Market Minute 9-8-25- Starlink Shells Out, While PNC Bulks Up

Markets are fairly quiet in the early going, with stocks, Treasuries, and the dollar mostly flat. Gold and silver are holding recent big gains, while crude oil is rebounding.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is spending $17 billion in cash and stock to buy wireless spectrum from EchoStar Corp. (SATS). The deal will help boost the company’s Starlink satellite-based mobile services business, while allowing EchoStar to retire debt and fund ongoing operations. The firm had run into financial trouble and recently sold another chunk of spectrum licenses to AT&T Inc. (T) for $23 billion. SATS shares had been falling steadily from 2018-2024, before surging recently on deal news.

SATS, T, PNC (YTD % Change)chart

Data by YCharts

We haven’t seen many mega-bank mergers in recent years, despite talk that deals would be easier to come by in a Trump 2.0 environment. But PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC) did just announce a $4.1 billion buy of Colorado-based FirstBank Holding. The deal would add privately held FirstBank’s roughly 100 branches in Colorado and Arizona to PNC’s footprint. PNC is already the eighth-largest US bank.

Finally, a handful of prognosticators are breaking ranks on the Federal Reserve. Standard Chartered strategists forecast that Chair Jay Powell and his fellow policymakers will cut interest rates by 50 basis points at next week’s meeting, rather than the more-standard 25 bps.

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They suggested a bigger “catch up” cut could be necessary given the lousy jobs data we got last week. Still, rate futures markets are only assigning about a 12% chance of a 50-bp move, according to CME FedWatch. The Fed’s remaining meetings in 2025 conclude on Sept. 17, Oct. 29, and Dec. 10.

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