The Hook
Andrew Zatlin is launching a $1,495-a-year newsletter called Capitol Gains Trader, and the opening pitch is a golf course. Not just any golf course: “Known for its punishing water hazards and hole number four, the course’s toughest, a 461 yard par four from the back tees.” The hook is that this unremarkable Florida golf club is “about to become part of what could be one of America’s most important national security companies. A company co-owned by the president’s two eldest sons.” The promise is “a potential 250%+ one-day move” in “a little-known NASDAQ ticker” for anyone who gets in before a “backdoor IPO” that starts trading “as soon as September 30th.”
Zatlin is a legitimate operator with a real background. He founded Moneyball Economics in 2022, and his firm was acquired by Agora in late 2024 and paired with Adam O’Dell under the Money & Markets sub-brand. His stated method is to track the buying of “connected” insiders tied to government, and to recommend two to three trades a month on the back of it. The details are in our What Porter & Co. Won’t Tell You About Your Own ’Perpetua… article.
The Big Claim
The claim is specific and date-stamped. Zatlin says he found “a five-page document filed with the SEC” connecting a golf-course holding company to a drone maker, that the combined company will “start trading through this backdoor IPO as soon as September 30th,” and that “it costs you less than $5 per share to get into” a stock “set to benefit from a $54 billion Trump-backed proposal.” The “250% one-day move” is the headline number. He frames it, notably, as not a red-versus-blue question but “a green situation,” and says his only job is to follow the money.
The Mechanism
The mechanism is a reverse merger, and it is worth explaining clearly because the term “backdoor IPO” is doing more work than it should. A reverse merger is a real, legal way for a private company to go public: the private company buys a shell or a tiny already-listed company that has little or no operations, and merges into it, acquiring its public listing without a conventional IPO. Zatlin’s “Section 7050” reference and his “on paper this company doesn’t even exist yet” line are describing exactly that.
The specific deal: Aureus Greenway, a holding company that owns 289 acres of golf courses in Kissimmee, Florida (the Kissimmee Bay Country Club and the Remington Golf Club), is the shell. It is merging with a roughly one-year-old drone startup that received an early investment from Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump through their 1789 Capital firm. The combined entity becomes Powerus (PUSA), and the Trump brothers own about 10% of it.
The underlying business is not a joke, even if the shell is. Powerus has real defense exposure. In August it announced its biggest contract yet, a $90 million Air Force deal for drone systems and services over the next couple of years, alongside smaller or unspecified orders in the Middle East and Pakistan. Its MatrixFold drone qualified for phase 2 of the Pentagon’s ongoing $1 billion competition to build rapid, cheap drone capacity. That is a real, if early and unproven, business.
It helps to understand the market this company is chasing, because the pitch assumes you know it. The Pentagon’s current drone push is not about the expensive, high-end systems that dominate headlines; it is about flooding the zone with large numbers of cheap, rapidly producible, attritable drones that can be built at scale and replaced quickly. That is the “Replicator”-style thesis, and it is a genuine, multi-billion-dollar procurement shift. A company that can qualify its drone for phase 2 of a $1 billion Pentagon competition is at least credibly positioned inside that shift. Zatlin’s underlying bet, that defense-connected insider money is a signal worth following, is not crazy, even if the specific “backdoor IPO” packaging oversells the timing.
The Real Pick
| Ticker | Company | Current Price (10/05) | Tease Price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PUSA | Powerus Corporation | $2.895 | ~$3.60 | -19.6% |
The current price is from Polygon as of the October 5, 2026 close. The tease price of roughly $3.60 is from StockGumshoe’s September 29 article. At that reference, Powerus was about a $575 million company with roughly 160 million shares outstanding.
Does the Math Check Out
The headline claim has already falsified itself. The “250% one-day move” was promised for “September 30th,” and September 30th has come and gone. Powerus is now trading under its own PUSA symbol, and the stock is down about 20% from the $3.60 reference price, not up 250%. The reverse merger closed, the ticker listed, and the fireworks did not happen.
Part of the reason is that there was no surprise left to price in. The Trump brothers’ connection to this deal has been public since March, and the stock already spiked to roughly $6 twice, on the initial press releases and on the announcement of the deal. When a “secret” reverse merger has been public knowledge for six months and has already had two pops, the “250% one-day move” at the final merger announcement is asking the market to be surprised by something it has already priced.
The “$54 billion Trump-backed proposal” is also worth a skeptical look. Powerus is a roughly $390 million company at today’s price. Even the tentative analyst estimates only reach about $240 million in sales by 2028. A “$54 billion proposal” is a much larger pool of government spending that many companies compete for, not a contract Powerus has won. The gap between a $54 billion headline and a $90 million actual contract is the gap between the pitch and the fundamentals.
There is still a legitimate thesis underneath the hype: government-connected insider buying is a real signal that Zatlin is not wrong to watch, and the Trump brothers’ 10% stake does align their incentives with shareholders for the next two and a half years. But the “buy before September 30” urgency mechanism has already expired, and the outcome so far is a loss, not a 250% gain. It is also worth noting that at today’s roughly $390 million market cap, PUSA is a genuine microcap, which cuts both ways: it can move dramatically on a contract win, but it is also thin and illiquid, exactly the kind of stock where a promised one-day pop can reverse just as fast.
The Verdict
This is a “dated buyout prediction” promo whose deadline has passed and whose marquee claim has not materialized. The reverse merger went through, Powerus is a real, listed company with real early defense contracts, and it might turn into something. But the specific trade this promo sold you, a 250% one-day move by September 30, is already off the table and the stock is down since the pitch. The correct frame is to evaluate Powerus on its own merits as a speculative drone-and-defense microcap, not as a “backdoor IPO” lottery ticket. For most readers, that means watching, not buying, and treating the “$5 backdoor IPO” as a lesson in how a dated catalyst can already be spent before the ad even reaches your inbox.
What They Got Right
- The reverse merger is real and was genuinely under the radar for most retail investors. Connecting a golf-course shell to a drone company via SEC filings is legitimate detective work.
- “Following the money” is a defensible strategy, and government-connected insider buying is a real signal that Zatlin has a sensible method for tracking.
- Powerus is a real business with real contracts. A $90 million Air Force deal and a Pentagon competition phase-2 qualification are concrete, verifiable facts.
- Zatlin is honest about the moral ambiguity, framing it explicitly as “a green situation” rather than pretending the arrangement is not unusual.
What They Got Wrong
- The “250% one-day move” was date-stamped for September 30 and did not happen. The ticker now trades below the tease price. That is the single most important fact about this promo.
- The “secret” framing overstates the information edge. The Trump brothers’ involvement has been public since March, and the stock already spiked twice, so there was little novelty left for the final announcement.
- The “$54 billion Trump-backed proposal” is a pool of government spending, not a contract. Powerus’s actual largest announced contract is $90 million, a hundredth of a percent of that headline number.
- The $1,495 price with no refunds (only a 30-day “credit” toward another letter) is a steep, non-refundable commitment for a service whose first marquee call is already underwater.
Compliance Disclaimer
This is not financial advice. NewsletterVetter has no position in any stock mentioned. PUSA is a newly listed microcap with a short public track record, and reverse-merger companies carry elevated disclosure and volatility risk that is not prominently discussed in the ad copy.
NewsletterVetter is an independent publication. Nothing on this site is investment advice. Always do your own research.