majors, who are pressing their own suits against Suno, break ranks and settle. If they do, Round Hill is left holding the industry’s only real chance at a big number.

Did you know we finance Hollywood films?

Well, we do! And on Tuesday, September 15, ​we’re screening one of them​.

We’re taking over Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn for a private showing of The Dutchman, featuring Kate Mara and Andre Holland.

​Film bridge lending​ is one of the most compelling and least understood corners of alternative investing.

Before the lights go down, we’re renting out Nitehawk’s Lo-Res bar to explain how our film lending joint venture, Launch Film Finance, originates film bridge loans.

If you’re in NYC, don’t miss this.

• Sep 15, 5-9pm.
• $99. Drinks and dinner come to your seat,
• 32 ppl capacity

Startups & VC

• Stripe closes its acquisition of OpenRouter for ​more than $8 billion​, applying its payments-infrastructure playbook to inference by sitting between developers and model providers and clipping a fraction of the spend
• SpaceX commits ​$100 billion to a Starbase​ in Louisiana, built on a former Exxon site, because a single spaceport can no longer service the Starship launch cadence
• Anthropic will tell IPO investors its addressable market exceeds ​$30 trillion​, topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion claim, on projected 2028 revenue of $190 billion to $200 billion
• OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar tells staff the company ​will be public in 2027​ or sooner, calling the listing a fundraise rather than a finish line, with an $852 billion valuation to justify
• AI chip startup Etched raises $700 million at ​a $21 billion valuation​ led by Jane Street, double its July mark, after the trading firm bought and deployed its first inference cluster
• Hypersonic missile maker Castelion raises $1 billion at ​a $13 billion valuation​, nearly five times its December mark, as the war with Iran drains American stockpiles
• Nvidia opens talks to invest in Perplexity at ​more than $30 billion​, alongside a possible licensing agreement, after the AI search startup reportedly tripled revenue in a year
• Hugging Face is approached about a sale at ​roughly $13 billion​, nearly triple its 2023 mark, a month after a rogue OpenAI agent breached it
• Smart ring maker Oura targets up to $3 billion in a September IPO at ​a $16 billion valuation​, having doubled revenue in each of the past two years
• Space startups raised ​$11.3 billion in six months​, more than all of 2025, on a median round that doubled to $14.5 million while seed fell to a record-low 1.5% of capital
• Satellite maker Muon Space raises $250 million at ​a $1.5 billion valuation​ to build 500 satellites a year, with Google and Salesforce among its backers
• SoftBank leads a $200 million round for Swiss startup Gravis Robotics at ​a $1 billion valuation​, retrofitting excavators with autonomous systems that claim 30% productivity gains
• California startups have raised roughly ​$366 billion this year​, more than triple the other 49 states combined, with OpenAI and Anthropic accounting for over half of it

Why it matters: Stripe’s $8 billion tollbooth

Stripe does not issue cards or hold deposits. It sits between businesses and the banks that do, and takes a small percentage of everything that passes through.

Buying OpenRouter for ​more than $8 billion​ is the same trade applied to inference: sit between developers and model providers, route each request by price, speed and availability, and clip a fraction of the token spend.

Building economic infrastructure for the internet is mostly the same job as building it for AI. The model layer is commoditising faster than anyone expected, and when the thing above you becomes interchangeable the money moves to whoever owns the switchboard.

A router that can silently move traffic from one model to another turns frontier models into fungible supply, which is exactly the position Alibaba, OpenAI and Anthropic are all raising enormous sums to avoid occupying.

