Happy Friday. Bradley Hatton-Jones gives us an investment pick, inflation cooled slighty in June, Jersey Mike’s IPO underwhelmed, and a Shohei Ohtani card sold for $11 million. Let’s dive in!
🎤 Listen: To the latest episode of Smart Humans, where Slava Rubin dives into the spacetech world with Orbit2Orbit founder Bradley Hatton-Jones.
This issue is brought to you by Orbit2Orbit: Building the Backbone of In-Space Logistics.
📈 DAILY MARKETS
✅ PICK OF THE WEEK
Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB)
Current share price: $60.76
It is an extremely impressive company
They have grown a tremendous amount on a fraction of the capital that other space companies have had
They just acquired a satellite communications company called Iridium
That will give them a major leap forward in how things are going to be moving in space
Here’s a list of our past expert investment picks.
Partner
The Space Economy Stops at Launch. Orbit2Orbit Doesn’t.
Billions go into getting payloads off the ground. Almost nothing exists to move them once they’re up there. Orbit2Orbit is building that layer: autonomous cargo vehicles that deploy, service, and transport payloads between orbital platforms. This isn’t a concept company. First mission flown, flight heritage achieved, manufacturing facility operational, commercial customers signed, and a qualified pipeline exceeding $10 million. A financing round is now open, with details available to interested investors. View the investor deck at orbit2orbit.space/investors or reach out at [email protected].
👨🏫 TODAY'S EXPERT
Bradley Hatton-Jones is the Founder and CEO of Orbit2Orbit, an Australian space company building the infrastructure required to validate, move and service technology beyond Earth. Bradley led the design and build of Australia’s largest rocket manufacturing facility and supported the development of the Eris launch vehicle. He founded Orbit2Orbit in 2025 to address a growing gap in the space economy: launch can place hardware into orbit, but there is limited infrastructure to move, upgrade, service or retrieve it once it arrives.
🎤 PODCAST
“Orbit2Orbit is busy building what comes before launch and what comes after the launch.” - Bradley Hatton-Jones
In the newest episode of Smart Humans, Slava Rubin talks with Orbit2Orbit founder Bradley Hatton-Jones about the SpaceX IPO, the future of space logistics, investing into space tech, and the in-orbit economy.
📰 NOTABLE NEWS
📊 Inflation cools slightly: The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, fell 0.1% in June and the annual rate dropped from 4.1% to 3.7%. The main driver of the decline was the temporary truce in the Iran War, which led to lower gas prices. With the truce no longer intact and the war still ongoing, expect the cooling inflation to be a blip that will not continue when the July readings come out next month.
🚀 Jersey Mike’s IPO: The sandwich chain went public on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday with the ticker JMKE, raising $1 billion at a $7.3 billion valuation. The share price fell 6% in the first day of trading, a disappointing initial result given the expected investor demand.
⚾ $11 million Ohtani card: A 1-of-1 2026 Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome Dual Gold Logoman autographed baseball card was pulled from a box, with the lucky collector immediately selling it for $11 million to investor Matthew Allen. The sale is the third-highest for any sports card in history and continues the hot market for Ohtani cards.
🤖 Moonshot AI fundraising: The Chinese AI startup that burst onto the scene only weeks ago with its Kimi K3 model has raised $3.5 billion at a $35 billion valuation, and is likely to go public in Hong Kong by the end of the year.
🪙 Crypto VC firms decline: The number of active crypto VC firms has fallen to around 150, nearly 90% fewer than the 1,177 firms at the industry’s peak in 2022. This steep decline shows that the majority of venture investors are pursuing other sectors as crypto has largely fallen out of favor.
💵 Fundraising struggles: Asset manager Blue Owl reported the slowest fundraising quarter for its flagship private credit fund in three years, pulling in less than half of Q1’s total.
📝 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Monday: ⚾ Collectibles boom, 🪙 BitMEX shutting down
Tuesday: 🏡 Top housing markets, 🚀 Boring company fundraise
Wednesday: 🏡 Housing prices, 📊 Consumer confidence dips
Thursday: 📊 Fed rate decision, 🏢 Industrial vacancy falls
Have a great weekend!
