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SharkWater Trading • Desk Notes • Pre-Market Scan SharkWater Pre-Market Scan — September 28, 2026September 28, 2026
ActionableNone qualify this run. Checked and came up empty: fresh filings (8-K, 424B5, S-1, 13D, 13G) for all twenty-six watchlist tickers since Friday, September 25's close; distribution or NAV events for RVI, DXYZ, VCX, ARKVX, THTA, and AGNC; and any confirmed post-Friday price move, since no new session has closed between then and this scan. Monitor
NoiseChecked against EDGAR this window, no new filing found, unless noted. ASTS — no new filing; press page not re-checked (prior JS-rendering issue). Data Gaps
Tight lines. — SharkWater SharkWater Trading pre-market scan. Educational and informational purposes only, not personalized investment advice. All figures sourced as noted and accurate as of publication. |
Monday, September 28, 2026
CORRECTED: SharkWater Pre-Market Scan — September 28, 2026
SharkWater Pre-Market Scan — September 28, 2026
SharkWater Trading • Desk Notes • Pre-Market Scan
SharkWater Pre-Market Scan — September 28, 2026
September 28, 2026
Bottom Line Up Front
No material company-specific developments surfaced this window. No fresh 8-K, 424B5, S-1, 13D, or 13G was found for any watchlist ticker since Friday's close, and no distribution or NAV event was found for the six income and pre-IPO funds checked. The day's only scheduled catalyst is SpaceX's Starship Flight 14, its first orbital launch attempt, targeting an 8:49am ET liftoff; the outcome was not known as of this scan. Nothing here clears the bar for a standalone post today.
Correction to the record
The "unpublished backlog" flagged in the September 20, 22, and 27 scans was a false alarm. Those scans searched Gmail's default inbox view, which excludes Trash, and concluded nothing had reached Blogger since September 17. Checking Trash this run, and confirming directly against sharkwatertrading.com, shows every post from September 18 through September 27 was in fact sent and is live on the blog, correctly dated through the September 27 TeraWulf correction. Nothing needs to be resent. No decision is needed from you on this.
Actionable
None qualify this run. Checked and came up empty: fresh filings (8-K, 424B5, S-1, 13D, 13G) for all twenty-six watchlist tickers since Friday, September 25's close; distribution or NAV events for RVI, DXYZ, VCX, ARKVX, THTA, and AGNC; and any confirmed post-Friday price move, since no new session has closed between then and this scan.
Monitor
- Space sector, forward-looking. SpaceX is attempting Starship's first-ever orbital flight this morning, an 8:15–9:30am ET window targeting 8:49am ET liftoff (SpaceX's own account and Space.com's live coverage; outcome unknown as of this scan). A clean result or a public failure could move sentiment across RKLB, ASTS, LUNR, PL, RDW, and FLY today with no company-specific news attached; none of those tickers has been confirmed as a stated payload or hardware partner on this mission.
- Macro, secondary sourcing. S&P 500 futures were down roughly 0.6 percent this morning on a reported US rejection of an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Brent crude reported near $107 a barrel (Investrade's morning note, secondary; not checked against a primary wire or exchange settlement).
- Fundrise Innovation Fund II, LLC filed an N-2/A on September 25, 2026 (EDGAR full text search, primary for the filing's existence, document not read this run). This is a separate legal entity from VCX, the Fundrise vehicle already on the watchlist. Whether it competes for the same investor base as VCX, RVI, DXYZ, and ARKVX, and what it means for VCX's NAV premium, was not traced this run.
- NVDA, secondary and not filing-based. Nvidia reportedly introduced a new hardware security architecture and may be permitted to sell its RTX Pro 5500 chip in China (Investrade's morning note, secondary; no primary Nvidia newsroom item checked this run).
- AVGO / OKLO / XE, unchanged. The FT-reported SASAC review of Broadcom's China switching-hardware dependency remains open and secondary-sourced only. Oklo's newsroom URL 404'd again this run; UBS's prior price-target cut and X-Energy's leadership change are unchanged.
Noise
Checked against EDGAR this window, no new filing found, unless noted.
ASTS — no new filing; press page not re-checked (prior JS-rendering issue).
RKLB — no new filing since the Sept 25 Electron launch already logged.
LUNR — no change.
PL — no change.
FLY — no change. Reconfirmed as Firefly Aerospace Inc., not the legacy Fly Leasing entity.
RDW — no change.
RVI — no change. Reconfirmed as Robinhood Ventures Fund I, not the legacy Retail Value Inc. REIT.
DXYZ — no change (checked against Destiny Tech100).
VCX — no new filing under Fundrise Innovation Fund itself; see Monitor for the related Fund II item.
