Trading Spaces
Our space names soar as SpaceX gets ready to IPO. Less-obvious AI names rocketed higher this week too.
The SpaceX Tailwind
Earlier this month, after Rocket Lab’s (RKLB 0.00%↑) earnings lit up the sector, we wrote about about the coming SpaceX ( SPCX 0.00%↑ ) tailwind.
The point was that when the SpaceX IPO finally launched, that could pull more attention and capital toward the publicly traded space ecosystem. We got a whiff of that this week, after SpaceX filed its public S-1 (IPO prospectus), lending weight to last week’s Reuters report that its IPO could come as soon as June 12th.
Some of our space-related rocketed higher in response this week.
Ironically, the biggest mover there was the least-obvious space stock, AmpliTech Group (AMPG 0.00%↑). The company doesn’t launch rockets or operate satellites, but its ultra-low-noise RF amplifiers are the kind of components LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite constellations need to transmit and receive clean, high-speed signals between orbit and the ground.
The space stock we took partial profits on this week was Redwire (RDW 0.00%↑):
Calls on Redwire RDW 10.38%↑). Bought the November 20th, 2026 $12 calls for $2.60 as part of a 3-leg combo on 4/14/2026; sold half of the calls for $8.00 on 5/22/2026. Profit: 208% on the calls sold. Signal: Market Watchers.
That’s one of the advantages of using options on these smaller, theme-adjacent names. When the market suddenly reprices the theme, we can take profits quickly while still keeping upside exposure.
AI Names Rocketed Higher Too
Space wasn’t the only theme working this week.
Last weekend, we argued that this isn’t the dot-com bubble.
Our point was that, unlike in the late 1990s, the current AI buildout is rooted in real earnings, real infrastructure demand, and real physical bottlenecks—compute, memory, power, photonics, cooling, sensing, storage, logistics, and semiconductor equipment.
This week, Nvidia’s (NVDA 0.00%↑) reinforced that point, reporting record quarterly revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% year-over-year. As impressive as Nvidia’s earnings were, no doubt a lot of retail investors saw their weekly NVDA calls expire worthless yesterday, as the stock ended the week down 4.43%. Nvidia’s record earnings had been anticipated by the market for weeks, which bid up the stock ahead of time.
Nvidia is now a $5.3 trillion market cap company. For big, short term moves, you need to be in smaller, less-obvious AI names. Fortunately, we were.
A Less Obvious AI Name
Last December, we opened a trade on Navitas Semiconductor (NVTS 18.40%↑). Nvidia makes the chips that do the AI math. Navitas makes power semiconductors that help feed those chips and the surrounding infrastructure more efficiently—a less obvious, but still essential, layer of the AI buildout. This week, it was the less obvious semiconductor company’s time to shine.
Also this week, we exited our December Navitas trade for a healthy profit:
3-leg combo on Navitas Semiconductor (NVTS 18.40%↑). Entered at a net debit of $1.55 on 12/8/2025; exited the March $9/$7 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 3/11/2026; sold half of the June $12 calls for $7.50 on 4/22/2026 and sold the second half for $13.00 on 5/21/2026. Profit: 548% (return on max risk: 233%). Signal: PA Top Names.
We added a new trade on Navitas earlier this month, along with trades on Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises (BW -6.61%↓), Nuvectis Pharma (NVCT -6.51%↓), and Aeva Technologies (AEVA 13.64%↑) in the same alert. Babcock & Wilcox and Aeva Technologies are AI-adjacent in different ways: BW on the power side of the AI-factory buildout, and AEVA on the embodied-AI side, where lidar and perception hardware help autonomous systems navigate the physical world.
Here’s how those four stocks have done since.
This Is Logic, Not Luck
There are two main ways to make money while writing about finance. The first is to preach doom. Say America’s debt is unsustainable, the “petrodollar” is about to collapse, Iran is about to replace the U.S. as a superpower, etc. There seems to be an insatiable demand for that sort of content, and maybe you can sell ads for precious metals if you get enough traffic.
The other way is to generate alpha. That’s what you see above. You can see more examples of it in this weeks Exits post.
One prerequisite for this is to have an open mind. The second prerequisite is to react to what is actually happening, not to your own hobbyhorses. Space and the AI buildout have been obvious themes for a while. We were writing about space names a year and a half ago, and we have objective sources of alpha, including Portfolio Armor’s Top Names, that keep us in these themes.
It’s been more profitable than waiting for the sky to fall.