 A Message From Porter & Company Editor's Note: Porter Stansberry's bombshell expos̩ is now live. Sitting down with financial reporter Kimi Weintraub, he reveals why he believes President Trump is secretly replacing the U.S. dollar Рand why the story could break wide open on December 14. He also names his No. 1 move to help you prepare. Watch it here before you read another word.
In the autumn of 408 A.D., a Gothic king named Alaric marched his army to the walls of Rome and simply waited. He didn't need to storm the city. He cut off the grain barges coming up the Tiber, and within weeks the richest city on Earth was starving. His price for leaving was thousands of pounds of gold, tens of thousands of pounds of silver, and three thousand pounds of pepper. Rome no longer had it. So the Senate stripped the temples and melted down the statues of their gods to pay him. According to the historian Zosimus, one of them was Virtus, the goddess of courage, and once she went into the furnace, whatever courage the Romans had left went with her. Two years later Alaric came back and walked straight in – for the first time in eight hundred years, Rome was sacked by a foreign army. Rome had been brought to its knees because it allowed its money to go to ruin.
For two hundred years before Alaric arrived, emperor after emperor had shaved the silver out of the denarius to pay for their wars – until the coin that was once trusted from Britain to Babylon was a lump of bronze with a thin silver wash. By the time the Goths reached the gates, Rome's walls were still standing, but its money had already given way. Today, America faces its own barbarians at the gate. China’s Silent Siege The new Barbarians aren't camped outside Washington – like Alaric, they don't need to storm the capital, they're simply waiting for the money to fail. China has slashed its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by more than 45% from their peak. It controls the vast majority of the world's refined rare earths, the metals without which no advanced chip or weapon can be built. And it is building gold vaults in Hong Kong and payment networks that let nations trade without ever touching a dollar. Beijing is cutting off the grain barges, and now it's waiting at the walls. A Cycle Nobody Escapes If you study enough history, you start to see that Rome's fate was not bad luck. It was a repeating pattern, and nearly every great power since has followed it. Kublai Khan's paper money was printed into worthlessness to pay for his wars, and in 1368 his dynasty was driven out of China. Weimar Germany ran through the whole cycle in barely five years, until a single U.S. dollar fetched more than four trillion marks. Each empire borrowed beyond its means, debased its money , and watched its allies drift away until the barbarians arrived. America is speed-running toward the same fate. If your family had set aside a dollar when the Federal Reserve opened in 1913, it would buy about three cents' worth of goods today. 
By all rights, the dollar should have gone the way of the denarius long ago. What saved it was a secret deal Henry Kissinger struck with Saudi Arabia in 1974: the world's oil would be priced in dollars, so every nation that needed oil had to hold dollars too. It was the modern equivalent of Rome's grain supply, except America controlled the barges. That arrangement bought time, fifty years of borrowing on the rest of the world's tab, and created staggering fortunes for those who owned the companies the new money flowed through. ExxonMobil climbed 9,700% in the decades that followed, JPMorgan 6,000%, Lockheed Martin 14,400% and Microsoft 479,000% – extraordinary price rises unleashed by the petrodollar era. By some estimations, America went from roughly 180,000 millionaires in 1974 to nearly 24 million today. But Washington never stopped clipping the coin. The dollar has lost more than 84% of its purchasing power since that deal, and in June 2024 the petrodollar arrangement quietly expired. Ask almost any historian or economist how this ends, and they'll tell you the same thing. No empire has ever escaped the cycle. Trump's Secret Dollar Reset Instead of melting down the statues, President Trump is trying to give the world a new reason to need the dollar. Working hand in hand with the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, he is racing to lock the physical foundation of artificial intelligence (the minerals, chips, energy and data centers) under near-exclusive American control. That's why the government has taken billion-dollar stakes in obscure mining companies, why the President negotiated a reported $500 billion of Ukraine's minerals, and why he refuses to let go of Greenland. It's also why, on September 30, 2026, he announced what he called one of the largest energy infrastructure investments in American history: a $22.3 billion natural gas power complex in Texas built to feed AI data centers, alongside a framework for eight new nuclear reactors. Seen together, I believe these emergency moves are the foundations of a new monetary order, with the dollar anchored not to oil but to what I call the AI Matrix. The companies at its chokepoints are already moving the way ExxonMobil and Lockheed did half a century ago. Vertiv is up more than 500% since 2024, GE Vernova nearly 700% and Arista Networks more than 750% since 2021. Whether Trump's gambit succeeds or fails, I believe it will draw a dividing line through this country, just as the petrodollar did. On one side will be the people who own the assets that will benefit from the new monetary order. On the other, those whose plans and portfolios get left behind. I won’t mince my words: I believe getting on the right side of this change to America’s money might be a critical way to protect your family's wealth, long-term. To help you understand the magnitude of what’s unfolding – and how it could impact your money directly – I recently laid out the full story for financial reporter Kimi Weintraub. In our in-depth interview, I explain why December 14 could be the moment this new order is revealed. I also share the five companies I believe sit at its narrowest chokepoints, and the name and ticker of my No. 1 move to make today. Watch the full interview here. 