ARKVX — no change (checked against ARK Venture Fund).
AGNC — no change. September's $0.12 dividend was already declared September 10, ahead of this window.
ORC — no change. September's dividend was already declared September 14, ahead of this window.
USA — no change (checked against Liberty All-Star Equity Fund).
THTA — no change. A 10.00 percent distribution rate was already announced September 14, ahead of this window.
IREN — no change.
NBIS — no change.
KEEL — no change. Reconfirmed as Keel Infrastructure Corp.
CBRS — no change. Ticker remains Cerebras Systems Inc.
WOLF — no change.
NVDA — no new SEC filing; see Monitor for a secondary item.
MU — no change.
AVGO — no new filing; see Monitor for the carried-over SASAC item.
SMR — no change.
Data Gaps
- No exact, primary-sourced VIX print for today exists in this scan; only secondary references to a risk-off tone were found.
- Oklo's newsroom URL 404'd again this run, same failure as September 27; its press page remains unconfirmed clean of any weekend or Monday-morning announcement.
- AST SpaceMobile's own investor press-release page was not re-checked this run (prior JavaScript-rendering issue).
- The relationship between "Fundrise Innovation Fund," "Fundrise Growth Tech Fund, LLC" (VCX's issuer name per Yahoo Finance), and "Fundrise Innovation Fund II, LLC" (the entity that filed the September 25 N-2/A) was not resolved. This needs a primary-source read before anything is written about VCX tied to that filing.
- Whether any watchlist ticker is a stated payload, hardware, or ground-systems partner on today's Starship Flight 14 mission was not verified.
- Liberty All-Star Equity Fund's (USA) most recent distribution declaration date was not independently re-verified this run.
- The Fundrise Innovation Fund II N-2/A's actual content was not read this run, only its existence and filing date via EDGAR metadata.
Tight lines. — SharkWater
SharkWater Trading pre-market scan. Educational and informational purposes only, not personalized investment advice. All figures sourced as noted and accurate as of publication.
Sunday, September 27, 2026
CORRECTED: Google Doesn't Own TeraWulf Stock. It Owns 41 Million Warrants Struck at a Penny.
SharkWater Trading • Data Center Desk • Filings
Google Doesn't Own TeraWulf Stock. It Owns 41 Million Warrants Struck at a Penny.
September 27, 2026
Bottom Line Up Front
A Schedule 13G filed September 25, 2026 shows Google, through Alphabet and XXVI Holdings, beneficially owns 41,011,803 shares of TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF), or 7.6 percent of the class, entirely through warrants exercisable at $0.01 a share. Those warrants were not bought. They were issued as collateral for Google's guarantee of Fluidstack's lease obligations on the CB-5 data center at Lake Mariner, first disclosed in an August 2025 8-K at 32,568,197 shares and now roughly 8.4 million shares larger. WULF closed Friday, September 25 at $15.74, down 3.38 percent, as the broader neocloud group (IREN, NBIS, KEEL) sold off together. This is a credit-support arrangement wearing the market's favorite AI-partnership costume.
What the Filing Actually Says
The Schedule 13G names three reporting persons: Google LLC, XXVI Holdings Inc., and Alphabet Inc., the parent chain that owns and directs Google. All three certify a passive stake, meaning the securities were not acquired to influence control of the company. The 41,011,803 shares are described as issuable upon exercise of warrants that are currently exercisable or exercisable within 60 days. There is no open-market purchase anywhere in this document.
Go back to the source of those warrants and the picture sharpens. An August 14, 2025 Form 8-K discloses that Google received 32,568,197 warrant shares at a $0.01 strike price in exchange for guaranteeing Fluidstack's lease payments under the CB-5 lease at TeraWulf's Lake Mariner site. The warrants themselves were pledged to CB-5's construction lenders as security, released only once the guarantee takes effect at lease commencement. Google was not writing a check for equity. It was putting its balance sheet behind Fluidstack's rent so TeraWulf could get the CB-5 buildout financed.
A bank co-signing your mortgage isn't the same as a bank buying your house. It gets you the loan. It also means the bank's name is now on the paper, and if you miss a payment, the bank's exposure is the thing that gets called first.
