XAI Chess Review: Is Matt McCall’s Innovation Report Worth It?

The campaign is called “XAI Chess,” and that name needs explaining before anything else, because the presentation behind it never mentions xAI or Grok. What Matt McCall actually pitches over 70 minutes is a critical-minerals story: polymetallic nodules on the ocean floor, a real executive order signed in April 2025, a chain of government equity stakes in mining companies, and one small company he says sits at the center of it all. The “chess” belongs to his framing of “Trump’s $16 trillion chess move,” and the “XAI” ties this to the sibling Oxford Club campaign family. Whatever you call it, this is one of the most factually grounded teaser pitches we have vetted in months. We read the full transcript, checked the executive order against the White House text, and followed the precedent trades. Here is what checks out, what is speculation, and what $99 gets you.

The Presenter

Matt McCall is a long-tenure newsletter analyst, a Stansberry Research alumnus now publishing through the Oxford Club and Monument Traders Alliance, and his media record is real and checkable: “You may remember me from the decade I spent on national television, where I made over 1,000 appearances on Fox Business, CNBC, and CNN.”

The track record he presents is specific to the point of audacity. Bitcoin: “back in 2014, when I endorsed Bitcoin, back when I was trading for about $640… had you taken my advice that day, every 10,000 invested would have grown to over $1.15 million at its high.” Advanced Micro Devices: “I recommended an upstart chipmaker called Advanced Micro Devices at just $2.14 per share… AMD soared by more than 250x at its recent peak.” Nvidia: “a small chip maker called NVIDIA at just $3.70 a share… it ultimately peaked at over $235. That’s for a gain of nearly 6,300%.” Tesla around $15 a share in 2014, plus O’Reilly Automotive and Boston Beer among the follow-ons, and the summary claim: “I’ve identified more than 50 different stocks that went on to gain 1,000% or more over two decades.”

His early Bitcoin, AMD, and Nvidia calls are part of his documented public record. The framing deserves the standard reading: every exhibit is quoted “at its high” or “at its recent peak,” which is cherry-picking to the maximum printed gain, a genre-standard practice you should read as a ceiling rather than an expectation. What earns real credit is the concession McCall makes on camera: “Of course, not all of my calls and recommendations turn out to be 10x and higher… It’d be insane to believe that and pretend like there aren’t losers along the way.” Presenters who volunteer that sentence are rarer than they should be. His methodology, which he calls “the innovation curve,” is a coherent framework: “First, the technology works. Then, the smartest money moves. Only later does Wall Street catch on.”

The Big Idea

The pitch opens with a physical object, and it is a great cold open: “I just received a FedEx envelope marked urgent… Inside this package right here is a single printed document that was signed by the president.” The document is real. It is Executive Order 14285, “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” signed in April 2025, and we verified its text against the White House record. The order’s stated purpose includes “potentially vast resources in seabed polymetallic nodules,” nearly word for word what the pitch claims.

The deposit in question is the polymetallic nodule fields of the Pacific seafloor. McCall describes them vividly: “Trillions of small black rocks packed so densely in places that they carpet the seafloor like cobblestones on a street… They’re what scientists call polymetallic nodules. And each one is packed with rare earth elements. Cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper, even traces of gold.” The harvesting model is the genuine differentiator versus terrestrial mining: “There’s no drilling, no blasting, no tunneling through a mile of granite… just gathering.” He likens the collector to “a giant rolling vacuum cleaner,” lifting nodules up a steel pipe to an 800-foot former oil vessel converted into a production ship.

The mechanism has three interlocking parts, and each is more documented than the genre norm:

  1. The deposit. Nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone are a real, heavily studied resource, and pilot collection trials have actually run at sea. The pitch cites a pilot that hauled “over 3,000 tons” over “two months at sea, traveling 50 miles across the ocean floor” (the recap section says “over 4,500 tons,” an internal inconsistency worth noting).
  2. The executive order. McCall highlights “Section 3i,” which directs a report on “the feasibility and any potential benefits or drawbacks of using the National Defense Stockpile… and of entering offtake agreements for these materials.” His gloss: “the United States government is preparing to become a paying customer for nodules before a single commercial harvest has ever begun.” The quoted language is verbatim from the real order.
  3. The one-vessel bottleneck. The sentence he calls “a sentence nobody in press has bothered to read” directs attention to processing capacity “in the United States or on United States flagged vessels.” His claim: “right now, there’s only one… U.S. flagged vessel capable of hauling this 21-ton treasure back to American shores. And guess who it belongs to? The $5 company I’ve been telling you about.”

