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Hey Nut Fam 🌰
Today’s edition is a masterclass in misplaced blame, surprise comebacks, and classic Trump-style market chaos. From housing policy theater to Intel’s redemption arc and a defense budget that giveth and taketh away - let’s crack it open 👇

🏭 Business Nuts

🏠 Trump Targets Corporate Landlords — But Zoning Laws Are the Real Culprit

Markets flinch, facts shrug.

President Trump lit a fire under housing stocks this week by pledging to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. Markets reacted instantly — Invitation Homes ($AMH) and Blackstone ($BX) briefly dropped nearly 10%.

But here’s the inconvenient truth:
Corporate landlords aren’t the housing villain America’s been looking for.

🧮 Follow the actual math

• Institutional investors own <1% of all U.S. single-family homes

• The top 24 landlords own ~520K homes

• That’s just 3.5% of the 15M rental homes nationwide

Even more awkward for the narrative:
Institutional purchases have already collapsed since mid-2022 thanks to higher interest rates. Blackstone has been a net seller for years, trimming its housing exposure by 20%+.

🧱 The real crisis nobody wants to fix

America is short 3–4 million homes. And regulation is the choke point:

• Height limits cap buildings at 2–3 stories on ~60% of residential land

• Only 7% of land allows buildings 5+ stories tall

• Local regulations now add $93.9K to the cost of a new home — up 45% in a decade

Median mortgage payments now eat 30%+ of buyer income, and the median first-time buyer is 40 years old — the oldest ever.

🟢 Bottom Line: Corporate landlords are a political scapegoat. Zoning laws are the real supply killer.

💻 Tech Nuts

⚙️ Intel Roars Back After a Brutal Reset

One good round doesn’t win the fight — but it keeps you in it.

Intel ($INTC) spent years eating crow. Now it’s swinging back.

The stock is up 100%+ over the past year, and investors finally have something tangible to cheer: Panther Lake, Intel’s biggest chip launch in nearly a decade.

🧠 Why this launch matters

• Panther Lake is already in production

• Global rollout set for Jan. 27

• Melius Research upgraded Intel to Buy

• Shares jumped 6.5% post-CES

This comeback didn’t come cheap. CEO Lip-Bu Tan:

• Cut 15% of staff

• Slashed $10B in costs

• Canceled global factory plans

The real prize isn’t the chip — it’s restoring trust in Intel’s foundry business. If Panther Lake delivers, designers might finally come back.

🟡 Bottom Line: Intel’s back in the ring — but 2026 is the real title fight.

🎢 Defense & Politics Nuts

🪖 Trump Whipsaws Defense Stocks With a $1.5T Budget… and a Warning Shot

Carrot. Stick. Repeat.

Defense stocks had a week straight out of a stress test.

Trump first spooked markets by blocking buybacks and dividends for defense contractors. Hours later, he flipped the script — proposing a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027, a 50%+ increase from current levels.

📈 Market reaction

• Northrop Grumman ($NOC): +8.3%

• Lockheed Martin ($LMT): +7.9%

• RTX ($RTX): +4.8%

Trump claims tariffs will fund it. The CBO says… not even close.

⚠️ Strings attached

Contractors only get paid if they deliver on time and on budget.
RTX was singled out for underinvesting in manufacturing, with Trump threatening to pull Pentagon contracts entirely.

🟠 Bottom Line: Bigger budgets, tighter leashes. Defense just got Trump-proofed.

📰 Other News — Quick Bites

• 📦 $150B tariff refund fight looms as importers brace for a Supreme Court ruling on Trump-era tariffs.

• 🤖 U.S. productivity jumps 4.9% in Q3 — the fastest pace in two years — as AI investment accelerates and labor costs fall.

• 🌎 Trade deficit hits a 16-year low, shrinking 39% to $29.4B as imports dropped sharply.

• 💾 Samsung profits triple on surging AI memory prices, though it still trails SK Hynix in high-bandwidth chips.

• 💳 JPMorgan takes over Apple Card from Goldman, inheriting $20B+ in balances and marking another consumer exit for $GS.

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• Glencore and Rio Tinto in talks for mining mega-merger

• CrowdStrike buys identity security startup SGNL for $740 million

• Apollo co-founder Josh Harris leads $1bn fundraising at Bruin Capital

• Family office deals cooled off in December, but heirs placed bets in health and media

• Trump admin reportedly considers paying each Greenland resident up to $100K amid US takeover talks

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🌰 That’s a Wrap

Housing problems don’t have easy villains, Intel finally remembered how to execute, and defense stocks just learned what Trump-style discipline looks like.

Thanks for reading Cash Nut 💰
See you tomorrow — same crunch, new chaos.

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