The Stake Has Grown, and This Desk Can't Fully Explain Why Yet
The gap between the 32,568,197 shares in the August 2025 8-K and the 41,011,803 shares in this month's 13G is about 8.4 million shares. TeraWulf announced a 160 MW CB-5 lease expansion with Fluidstack in the interim, and the growth in the warrant count is consistent with additional collateral tied to that expansion. This desk has not confirmed that link against a specific filing, and is not asserting it as fact. It's the open thread worth pulling before treating this as a settled story.
| Date | Filing | Warrant Shares | Strike |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 14, 2025 | Form 8-K | 32,568,197 | $0.01 |
| Sept 25, 2026 | Schedule 13G | 41,011,803 | $0.01 (per originating 8-K) |
Source: SEC EDGAR, Form 8-K filed Aug 14, 2025, and Schedule 13G filed Sept 25, 2026, both read via TeraWulf's own investor-relations filing mirror. TeraWulf's total shares outstanding, approximately 498.97 million, is aggregator-sourced (stockanalysis.com) and not independently confirmed against the company's own most recent 10-Q cover page.
The Bull Case
- Google's credit is doing real work. A guarantee from a company with Alphabet's balance sheet is what let TeraWulf and Fluidstack get CB-5's construction financed on favorable terms, without TeraWulf issuing dilutive cash equity to fund the buildout directly.
- The relationship is expanding, not shrinking. A larger warrant block points to a larger backstop, which points to a larger footprint at Lake Mariner. That's a vote of confidence in the underlying AI-hosting demand, even if it isn't a vote of confidence expressed through open-market stock purchases.
- Warrants at $0.01 pledged as loan collateral are not the same as an active seller. Nothing in this filing shows Google distributing or selling shares. The overhang is theoretical until exercised.
The Bear Case
- 41 million shares at a penny is functionally free stock. If those warrants are ever exercised in full, the dilution hits per-share value directly, and the cost basis to Google is close to nothing.
- A guarantee exists because the underlying credit needed one. Fluidstack's lease obligations required Google to co-sign in the first place. That is a data point about the counterparty risk in the deal, not just a marketing headline about "Google backing TeraWulf."
- It landed inside a real group-wide selloff. IREN, NBIS, WULF, and KEEL all closed lower Friday. Layering a growing, penny-strike dilution overhang onto a sector already digesting a confirmed Nebius GPU-rental price hike and a Sell rating on a neocloud peer is not a coincidence this desk is ready to wave off.
The SharkWater Take
I don't read this as a bullish Google-backs-TeraWulf headline, and I don't read it as a bearish Google-is-dumping-shares headline either, because neither is what the filing says. What it says is that TeraWulf's biggest AI-hosting partner is extending credit, not cash, and getting paid in cheap dilution for the privilege. That's a normal, sensible way to finance a data center buildout. It is not, on its own, a reason to pay up for the stock on the theory that Google's name is now attached to it. Until I can trace exactly which expansion agreement accounts for the extra 8.4 million warrant shares, I'm treating this as a data point inside the broader neocloud pullback, not a standalone thesis. I am not taking a position here off this filing alone.
Tight lines. — SharkWater
Educational and informational purposes only. Not personalized investment advice. All figures sourced as noted and accurate as of publication. Options involve substantial risk of loss. The author may hold positions in securities discussed. Do your own work.
Saturday, September 26, 2026
Samueli's $250 Million Broadcom Sale Cleared. The Stock Didn't Blink.
SharkWater Trading • Insider Desk • Broadcom • Form 4
Samueli's $250 Million Broadcom Sale Cleared. The Stock Didn't Blink.
September 26, 2026
Bottom Line Up Front
Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) director Henry Samueli sold 702,190 shares on September 23, 2026 at an average price of $356.04, for proceeds of $250,006,184, confirmed by a Form 4 filed September 25. He also gave away a further 72,474 shares with no consideration attached. He still holds 52,680,018 shares directly, so the disposal is roughly 1.5 percent of his stake.
AVGO closed September 25 at $352.81, up 0.70 percent from Thursday's $350.36. A quarter-billion-dollar insider sale moved the stock less than a rounding error. The more relevant overhang right now isn't this filing at all, it's an unresolved, reportedly ongoing Chinese state review of how dependent its data centers are on Broadcom's switching chips.
The Sale, Confirmed
This desk flagged the setup two days before it resolved. On September 23, 2026, two related filers put the market on notice: D95GT, LLC, managed by Lapland Longspur LLC, filed a Form 144 for 631,972 shares valued at $225,004,972.58, and the Samueli Foundation filed one for $25,797,598.63. A Form 144 is a notice of intent to sell, not proof a sale happened. As of Wednesday's coverage, no Form 4 had posted confirming any of it traded.
That changed Friday. Henry Samueli's own Form 4, filed September 25 at 4:15pm ET, shows the transaction dated September 23: 702,190 shares sold at $356.04 average, $250,006,184 total, plus 72,474 shares disposed by gift. The gift carries no cash consideration, the kind of transfer that shows up in estate and foundation planning rather than in a liquidity scramble.
