The US Government's Shopping List
The US Government now owns a piece of 30 companies. It's done very well out of it, but most people who bought the same shares have not.
The US Government's Shopping List
The US government now owns a piece of 30 companies. It has done very well out of it. Most people who bought the same shares have not. This report is why both of those things are true, and what it means for anything you hold.
4 questions, in the order they come up. Each one is a section. Tap any of them to jump there.
→Does a government stake mean the share price goes up?The 5 companies, side by side, in 10 seconds. The answer is no, and it is not close.
→So why did the government do well when buyers did not?Because it bought a different deal to the one you would get. 6 terms, laid out side by side.
→How did it get terms that good?2 conditions decide who gets picked, and the companies that are missing prove it.
→What happened to each of the 5?Every 1 of the 5 charted from 3 years before its deal, with the terms sitting next to the price.
Does a government stake mean the share price goes up?
Almost everyone assumes it does, and the reason is Intel. The government bought in at $20 a share and Intel is over $100 now. That single fact has done more to shape how people read these announcements than anything else.
5 listed companies have had a government stake taken in them. Here is every one, from the week its deal was announced to last week.
Lithium Americas is the one to sit with. It closed the week of its announcement at $9.04. That was not a step on the way up. That was the peak. It has fallen every quarter since and it is $3.08 now.
And Intel does not really support the assumption either. It closed its announcement week up 1%, then drifted down for the following month. The run to $134 happened in June 2026, 10 months later, for reasons that had nothing to do with the government. The deal was not the catalyst. It was the entry price, and only the government got it.