Sports

• LeBron James borrowed almost $300 million by ​selling bonds to insurers​ arranged by Guggenheim, backed by his lifetime Nike contract at 4.8%, a structure David Bowie pioneered in 1997
• Arctos agrees to buy 10% of the Atlanta Falcons at ​a $10.6 billion valuation​, the highest any NFL franchise has carried, and its fourth NFL position alongside the Bills, Chargers and Browns
• Sportico values the NFL’s 32 teams at ​a combined $299 billion​, up 31% in twelve months, with the Cowboys alone at $15.5 billion
• Sweden’s EQT takes a majority stake in NRL club Melbourne Storm at ​an A$150 million valuation​, its first direct investment in a sports team and a rare private owner in a member-controlled league
• Jets owner Woody Johnson buys a minority stake in ​the Aston Martin F1 team​ and joins the board as vice chairman, adding to his 43% of Crystal Palace
• The USTA strips roughly 3,500 cheap seats from Arthur Ashe Stadium in ​an $800 million renovation​, expanding courtside from 3,000 to 5,000 seats and adding nine clubs
• The company behind the Enhanced Games posts ​a $62 million quarterly loss​ on the cost of staging its debut Las Vegas event, with the stock down 77% from its listing
• Tata Steel exits professional football by selling Indian Super League club Jamshedpur FC for ​100 rupees​, or about one dollar, after years of losses
• The record $12.5 billion Lakers sale to a Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger group ​will not be halted​ by the Buss family dispute over the remaining stake

Why it matters: LeBron’s version of Bowie bonds

The story first landed as a scandal, but it’s pretty fascinating.

An LLC controlled by LeBron James issued close to $300 million of bonds, and the buyers were two Midwestern life insurers advised by Mark Walter (the same Mark Walter who went on to own the Lakers, the team LeBron joined.)

But the structure is the actual story. David Bowie did this first in 1997, issuing $55 million of bonds backed by royalties from 25 albums recorded before 1990.

LeBron’s version is ​backed by future off-court income​ (principally a lifetime Nike contract reportedly worth more than $1 billion) and it runs to 2049.

It’s like a human capital contract: contractual cash flow, pledged income far in excess of debt service, a 30-year tenor.

That last part is why life insurers wanted it. They carry liabilities stretching 20, 30 and 40 years and need assets that match, which is the same appetite that pushed insurance money into private credit, then into franchise stakes, and now into individual people.

The productization is already underway, with specialist lenders advertising $10 million to $150 million advances against guaranteed athlete, musician and creator contracts.

Watch who underwrites the second tier of this stuff, where the name is smaller and the endorsement is “cancellable.”

“The second tier is the better file anyway.

LeBron’s version works because one counterparty signed for life. Go one rung down and the book is five or six brands on three-year terms with morals clauses attached, so concentration carries the risk.

Cap any single brand’s share of the book, add replacement provisions when one walks, size the coverage to survive two terminations at once. That’s a portfolio problem, and portfolio problems have templates.

Duration is the harder sell. Insurers want thirty years. A second-tier endorsement book runs five.”

— ​Josh Stein​

Prediction Markets

• Cantor Fitzgerald begins institutional block trading in prediction markets, opening Kalshi to ​thousands of institutional clients​ that could not previously take size without moving the book
• CNBC reports hedge funds are ​about to jump in big​, treating event contracts as a distinct asset class rather than a retail curiosity
• Polymarket seeks $1 billion at ​more than a $20 billion valuation​, roughly double its mark from earlier this year as competition for order flow intensifies
• A Stanford study of 444 high-volume bettors examines ​the line between entertainment​ and behavioral bias, the research question regulators will eventually cite
• States and tribal operators keep pushing back as the CFTC writes rules for ​sports event contracts​, leaving federal blessing and local hostility running in parallel

Why it matters: Cantor puts Kalshi on the block desk

Cantor Fitzgerald’s launch of ​block trading on Kalshi​ on Kalshi is a plumbing story that changes the asset class, because the single thing that has kept serious money out is not just legality, but depth.

A fund that wants a nine-figure position in an event contract cannot put it through a retail order book without announcing the trade and moving the price against itself.

A block desk fixes exactly that: negotiate size away from the screen, print it, and let the market see the trade after the fact.

That is how equity options and credit derivatives grew up. But two consequences follow.