The proof-of-pattern is the part we found most compelling, because every precedent is real and dated. The U.S. government took an equity stake in Lithium Americas (September 30, 2025) and the stock ran “up 204% in less than a month.” It took a stake in Trilogy Metals (October 6, 2025) tied to the Ambler Access Project, and “shares shot up 440 percent.” And in USA Rare Earth (January 2026), where “shares went vertical.” These are documented policy events followed by documented rallies. McCall’s thesis is simply that the seabed play is next in the sequence. There is also a historical flourish that happens to be true: the CIA’s Project Azorian used deep-sea mining as cover in 1974, and McCall tells the Glomar Explorer story at length, correctly, as proof that harvesting technology worked even with 1970s equipment. For the specifics, our “Rare Earth Stock Picks: The Government-Backed Pattern” article is worth a read.

The honest scale caveat: the “21 billion tons” estimate is at the top end of published nodule estimates for the whole zone, far beyond any single company’s licensed tonnage, and the “$8-16 trillion” valuations are speculative media estimates of in-situ metal value, not reserve valuations. To his credit, McCall flags this himself: “I’m not going to insult your intelligence and pretend this company captures everything,” and he walks through a 1 percent capture scenario instead. The mechanism is real; the scale is presented at its most cinematic.

The Key Claims

The headline claim is a price projection on an unnamed small cap: “I fully expect it to top out over $50 a share before Trump’s second term is over. In other words, this is truly a 1,000% opportunity for folks who get positioned before Trump pulls that trigger.” The entry math: “You could buy shares right now for around $5,” with “The entire market cap of this small company is roughly $2.5 billion.” Third-party valuations are stacked: “60 Minutes called the discovery staggering, estimating the deposit’s worth at somewhere between eight and 16 trillion dollars,” and “Arthur D. Little… values this discovery at 20 trillion dollars.”

The timeframe is explicitly calendar-driven: “On January 1st, 2027, a hard federal deadline kicks in. One that effectively cuts off America’s access to Chinese-sourced critical minerals and defense systems.” Defense supply-chain de-China-ification deadlines exist in legislative direction, but the single dramatic cutoff date is the pitch’s dramatization of a messier policy process. On the announcement itself, McCall is confident: “I’m convinced Trump’s announcement is coming in a matter of weeks, not months.”

Where the presentation earns our respect is in its two biggest concessions, both stated plainly. On the backstop: “Nobody knows for sure if Trump will ultimately back this company. Nothing is final until that ink is dry.” On the risk: “let me be straight with you… it’s just a small, speculative stock. Situations like this carry real risk and they can move violently in both directions. So do not invest money that you can’t afford to lose.” The gap between “$50 a share” and “speculative stock that can move violently in both directions” is the story of this promo, and both sentences appear in the same presentation, which is more disclosure than most teasers offer.

The urgency mechanics include one manufactured device: “we’re limiting the number of new members who can take action today to just 1,000 people today.” That cap has no audit trail. But the scarcity rationale McCall gives is unusually honest for the genre, arguing that opening the floodgates would “inflate the price of the stock… before my own readers get a chance to get positioned. And that’s just not right.” The strongest urgency beat is the precedent close: “Just ask anyone who watched Trilogy Metals skyrocket 407% in one week from the sidelines.”

The Free Ticker

The hero pick is not named: “In there, you’ll find all the details you need, the company name, the ticker symbol, how to buy, when to buy, what price to pay.” What the presentation gives away free is the proof-of-pattern trio, and all three are real, verifiable stocks:

  • Lithium Americas (NYSE: LAC), the Thacker Pass government restructuring, up “204% in less than a month” after the September 2025 stake.
  • Trilogy Metals (NYSE American: TMQ), the Ambler Access stake, “shares shot up 440 percent” (elsewhere “407% in one week”).
  • USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR), the Round Top deposit stake, where “shares went vertical.”