One honest caveat: the Form 144 totals from the two entities above (roughly $250.8 million combined) don't reconcile cleanly, share for share, against the Form 4's sold-plus-gifted total. Multiple Samueli-affiliated vehicles appear to be involved. I'm not going to force a clean story out of numbers that don't quite line up. What's confirmed is the Form 4 itself: the shares moved, priced, and are on the books.
| Filer | Type | Shares | Value / Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| D95GT, LLC (Lapland Longspur LLC) | Form 144, filed 9/23 | 631,972 | $225,004,972.58 |
| Samueli Foundation | Form 144, filed 9/23 | N/A | $25,797,598.63 |
| Henry Samueli (director) | Form 4, sale, filed 9/25 | 702,190 | avg $356.04 ($250,006,184) |
| Henry Samueli (director) | Form 4, gift, filed 9/25 | 72,474 | no consideration |
Source: SEC EDGAR, Form 144 and Form 4 filings, September 23 and 25, 2026. Form 144/Form 4 totals across the listed entities do not fully reconcile against each other; treat as related but not confirmed identical transactions.
A sale this size usually throws a wake big enough to rock anything nearby. This one barely rippled the surface, which tells you either the water underneath is calmer than the headline number suggests, or the market's watching a different current entirely.
What The Market Is Actually Pricing
Broadcom's stock has a bigger, unresolved question sitting on it, and this filing isn't it. The Financial Times has reported, and multiple secondary outlets have since repeated, that Chinese authorities are reviewing how dependent state-owned data centers are on Broadcom networking-switch hardware, with one figure cited at up to 90 percent of surveyed state-owned deployments. As of this writing, that review is still at the review stage. No primary Chinese-government document has surfaced, and no confirmed policy action, a ban, a directive, anything binding, has been found.
That's the asymmetry. Samueli's sale was signaled in advance, sized small against his remaining stake, and absorbed without a ripple. The SASAC review has had no such advance notice, no size anyone can put a number on yet, and the kind of binary outcome that moves a stock on a single headline whenever it does resolve.
The Bull Case
- No surprise, no new information. The Form 144 notices were public Sept 23. By the time the Form 4 posted, the market had two full sessions to price it in, and did essentially nothing.
- It's a small slice of a large stake. Against 52.68 million shares still held directly, 1.5 percent moving reads as routine diversification, not an exit.
- The gift component points to planning, not distress. 72,474 shares moved for no consideration is estate and foundation mechanics, not a signal about the business.
The Bear Case
- A quarter-billion dollars is still a quarter-billion dollars. Co-founder selling at this scale is worth logging even when it's routine.
- The actual risk sits somewhere else entirely. The SASAC review of China switching-chip dependency remains open, unresolved, and un-primary-sourced. It's the one variable here that can move the stock hard, and this filing says nothing about it.
- The paper trail doesn't fully add up. When related-filer totals don't reconcile cleanly, that's worth flagging on principle, even if it turns out to be nothing more than filing mechanics across entities.
The SharkWater Take
I'm not reading a signal into this sale. A founder-director moving 1.5 percent of his stake, telegraphed two full sessions ahead of execution, is closer to bookkeeping than to conviction changing. If Samueli were trying to get out ahead of bad news, the market's total non-reaction argues he isn't, or that he isn't the one who knows something the rest of us don't. What I'm actually watching is the SASAC review. That's the variable with the power to move this stock on a single headline, it has no timeline anyone's confirmed, and this filing tells us nothing about it either way. Treat AVGO as fairly priced on the insider story and unpriced on the China story, and watch the second one, not the first.
Tight lines. — SharkWater
Educational and informational purposes only. Not personalized investment advice. All figures sourced as noted and accurate as of publication. Options involve substantial risk of loss. The author may hold positions in securities discussed. Do your own work.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Iridium Holders Just Cleared an $8 Billion Rocket Lab Deal, and RKLB Rallied Into It
SharkWater Trading • Space Desk • M&A • RKLB
Iridium Holders Just Cleared an $8 Billion Rocket Lab Deal, and RKLB Rallied Into It
September 25, 2026
Bottom Line Up Front
Iridium (NASDAQ: IRDM) stockholders approved Rocket Lab's acquisition of the company on September 24, 2026, with 99.6 percent of votes cast in favor, representing 81.0 percent of shares outstanding. The deal pays Iridium holders $27.00 in cash plus Rocket Lab stock for a combined notional value of $54.00 a share, an implied Iridium enterprise value of roughly $8.0 billion. Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) closed the day up 4.69 percent to $73.61.
