The Trump administration is doing something unprecedented: Making massive investments in critical American businesses through the stock market. The bombshell move isn’t just to make money – the goal is to take a stake in companies that help protect America’s safety, sovereignty, and stability. That said, even though their goal isn’t amassing wealth, that doesn’t mean you can’t profit off of the moves they’re making.
The Trump administration has a theme when they make these investments. Right now, the theme is rare earth materials, critical minerals, metals, and semiconductors. Notably, all things that we rely on other countries for – usually, that means China.
Trump’s mission: End America’s reliance on Chinese critical minerals
The last thing the Trump administration wants is to give control of anything the U.S. needs to China. These critical minerals and rare earth materials may sound like foreign concepts, but they’re highly useful in a multitude of applications that industries far and wide are involved in, from EV batteries to oil refining to consumer electronics to diagnostic medical tools – and many, many things in between. And of course, by now, we know that semiconductors are used in almost everything from phones and fridges to planes and vehicles. In the eyes of the Trump administration, America’s security, sovereignty, and stability rely heavily on its ability to produce all these vital resources domestically.
Enter: Wall Street. Trump is no stranger to the stock market. As a legendary businessman prior to taking office, it makes sense that he’s leaning on every mechanism that capitalism has to offer to achieve the goals above. Forget passing legislation, dealing with watered down bills, and Congressional gridlock – the Trump administration is directly taking stakes in key businesses. Thus far, we’ve seen government stakes in:
- Intel (INTC): 9.9% equity stake in exchange for grants supporting U.S. chip manufacturing.
- Lithium Americas (LAC): Converted a $2.3 billion loan into a 5% equity stake in the company and its Nevada lithium project.
- MP Materials (MP): Purchased a 15% stake to support rare-earths production.
- Trilogy Metals (TMQ): Acquired a 10% stake along with warrants for additional shares, to back its Alaska critical minerals operations.
(Source of image above: Visual Capitalist)
But there’s something interesting about these stakes…
The government is a big place. These are not likely to be solely decisions made by President Trump himself. There are likely teams that go into these investment making decisions. Backroom talks. Corporation conversation. When enough people are involved, information gets out, and you end up with this:
At Market Rebellion, we track what we call “smart money” purchases, or unusual options activity. This means someone’s paying up in a big way to make a high leverage, high risk bet on the direction of a stock over a given time. What we’ve found is that these “smart money” bettors, who put at risk anywhere from hundreds of thousands to, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars, are rarely “just betting.” Even if you’re one of the richest people or institutions in the world, making a bet like this usually means you know something.
By tracking every single trade in the entirety of the options market – literally millions of orders every day – with advanced algorithms and a professional team of options analysts, we’re able to filter that down into just a few every day that we feel are truly “unusual.” The four seen above all fit the bill and were all published officially for Market Rebellion subscribers on the dates seen on the left – notably, they *all* came before serious government stakes, which in turn significantly boosted the value of the stocks.
For those who don’t know, options amplify those stock market gains significantly, because every option is in theory representative of 100 shares of stock.
So that begs the question:
What’s the next stock that the government is going to take a stake in?
No one can know for sure, and even the unusual options activity bettors are wrong sometimes. But by using Market Rebellion’s unusual options activity, this analyst has a hunch: NB, NioCorp Developments. Remember: This is just speculation, not financial advice nor any type of recommendation. That means I’m not telling you to trade or invest in this name… but I am telling you that someone out there did – twice.
These options trades came from our unusual options activity, and the more recent of the two was a featured trade idea for subscribers of Market Rebellion’s nightly newsletter, the Rebel Roundup. Neither of these pieces of smart money activity have expired yet, and the trade from August 21st has risen from a value of $0.15 at the outset of the trade to a high this week of $2.84 – a gain of over 1793% within just a few weeks.
And although the government hasn’t announced any stake in this name yet, it’s still moving fast to the upside – possibly off of speculation that a stake could be on the way. If we look at what this company does, a quick Google search shows that it certainly seems to fit the bill:
“NioCorp Developments is advancing the Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project in Nebraska — a mine and processing facility set to produce niobium, scandium, titanium, and rare earth elements. These minerals are vital for high-tech applications, from lighter, stronger steel to advanced aerospace alloys and powerful magnets for electric vehicles. The Elk Creek site will be North America’s only integrated niobium, scandium, and titanium operation.
- Niobium: Improves steel strength and corrosion resistance for automotive, construction, and pipelines.
- Scandium: Enables advanced aluminum alloys and solid oxide fuel cells.
- Titanium: Used in aerospace alloys, pigments, and medical implants.
- Rare Earths: Key to EV and clean energy technologies.
By reducing reliance on imported minerals, the project seeks to strengthen U.S. defense, energy security, and supply-chain stability.”
So, could NioCorp Developments be the next big U.S. government buy? Nothing is certain and no one knows for sure – but we do know one thing: There’s somebody out there with a lot of money on the line who certainly seems to think so.
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