Key Points:
Washington bought 433 million Intel shares at $20.47 — about 17% below market. Your 401(k) ate the difference.
At least 10 US companies now have the government as a shareholder. Lockheed and Micron could be next.
Intel's own SEC filing warned of dilution. Nobody covered it. A second haircut is already written into the deal.
Special Report: Your free guide is about to disappear (from Profits Run)
I can't stop thinking about a single line buried in an SEC filing from last August.
Intel told its own shareholders, in plain language, that the U.S. government was buying in below market price. And that the deal would water down everyone else's stake. The government paid $20.47 a share. The market price was around $24. That's roughly 17% off. Washington bought 433 million shares for $8.9 billion.
Here's what worries me. If you own an index fund, you own a slice of Intel. If you have a 401(k), Intel is almost certainly in it. So when the government bought in cheap, your slice got a little smaller. You didn't get a phone call. You didn't sign a thing. You just own a bit less of one of America's biggest chipmakers than you did the day before.
June 12: The Biggest Buying Spree in History?
On June 12, Elon Musk is set to take SpaceX public…
And I believe it will trigger the biggest buying spree in history.
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And get ahead of the masses.
I don't think most people realize this is happening. And it's not just Intel.
The Trump administration now holds equity stakes in at least ten publicly traded American companies. Intel. U.S. Steel. MP Materials. Lithium Americas. Westinghouse. L3Harris. A new IBM venture called Anderon. And as of last Thursday, nine quantum computing firms in one shot. The White House is hinting Lockheed Martin and Micron could be next. I get why people might shrug. National security. Critical minerals. Chips. These all sound like good reasons.
But the Intel deal told us how it works. The government didn't just pay below market. Intel's filing also flagged a warrant. In plain English, a warrant is a coupon that lets the holder buy more shares later at a set price. The government's warrant kicks in if Intel ever sells off more than half its foundry business. If that happens, Washington can buy more shares cheap. Existing shareholders get diluted again. So that's two haircuts baked into one deal. The first one already happened. The second one waits in a drawer.
The same week the quantum deal hit, news broke about Anderon. That's the new IBM-linked venture where the federal government took a stake. I'm still piecing together the details. Nobody knows the full terms yet. But the pattern is the same. The government shows up. The government gets a discount. The rest of us absorb the difference.
Think about what this means for the man on Main Street. He owns these companies through his retirement account. He bought in over decades, paycheck by paycheck. He paid full price for every share. Now the government is buying in below his cost basis, and his ownership shrinks a little each time. He never voted on it. He never got a notice in the mail. He just owns less.
Let me give you the number I can't get out of my head. 433 million shares. $20.47 each. About 17% under the market. That's the Intel template. And it's now the model for at least nine more deals, with two more rumored. Say that number out loud at the golf course this weekend and watch what happens. Most people haven't heard it. The press is treating each deal as its own story. I don't think that's the right frame. The deals stack. The dilution stacks. And the bill goes to whoever held the shares first.
He Called Nvidia in 2016. Here's His Next Call.
In 2016, Louis Navellier recommended Nvidia to his readers at $2.51 — split-adjusted. It went up 44,000%. The readers who acted could have made huge sums of money. Those who didn't have been watching from the sidelines ever since. Today, Navellier says a new AI computer called "Golden Dawn" — 283 trillion times more powerful than today's data centers — is about to create the same kind of opportunity. He's identified the one little-known company best positioned to profit, and he's revealing it — down to the ticker — before May 5th.
I want to be fair. I get the case for some of this. Chips matter. Lithium matters. Defense matters. If the government has to backstop industries that left us exposed, I understand the argument. But there's a difference between backstopping and buying in cheap. A loan is one thing. A subsidy is one thing. Taking equity below market price is something else entirely. It's a transfer. And the people on the losing end of that transfer are the same people the policy is supposed to help.
The other thing that nags at me is the silence. Intel disclosed the dilution in writing. The filing is public. Any reporter can pull it up in two minutes. But the warning never made the front page. The warrant never made the front page. The 17% discount never made the front page. I keep asking myself why. I don't have a clean answer.
So here's where I land tonight. I'm not telling you to sell anything. I'm not telling you to panic. I'm telling you to know what you own, and to know what's happening to it. The next time you open your statement and the share count looks the same as last year, remember that the share count isn't the whole story. The size of the pie matters too. And the pie has been getting cut up in a back room.
A man sits at his kitchen table on a Sunday morning. Coffee getting cold. Vanguard statement in front of him. Same number of shares as last year. Same ticker symbols. He owns a smaller piece of the company than he did twelve months ago. And he never signed a thing.
More on this tomorrow.
— Lauren
Editor, American Ledger