• First, liquidity begets liquidity, so a genuine institutional bid is the fastest route to the valuations these venues are already carrying, with Polymarket seeking ​more than $20 billion​ and Kalshi reportedly higher.
• Second institutional size sharpens every integrity question that was tolerable when the average ticket was $50. Insider information about an outcome is worth what someone can bet on it, and Cantor just raised that number by orders of magnitude.

Watch which contracts the venues decline to list now that the people trading them can move real money.

Crypto

• Bitcoin tops $80,000 for the first time since mid-May, capping ​its best three-day run​ since 2023 as the Treasury’s buyback plan revived dollar debasement fears
• Bitcoin and ether ETFs pull in ​$2.6 billion in a week​, the strongest inflows since October and roughly triple the prior week’s volume
• Zcash reaches ​an eight-year high above $800​ as Grayscale’s US ETF goes live, quadrupling the privacy token’s price in six months before an 8% pullback on the listing
• Ray Dalio tells investors to ​sell bonds and buy gold​, putting as much as 15% of a portfolio in bullion and bitcoin as the US debt load compounds
• Tokenized Pokémon cards are ​outperforming bitcoin this year​ as sealed collectibles move on-chain, with hundreds of millions flowing through the platforms monthly

Collectibles, Culture and Luxury

• Chassis zero of the Luce, Ferrari’s first electric car, sells for ​$40 million at RM Sotheby’s​, roughly 36 times its estimate and 62 times retail, for a design Ferrari’s own former chairman said risked destroying a legend
• Heritage’s Summer Platinum Night becomes ​the highest-grossing sports auction​ ever at $62.9 million, with six lots above $1 million and seventeen above $500,000
• A T206 Honus Wagner graded Authentic sells for ​$5.86 million​, a record for the grade, while a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle doubles its own grade record at $3.72 million
• Maradona’s Hand of God ball sells for $3.35 million, well short of ​its $10 million estimate​ but comfortably above the $2.37 million it fetched in 2022
• Shohei Ohtani’s game-worn Tokyo Series cleats sell for ​$440,055​, more than quadrupling Michael Jordan’s old record for baseball footwear
• Pop Mart’s first-half revenue rises 24% against 200% last year, with the founder conceding the company will likely ​miss its full-year target​ as Labubu demand cools
• Luxury sales fall sharply in China as ​a tax crackdown hits​ wealthy shoppers, removing the marginal buyer the entire category has leaned on for a decade
• Disney pushes deeper into ​the trading card business​, where its card revenue has quadrupled since 2023, chasing a collectibles market it puts in the tens of billions

Why it matters: Ferrari’s $40 million electric car smashes estimates

The Luce was the most criticised car Ferrari has ever built. Purists hated the design, Ferrari’s own former chairman Luca di Montezemolo said it risked destroying a legend, and the internet spent May treating it as evidence the marque had lost its mind.

But Chassis zero then sold for ​$40 million at RM Sotheby’s​, about 36x estimate and 62 times sticker, making it one of the most expensive cars ever auctioned.

Chassis zero of the first electric Ferrari is a one-of-one on a line that will run for decades, and that is a permanent fact about the car regardless of what anyone thinks of the styling.

Two caveats keep this from being a tidy thesis.

• It was a charity sale, where prices carry a philanthropic premium that never shows up in a normal auction room
• The full 2026 allocation of roughly 500 Luces sold out in under two months, so the scarcity applies to this specific car rather than the model.

Set it against the same week’s results elsewhere. Heritage ran ​the largest sports auction​ ever recorded at $62.9 million, and inside it Maradona’s Hand of God ball missed a $10 million estimate by two thirds.

As always, the market pays for provenance that cannot be reproduced.