Good investing, Porter Stansberry
Additional Reading from MarketBeat Media
AST SpaceMobile Is Down 67%—Could SpaceX's Mobile Push Deepen the Selloff?Author: Jessica Mitacek. Article Posted: 10/16/2026. 
Key Points
- AST SpaceMobile shares fell more than 20% in five sessions, hitting a one-year low and down about 67% from their May peak.
- SpaceX's plan to acquire low-band spectrum to boost Starlink Mobile's indoor connectivity has emerged as a fresh competitive threat to AST SpaceMobile.
- AST SpaceMobile faces additional pressure from a Piper Sandler downgrade, a new securities class-action lawsuit, heavy cash burn, and six straight quarterly earnings misses.
- Special Report: The REAL Reason Trump is Invading Iran
Shares of space-based cellular broadband network provider AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS) continued their descent this week, falling more than 20% over the past five trading sessions as a new headwind entered the fray. On Thursday, Oct. 15, the stock hit a new one-year low and is now trading at levels not seen since September 2025. From its all-time high on May 28, ASTS is now down around 67%.
As the Midland, Texas-based company continues to pursue its goal of expanding its low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of BlueBird satellites to 45 by early 2027, here are some headwinds investors should be aware of. Musk Positions Starlink to Become a Major Mobile CarrierAfter announcing in September that it will buy wireless spectrum licenses from EchoStar (NASDAQ: ECHO), direct-to-cell (D2C) provider and AST SpaceMobile competitor SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX)announced on Oct. 8 that it will acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio comprising up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band. The spectrum licenses could improve Starlink Mobile's indoor connectivity capabilities, potentially positioning the company as a major mobile carrier in the United States. However, reliable service inside buildings will depend on the combined development of its satellite and terrestrial networks. According to a filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the objective is for SpaceX to expand the capabilities of its Starlink constellation to “supercharge competition in the mobile market by ensuring all Americans have access to high-speed mobile broadband anywhere they go.” The low-frequency radio spectrum, which will be purchased from investment firm Grain Management according to the FCC filing, can penetrate walls, roofs and other structures, helping overcome a major hurdle for Starlink’s LEO satellites. While the spectrum agreement is pending FCC approval, the news—which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called the “last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America”—was enough to jolt major mobile carriers. Major telecom stocks sold off on the news, with Verizon (NYSE: VZ)falling more than 10% on Oct. 9 and AT&T (NYSE: T)losing around 11%. SpaceX’s ambitions to expand its independent wireless footprint also drove AST SpaceMobile’s stock down more than 10%, compounding the company’s recent struggles. The Starlink Initiative Presents an Additional Headwind for AST SpaceMobileWhile the SpaceX announcement was a natural progression following its September agreement with EchoStar, it presents a new challenge to AST SpaceMobile, which continues to pursue D2C connectivity at commercial scale. The company has several catalysts working in its favor. Its routine launches have served as tailwinds for the stock, and its next cohort of BlueBird satellites could still join its LEO constellation this month. AST SpaceMobile has strategic partnerships with more than 60 mobile network operators that collectively cover approximately 3 billion subscribers. Those agreements include pacts with communication services sector mainstays AT&T and Verizon; Tokyo-based Rakuten (OTCMKTS: RKUNF); real estate investment trustAmerican Tower (NYSE: AMT); and the U.S. federal government. However, there is no shortage of headwinds countering those tailwinds. On Oct. 13, investment bank Piper Sandler downgraded ASTS to Neutral and reduced its price target by about 45%, citing lower confidence in the company’s launch schedule and potential limits on SpaceX launches. In addition, satellite industry analyst Tim Farrar noted on the social media platform X that, at its current pace, AST SpaceMobile may not reach a 60-satellite constellation until 2028. Meanwhile, ongoing civil litigation, along with legal fees and potential damages, could hamper the company’s financial performance. A new class-action securities lawsuit against AST SpaceMobile alleges that the company misled investors about its capital needs and competitive position from March 2025 through July 2026. The suit—which centers on three separate $1 billion convertible-note offerings that allegedly undercut prior assurances, raised concerns about shareholder dilution and preceded sharp ASTS sell-offs—adds to existing concerns about AST SpaceMobile’s volatility, cash burn, launch delays and insider selling. Analysts forecast a full-year cash burn rate of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion, driven primarily by research and development, AST SpaceMobile’s vertically integrated BlueBird satellite production and costly rocket launch service fees. SpaceX charges around $55 million to $65 million per launch. Meanwhile, a series of weak earnings reports continues to be an obstacle. AST SpaceMobile missed Q2 earnings and revenue estimates as spending rose sharply to support its satellite buildout, following a galactic Q1 miss. The company has now missed earnings estimates for six consecutive quarters. Wall Street’s Outlook Sends Mixed SignalsWhile the stock remains highly volatile, with a current beta of 2.72 and short interest at 21.06% of the float, or $3.89 billion worth of ASTS shares, institutional ownership continues to rise. Institutional ownership sits at around 61%, with institutional inflows totaling more than $2.41 billion and outflows of just $407.05 million over the past 12 months. Over the trailing year, however, insiders have sold $451.61 million worth of shares, compared with $806,470 worth of purchases. The stock carries an analyst consensus Hold rating and an average price target that suggests more than 80% upside potential. . |