The vote clears the biggest hurdle on the calendar, but closing is still targeted for mid-2027, subject to regulatory sign-off the announcement doesn't itemize. The risk for RKLB holders now sits less in the vote and more in the collar, the financing, and eighteen months of runway for something to go wrong.
What Actually Happened
At a special meeting on September 24, 2026, Iridium stockholders approved the merger agreement first announced June 29, 2026. Rocket Lab's own investor relations release put the vote at 99.6 percent of votes cast, representing 81.0 percent of Iridium's total shares outstanding. That's about as clean an approval as a shareholder vote gets. Iridium CEO Matt Desch called it "an important milestone toward bringing together two companies," and Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck used almost the identical phrase in his own statement. No 8-K formally disclosing the vote tally had posted to SEC EDGAR as of this writing, so today's confirmation rests on the companies' own release, not yet a filed document.
The Deal Mechanics, Confirmed Against the Original Filing
The consideration structure, verified against the June 29 announcement and its SEC exhibit, is straightforward on the cash side and less so on the stock side. Each Iridium share converts into $27.00 in cash plus a number of Rocket Lab shares set by an exchange ratio that is subject to a collar. That collar bands Rocket Lab's stock price between $67.50 and $112.50. RKLB closed Thursday at $73.61, comfortably inside that band. The exact formula for how many Rocket Lab shares an Iridium holder receives inside the collar was not disclosed in the announcement itself. Rocket Lab's release says the full mechanics live in the transaction agreement filed with the SEC, and this desk has not yet located a definitive merger agreement document that spells it out share by share.
A collar works like a channel marker in a harbor. Inside the marked lane, the boat has room to drift with the current and still make it to the dock at roughly the value promised. Stray outside the markers, high or low, and the deal terms lock in place rather than floating with the tide. Rocket Lab's stock is sitting well inside the channel right now, which is the calm version of this story.
The Bill Rocket Lab Is Taking On
The cash half of a $27.00-per-share payment across Iridium's outstanding share count is a real number, and Rocket Lab isn't paying it out of pocket alone. The company has committed financing for a $3.6 billion, 364-day senior secured bridge term loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, on top of balance-sheet cash and other debt and equity sources it hasn't fully specified. Rocket Lab also completed a $1.944 billion at-the-market equity offering on September 15, 2026, which this desk reads as at least partly aimed at funding this transaction, though the company hasn't stated that directly. A 364-day bridge loan is, by design, a short-term instrument meant to be refinanced or repaid quickly. That refinancing has to happen sometime between now and mid-2027, and the terms of it aren't public yet.
The Bull Case
- The vote is the cleanest kind of milestone. 99.6 percent approval on 81 percent share turnout removes stockholder risk almost entirely. What's left is regulatory, not political.
- Vertical integration is the actual thesis, not just deal size. Rocket Lab builds launch vehicles and satellites; Iridium operates one of the only functioning global satellite constellations. Owning both ends of that chain is a different business than being a launch contractor for other people's satellites.
- The market reaction on approval day was positive, not defensive. RKLB rallied 4.69 percent the same day the deal cleared its biggest hurdle, rather than selling off on dilution or leverage concerns, which is the more common reaction to a company taking on billions in acquisition debt.
The Bear Case
- Mid-2027 is a long runway. A year and a half between a stockholder vote and a closed deal is a lot of time for regulatory review, financing markets, or Iridium's own satellite business to hand the desk a surprise.
- $3.6 billion of bridge debt on a 364-day clock is a refinancing problem waiting to happen. Bridge loans get termed out or repaid, and the cost of doing either depends on credit markets Rocket Lab doesn't control eighteen months from now.
- The exchange ratio mechanics still aren't fully public. Until the actual formula inside that $67.50 to $112.50 collar is confirmed, nobody outside the two companies knows exactly how many Rocket Lab shares get issued, which means nobody outside the two companies can fully model the dilution.
The SharkWater Take
The vote is good news and the market treated it that way, but the vote was always the low-risk part of this deal. Stockholders rarely torpedo a board-approved merger, and 99.6 percent approval confirms that pattern rather than telling us anything new. What I actually want before I'd treat RKLB as a clean read on this acquisition is the exchange ratio formula and a clearer picture of how the $3.6 billion bridge gets termed out. Both of those live in documents this desk hasn't located yet. Until they surface, I'm filing this as confirmed progress on a deal that was already priced as likely to happen, not as a new reason to change how I think about the stock.
Tight lines. — SharkWater
Educational and informational purposes only. Not personalized investment advice. All figures sourced as noted and accurate as of publication. Options involve substantial risk of loss. The author may hold positions in securities discussed. Do your own work.