Private Equity & Private Credit

• Charlesbank agrees to acquire Wood Smith Henning & Berman in ​a $700 million transaction​, among the largest private equity investments in a US law firm and structured to work around rules barring non-lawyer ownership
• Private equity is now sitting on roughly 4,600 stuck portfolio companies worth ​$860 billion of value​ with no clear exit, with covenant-lite loans at 92% of outstanding leveraged debt against 16% in 2009
• Alternative investment fundraising tops ​$104 billion through July​, down 12% year-over-year as the credit slump outweighs gains in hard assets
• Pimco president Christian Stracke says wealth distributors ​cannot sell direct lending​ retail vehicles any longer, and are hunting for alternatives to the product that built the channel
• Evercore counts a record ​$121 billion of secondaries​ in the first half and puts the full year on track for $250 billion, with GP-led volume outpacing LP-led for the first time since 2022
• A KKR-led consortium agrees to take Australian insurance broker Steadfast private for ​A$7.7 billion​, one of the largest buyouts the ASX has seen
• PitchBook’s return barometers put private equity and venture at ​their best readings since 2020​, implying quarterly returns near 4.9% and 5.5%, though these are nowcasts rather than reported marks

Creators are building real businesses, and a whole new private financing layer is emerging to fund them: advances, revenue-share deals, credit lines, and catalog loans.

On October 6 we’re bringing the people writing those checks (and the people taking them) together in Los Angeles for an intimate evening of straight talk on how creator lending actually works.

Real Estate

• The US office vacancy rate falls to 17.7%, ​down 130 basis points​ year-over-year, with Manhattan leading on both volume and pricing in a clear flight to quality
• Brookfield buys 50 multifamily buildings across Japan’s four largest cities for ​¥100 billion​, its first move into Japanese residential and a step toward a $10 billion five-year target
• New single-family home sales drop ​10.5% in July​ and 6.3% year-over-year, as mortgage rates keep buyers out even with the median price slipping
• The Case-Shiller index shows national home prices up just ​1.5% year-over-year​, led by Chicago, New York and Cleveland while Seattle, Las Vegas and Denver fall
• Micron’s $50 billion Boise buildout has ​pushed local home prices​ sharply higher and strained local infrastructure, turning a mid-sized Idaho market into an AI manufacturing boomtown
• Goldman Sachs agrees to buy sale-leaseback specialist LCN Capital Partners for ​up to $410 million​, betting institutions and private wealth will pay up for inflation-protected net lease income
• BREIT completes its exit from self-storage and pours ​$3.3 billion into data centers​ in the second quarter, the clearest statement yet of where non-traded REIT capital is going
• Commercial property sales are up ​roughly 30% through midyear​ on Green Street’s count, with activity surging despite macro risk and higher financing costs

Why it matters: Surprise office bottom (at the top of the market)

Office was the asset class everyone agreed was structurally broken. But vacancy has now fallen to 17.7%, ​down 130 basis points​ in a year.

Interestingly, almost none of it came from tenants taking more space. It came from supply leaving, through conversions, demolitions and buildings quietly reclassified out of the inventory.

That makes this a denominator recovery rather than a demand recovery, which matters enormously for what you can buy.

The trophy end has re-tightened, while the commodity end is still being absorbed by attrition. The financing side is finally cooperating, with commercial property sales ​up roughly 30%​ through midyear, and the smart capital is not waiting for offices anyway.

Office is investable again at the top of the quality curve and at replacement-cost basis, and it is still a liquidation story everywhere else.

Japan trip: 51 days away!

Three nights in Tokyo. One night in the Nagano highlands.

Our Japan trip is 60 days away, and we’re excited to share the trip is taking shape.

Updates:

• Hotels locked in: ​Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel​ (Shibuya) for 3 nights, ​Hotel Silk (Madarao)​ for our night in Iiyama
• Bonsai Day is fully confirmed: ​Shunkaen Bonsai Museum​, a traditional tea ceremony, and a private live bonsai performance with renowned artist ​Mr. Saeki​
• Sumo show is set. This is gonna be epic.
• Traditional tea ceremony in ​Shinjuku​ (matcha and sencha)
• Nagano day: Now includes the ​Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park​ before our distillery tour and tasting at ​Kiyokawa​
• Vinyl hunting in Shimokitazawa added for those sticking around before departure

More details to come as we lock in the final pieces.