The pattern, not the pick, is the free value: each named stock moved hundreds of percent on a government stake, and the fingerprint of the hero company, three contract areas in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a converted oil-tanker production vessel listed as U.S.-flagged, a 13-year operating history, collector trials at sea, and a sub-$5 share price, matches the deep-sea mining profile our earlier SKO List coverage identified as The Metals Company (Nasdaq: TMC). We flag that as an unconfirmed hypothesis, not an identification: the pitch’s market-cap and tonnage figures do not precisely match TMC’s reported numbers, and McCall’s report is the only place the name appears. If you want the company name, ticker, and buy price, that is exactly what the paid report delivers.

What You Get

The product is a one-year membership to the McCall Innovation Report, McCall’s flagship monthly advisory, anchored by four research reports:

  • The main report: “Trump’s $16 trillion chess move, how to play the biggest resource grab in American history,” containing the company name, ticker, buy price, and timing.
  • Bonus 1: “The Musk Stampede Master List,” three companies McCall believes “could ride Musk’s next 20X wave,” built on the Neuralink and AI-biology thesis, including an AI-designed drug in “two phase three clinical trials across 40 countries with more than 1600 patients.”
  • Bonus 2: “The Eighth Magnificent Stock,” a company that “Last quarter… saw revenue grow 93%.”
  • Bonus 3: “The Great AI Shock, Three Popular AI Stocks to Avoid Right Now.”
  • Plus the full model portfolio with “buy-up to prices on every recommendation,” real-time buy/sell alerts, monthly issues, market briefings, and a members-only live Q&A every Thursday, with “no personal information, no personal advice ever shared.”

The price is anchored and discounted: “a one-year subscription to the McCall Innovation Report is $250… Today, you can get a full year of the McCall Innovation Report along with every report I’ve shown you for just $99,” with a further discount promised behind the order button. The guarantee is strong: “take a full 90 days to decide and if at any point in that window you feel I didn’t deliver what I promised you today… I’ll give you a full refund… everything you get from today still stays with you.” A 90-day full refund with keep-the-reports terms is at the generous end of the genre. Check the order page for the renewal price and any auto-renewal terms before subscribing; the transcript does not state them.

Our Take

This is a strong pitch built on an unusually solid foundation, and we want to be precise about which parts are which. The load-bearing facts all check out: Executive Order 14285 is real and the quoted “Section 3i” language is verbatim; the Lithium Americas, Trilogy Metals, and USA Rare Earth stakes are real, dated policy events followed by real rallies; the Glomar Explorer story is accurate history; the nodules are a real, studied resource with real pilot harvests. When a teaser’s scariest-sounding claims turn out to be quotable from the Federal Register, that is the genre at its best. Our “Trilogy Metals: The Ambler Road Deal and What Happens Next” article covers the details.

The speculation sits on top of that foundation, clearly stacked. That Trump will take an equity stake in this specific company, on a “weeks, not months” clock, is McCall’s thesis, conceded by the presenter himself as uncertain. That the deposit is worth “$16 trillion” to any owner is a media-speculative number, which McCall at least deflates with his 1 percent capture walk-through. That Elon Musk “may want to acquire this entire company outright,” a second rocket attached to the thesis, is sourced to unnamed “contacts.” And the January 1, 2027 hard deadline is a dramatized compression of a messier supply-chain policy process. None of that makes the pitch dishonest; it makes it a pitch, with a speculator’s odds on the payoff.

McCall’s own warning is the right frame for the decision: this is a small, speculative stock that can move violently in both directions, and it should be sized accordingly. What you are really buying at $99 is a well-researched monthly advisory with a documented innovator at the helm, a four-report bundle, and a 90-day exit with everything kept. Who this is for: investors comfortable with speculative small-cap positions who want the seabed-mining thesis fully laid out with a name, ticker, and buy price, and who value the broader Innovation Report portfolio as the real product. If you only want the one stock and cannot tolerate a 50 percent drawdown on the way to any upside, skip it and watch the government-stake pattern play out in the free names. Our recommendation for speculators: the $99 trial with the 90-day refund is a reasonable way in, read the main report, check the company’s actual filings against the pitch’s figures, and decide with the refund window open.

Where to Learn More

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