27 Oct 27th October 2025

Index Movement Last Week

Another great week for US stocks and a lacklustre performance from Australia.

Two weeks ago on 10/10, the S&P 500 fell 2.7% heading into the weekend on a single “Truth”
post from President Trump that re-ignited China trade war concerns. Until Friday, the index had
traded within its intraday range from 10/10 for nine consecutive trading days, but Bulls took
control to close out this week and easily pushed the market to fresh all-time highs. The
new highs have once again confirmed the bull market run that began more than three years ago
with the launch of ChatGPT.

Even though the Government is still officially shut-down, somehow they did manage to release inflation data on Friday. That came in at 3.0% annualised. Right inbetween the last two readings of +2.9% and +3.0%. This confirms tariffs are not yet having an effect and will allow the Fed to go ahead with the planned interest rate cut by 0.25% when they meet this week.

On top of that, earnings season has been strong so far. But this week it is the turn of Big Tech. Expectations are high. If they can beat those high expectations then expect stocks to be off to the races.

Markets did get a little worried when China threatened to stop exports of rare earths in response to Trumps tariffs on their exports. But then the US government came out and said they had been negotiating and China will pause for 12 months to allow negotiations to continue. China did not confirm this.

These days I don’t know who I believe in media statements. I always used to ignore Chinese economic data as being not trust-worthy. Today, I think I trust them more than the Trump administration. It is all very confusing.

But, it doesn’t really matter. This is all just short-term noise and not important. Nothing can derail the decades long development of AI and what it will mean. We are still only a couple of years in. This is a long term structural market change and a few tariffs or geopolitical arguments are not going to stop it.

What it will need a lot of is power.

For example, Oracle announced they are building a data-centre with OpenAI. It will need as much power as 800 homes. And that is just one data-centre. The other hyperscalers are all planning similar things.

So just where will this new power come from?

There hasn’t been a period of human evolution that has consumed LESS power. We always want more. Green is not reliable enough. Coal is too dirty.

I’ve always been a fan of Nuclear and it seems the US are too.

To understand why, we need a little history lesson.

Back in 1973-74 there was an oil crises. At the time France produced the majority of its electricity from Oil. Following the crises they decided they would never be dependent on another country for power again and embarked on a large scale development of Nuclear power. Even today they are the world’s second largest producer of Nuclear Power.

France makes the lowest cost electricity in Europe. They also have the lowest emissions and export good amounts of electricty to their neighbours adding cash to the coffers.

Here is a nice little picture to show you French emissions. I left my curser right at the peak so you can see the date. Notice how this lines up perfectly with the 1973 Oil Crises and the adoption of Nuclear

You will see today, with the second largest Nuclear power generation in the world, France is running about 4tonnes of CO2 per capita. By comparison, Australia runs at around 14tonnes of CO2 per capita and we have no Nuclear Power.

I do hope Albo is reading this as it gets even better for Australia.

Hopefully you can see how Nuclear is a great source of power. It is reliable and green.

As you will probably know, to make a nuclear reaction you need Uranium. We have lots of it and dig it out of the ground. The problem is you can’t just dig it out and drop it in a reactor. You must refine it first.

And this is where it all gets interesting.

Russia does around 70% of all the uranium refining in the world. So those two big Nuclear countries, they mainly buy the refind Uranium from Russia. And as you know, we are not supposed to be friends with Russia.

I got interested in all this back in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the US placed sanctions against Russia. I thought – this will be interesting. If they can’t buy uranium from Russia, where will it come from?

What I missed is that they carved out refined Uranium from the sanctions so they continue to buy it from Russia.

When I found out about Russian refining in 2022 I went looking for alternatives and came across Silex Systems. Listed on the ASX under code SLX.

Silex is basically a technology company but the one thing I am interested in is their new technology to refine Uranium using lasers. Problem at the time was it was untested. Disclosure – I bought stock anyway.

I have mentioned Silex a few times since then. Over the last couple of years they have been testing their lasers through a joint-venture with Cameco (world’s largest Uranium miner) in the US. They have recently completed testing at production scale and are waiting on approval from the US regulator to go into full time production.

Given the need for refined uranium and the need for new power. This is a forgone conclusion.

How much revenue do you think they can produce by offering the world an alternative to Russia?

The US nuclear story does not end there. There is a nice little company on the Nasdaq, OKLO. It makes small nuclear power plants fueled by Nuclear waste. You can drop one of these close to your data centre and make your own power rather than rely on buying it from someone else. OKLO has had a nice pullback this year after a great run so looks attractive now.

Other stories include a company called Deep Fission. This one is private so you can’t buy it. They have an interesting plan. They want to drop a small nuclear reactor inside a well that is more than 1km underground.

One of the problems with Nuclear power generation is failure of the water pump that is used to cool the reactor. This is what happened at Fukushima after the Tsunami in 2011. But, if your reactor is underground, you don’t need a pump to get the water there. Gravity will do it for you. And gravity is very reliable. Plus, let’s say something does happen, then you just fill the hole in and bury the uranium back in the ground, where it came from in the first place, under 10,000 tonnes of rock.

America is very good at drilling these wells. It has been doing it for their oil industry for more than 100 years, so they have the drilling technology, they have the small scale reactors and now they have basically unlimited supply of refined uranium, thanks to SLX.

To illustrate how keen the US are on Nuclear, that company Deep Fission, had a target to get testing done by end of 2026. They got told, you must get it done by end of 2025. Get on it now.

As you can see, the US are going to need more fuel for their Nuclear Power program. And SLX can make it for them.

My last comment for the week – It is such a shame Australia will not go down the Nuclear path. We could build it out the back of beyond, bury it underground, mine the uranium ourselves and use our own technology to refine the uranium it needs

Instead we are producing 14tonnes of CO2 per capita when there is evidence this could easily be as low as 4 by moving to a predominatly Nuclear generation. Just like France did and continues to do.

Warning

Stock values can go down as well as up. It is possible to lose 100% of your investment in a stock. Any advice given by Capital 19 is general advice only and does not take your personal circumstances into account and might not be suitable for you.