2 spots left

Tokyo, sumo, bonsai masters, snow monkeys, sake at a private distillery — this trip is going to be epic.

Early bird pricing is over, but you can still lock in before it’s fully booked.

• Price: $3,999
• Bring a guest: +$2,999
• Includes: All meals, drinks, activities, events, and transportation. Everything except flights.

Artwork

• Dealers warn that forgeries are proliferating as ​the South Asian art market​ booms, with specialists in India and Pakistan reporting a sharp rise in fakes reaching the trade
• Europol reports that museum heists have ​turned violent and targeted​, with thieves recruited on social media and organised networks focused on gold and jewels rather than paintings
• Christie’s posts ​$4.5 billion in H1​ as auction sales rise 71%, with trophy lots and luxury goods driving the rebound at both major houses
• Nearly 700 handwritten Gandhi notes from 1944 to 1946 sell for ​a record $1.69 million​ in Mumbai, as the market for rare historical documents keeps compounding
• Frieze Seoul returns for a fifth edition in early September with ​more than 125 exhibitors​ and new curated sections, before its move to a Zaha Hadid convention centre next year

Why it matters: The fakes arrive right on schedule

Every art market that appreciates quickly gets the forgeries it deserves, and South Asian modern art has appreciated very quickly.

Dealers now report ​a sharp rise in fakes​ reaching the trade in India and Pakistan, which is what happens when demand outruns the infrastructure that authenticates supply.

Forgery becomes profitable when three conditions line up:

• Prices rise fast enough to make the effort worthwhile
• The artists are dead and their estates are unfunded or disorganised
• The catalogues raisonnés that would settle attribution either do not exist or are decades out of date.

South Asian modernism checks all three.

The market needs funded estates, published catalogues and specialists willing to say no in public, and the auction houses have every incentive to under-supply that infrastructure while ​sales are rebounding 71%​.

For collectors the rule has not changed in a hundred years. In a market without a catalogue raisonné, you are not buying a work, you are buying a paper trail, and anything without one should be priced as a decorative object.

Precious Metals and Gems

• Copper’s cash-to-three-month spread collapses roughly 89% in four sessions after ​20,000 tonnes hit LME warehouses​, unwinding the widest backwardation in five years without any new metal being mined
• Cash copper set a record above $14,900 a tonne on August 19 after LME stocks fell for ​42 consecutive sessions​, the longest downward run since 2014
• US copper imports hit ​a twelve-year high​, pulling 14% out of LME inventories and locking hundreds of thousands of tonnes in American depots on tariff fears
• The Democratic Republic of Congo’s ban on ​copper and cobalt concentrate exports​ continues to tighten raw material supply, with Chile’s output at a nine-year low
• Zambia re-elects Hakainde Hichilema, ​removing an election discount​ from Africa’s second-largest copper producer and its stated path to 3 million tonnes a year by 2031
• China’s rare earth magnet exports fall about ​10% through July​ even as Beijing insists conditions are improving, with allocations to individual destinations swinging far more than the headline total
• Gold holds near records with Ray Dalio urging investors to ​put 15% in bullion​ and bitcoin, arguing the US debt trajectory leaves bonds uninvestable

Why it matters: The copper squeeze

For three weeks the copper market told a supply story and every input supported it. LME stocks fell for ​42 straight sessions​, Chile cut its forecast twice, Congo banned concentrate exports, an Indonesian smelter stayed offline, and cash copper set a record above $14,900 a tonne.

Then the cash-to-three-month spread went from $535 to $56 in four sessions, an 89% collapse, and about ​20,000 tonnes arriving​ in LME warehouses was enough to do it. That is roughly a day and a half of global consumption.

The global stock of copper and the cost of holding a tonne on one particular date are different things, and only the second one was ever scarce.

The deferred price actually rose while the spread collapsed, which is the giveaway. If the world had suddenly decided copper was abundant, both would have fallen.

What changed was the administrative status of metal that already existed, not its quantity, and the same pattern is running through other critical minerals right now, from Chinese magnet allocations that move by destination while the total holds, to a lepidolite mine the market booked as restarted that an inspector found idle.

The practical lesson for anyone trading physical commodities is to distrust any squeeze that resolves without new production.

Farmland

• Midwest farmland values fall in inflation-adjusted terms by ​the most since 2016​, a real decline hiding inside a nominal number that barely moved
• The Chicago Fed reports second-quarter district farmland values ​essentially unchanged​ year-over-year, the flattest reading since the last farm downturn
• US farm bankruptcies climb to ​their highest in six years​, with Chapter 12 filings running well above 2024 as input costs outpace crop prices
• The Kansas City Fed still describes farmland values as ​showing continued resilience​ across its district, a reminder that the correction is regional rather than national so far
• USDA rates corn at ​57% good to excellent​ and soybeans at 60% as of August 23, with the Pro Farmer tour finding heat stress in South Dakota and excess moisture in Ohio
• US cropland values are still up ​3.3% on the year​ nationally, with cash rents near records even as operator margins compress

Why it matters: Corn belt farmland stops beating inflation

Farmland’s entire pitch to institutional allocators is that it is a real asset. Not that it produces a big yield, which it usually does not, and not that it trades well, which it cannot, but that the land itself holds purchasing power while throwing off a modest cash return.

So a quarter in which nominal American Midwest values barely move and real values fall by ​the most since 2016​ is not a small data point. It is the asset failing at the one job it is bought to do.

The cause is a squeeze from both ends. Crop prices have not kept up with a wartime input bill, with fertiliser and diesel elevated since the Iran conflict closed Hormuz, so operator margins are compressing even as ​cash rents sit near records​.

Rents are the transmission mechanism between the farmer’s income statement and the landowner’s asset value, and they are the last thing to adjust, which is why the stress shows up first in farm bankruptcies at ​six-year highs​ rather than in land prices.

For anyone holding American farmland as a diversifier, understand that the correction is regional, with the Kansas City Fed still reporting resilience while the Corn Belt flattens, so index-level numbers are hiding a widening dispersion.

Wine, Whiskey, and Spirits

• Canada’s booze boycott has become ​a genuine trade weapon​, with provincial governments controlling distribution and refusing to restock American bottles even as tariff talks collapse
• The Brown family, which has controlled Brown-Forman for over 150 years, is fending off ​a takeover and each other​, with relatives publicly criticising the company’s strategy and leadership
• Brown-Forman has twice rejected ​Sazerac’s $15 billion approach​, calling the unsolicited bid inadequate while the shares trade far below where the family once assumed they were worth
• Brown-Forman’s Canadian sales fall ​62% amid the boycott​ of American liquor, with the chief executive calling the impact significant and the product still off most provincial shelves
• Gallup finds just ​54% of US adults drink​, tying a record low against 71% in 1978, with only 13% saying they sometimes drink more than they should
• The US wine industry has swung from a $254 million trade surplus to a $90 million deficit in a year, ​according to the Wine Institute​, which called Canada the market that made international growth possible

Why it matters: Canada stops stocking American booze

Provincial liquor boards are monopoly wholesalers, so a premier can pull American bottles at zero fiscal cost with no legislation

Exports are at under half their prior-year level, Brown-Forman down 62%, and US wine flipping from a $254m surplus to a $90m deficit in a year.

Shelf space doesn’t return on its own once Canadian, Irish and Japanese distillers have filled it, and that the mechanism generalizes to any category where a government is the distributor.

See you next time, Stefan

Disclosures

• This issue was sponsored by ​Rooftop Immersive​
• has no sponsors and contains no affiliate links.