Most investors will be chasing the SpaceX IPO itself, but the smartest trade is taking shape in the public companies surrounding the story.
Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by artificial intelligence).
Editor’s note: Yesterday smart money, my colleague Jonathan Rose He explained why he believes retail investors could become “exit liquidity” in SpaceX’s upcoming IPO — the same kind of setup that has trapped late buyers in countless hype-driven deals before it. But avoiding the trap is only half the equation.
Today, Jonathan will explain where professional traders often look: the “family” of stocks surrounding the IPO itself. It also highlights three stocks already connected to the SpaceX hypothesis and explains why getting familiar with the story isn’t enough without institutional confirmation.
If you missed last week’s live event with Jonathan and the Wall Street veteran Mark ChaikinThey delve deeper into the signals that reveal the true value of the stock. I recommend you watch the replay here.
Without further ado, here’s Jonathan…
One of the biggest differences between retail investors and professional traders is the question they ask first.
Most investors will wonder: “Which stock should I buy?”
Professional traders ask: “What else will happen if this story becomes important?”
This distinction is extremely important during major technological shifts.
And that’s exactly what I was thinking last week when my live chat became obsessed with Elon Musk’s ideas. Neuralink project.
no Tesla company (TSLA). not SpaceX IPO. no xAI Chat bots.
Brain implants.
The conversation was quick: “When is the IPO going?” “How do we invest?” “Is there a bar yet?”
Honestly, I get it. The idea sounds like science fiction. Small devices that connect computers directly to the human brain. People control machines by thought alone.
How amazing would that be?
It’s the kind of story that the media and Wall Street immediately became obsessed with.
But this is the part that caught my attention.
Around the same time that Musk is pouring money into Neuralink, Sam Altman is backing another brain computer startup. Two billionaires. Suddenly two of the most powerful people in technology are racing into the exact same sector.
When this happens, traders take notice.
Not that we think we’ll wake up tomorrow with Neuralink IPO tape. But when the smart money starts flowing into an entirely new industry, the real opportunities often appear around the edges of the headline before the public even realizes there’s a trade developing.
Bruce Lee It contains a line that perfectly embodies how traders should think about opportunities like these:
It’s like a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t focus on the finger, or you’ll miss all the heavenly glory.
Instead of asking: “How do we invest in Neuralink?”
When we see money flowing into a new sector, we should ask completely different questions:
- Who builds the chips?
- Who makes microscopes?
- Who provides the memory?
- But which public companies would benefit if this entire sector was suddenly repriced at a higher price?
This is the frame.
And frankly, this is the same pattern of behavior that we saw last week with the SpaceX IPO.
Many investors never manage to get past what is right in front of them. They will focus entirely on SpaceX itself. the date. Indicator. Evaluation. The noise.
Meanwhile, the smart money is already starting to move on to the “family” surrounding the story. This is where second-rate commerce often lives.
This is what I want to show you today.
In this article I will explain how professional traders think about “family” trades during massive IPO cycles…
We show you three publicly traded stocks that are already linked to the SpaceX theory…
And explain why the real advantage comes from waiting for confirmation from the smart money before the public catches up.
Family trade
Floor traders learn very quickly that markets move in clusters. Nothing trades in isolation.
Everything has a family:
- If semiconductors move, suppliers move.
- If spending on AI increases, infrastructure moves.
- If uranium rises, utilities and miners will move.
- If SpaceX eventually goes IPO at the same valuation Wall Street expects, the companies surrounding that ecosystem will be repriced as well.
This is the game. Once you start seeing the market this way, you stop chasing headlines and start looking for relative value instead.
That’s exactly what’s happening around SpaceX right now.
Alphabet Company (Google) is one of the most overlooked names associated with the thesis. Most investors still think of Alphabet as a search and cloud company. But Alphabet also owns a large stake in SpaceX which suddenly became more apparent once SpaceX started trading publicly. This is the kind of hidden revelation that Wall Street often ignores… until suddenly everyone notices it at once.
Rocket Lab USA (He rode) It’s another interesting “family” trade because the moment Wall Street starts assigning massive valuations to reusable rockets and orbital infrastructure, analysts are forced to rethink what their peers in the public should be worth as well. The similar group changes overnight.
Then there AST Space Mobile (Estes)which falls directly within the story of the satellite communications that SpaceX’s Starlink system helped create in the first place. If investors suddenly decide that space communications deserves significantly higher valuations after SpaceX’s roadshow begins, names like ASTS will immediately be drawn into the conversation.
Now, this is where even smart investors make a mistake. They find family, buy stocks and hope.
This is not a bad idea, but this is not how I trade. Because stories and ideas alone are not enough.
And honestly, this is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned after 28 years of trading futures, bonds, and options professionally:
Sometimes the narrative is exactly right… and the trade still fails because the big money doesn’t actually confirm the move.
Confirmation layer
That’s why I focus so much on unusual trading activity.
Big money leaves footprints.
When these big funds start aggressively building positions in names that most retail investors don’t know yet, this activity tends to show up before the headlines have fully caught up. This is the signal I built my system on from the beginning.
But over the past year, I’ve realized something important: finding the signal was only half the job.
I am very good at identifying unusual trading activity and volatility. I’m pretty good at finding where the smoke is rising before the audience sees it. But the trend? Bullish or bearish?
I’ve been saying this explicitly to my members for years: Sometimes the trend is a coin flip.
This is exactly why we partner with Mark Chaikin Makes a lot of sense.
Mark has spent decades building institutional money flow tools used everywhere from Bloomberg terminals to professional research offices. My tools identify where unusual positions are being built in trading activity. Marc Money Flow tools confirm whether institutional money in the underlying stock is flowing in the same direction.
When both signals line up, that’s what Mark and I start calling it Convergence operator. It has completely changed the way I think about second rate deals like this.
Because now we’re not just asking: “Is this stock connected to the SpaceX story?”
We wonder: “Is the big money really accruing to this name now?”
Big difference.
Right now, parts of the SpaceX family are already starting to show this layer of confirmation — especially within infrastructure, AI computing, satellite communications, and quieter derivatives that most investors are still not paying attention to.
Once you understand how to think this way, you will start to see the market differently:
- What is the second order effect?
- What names did you forget to move?
- Where is institutional money quietly accumulating?
- Which settings are actually confirmed?
This framework works almost everywhere.
Mark and I went live Thursday night to demonstrate how we use the proximity operator to identify these types of settings right now — including many of the names associated with SpaceX’s infrastructure transactions and artificial intelligence that are already appearing on our screens.
If you missed the live event, you can Get the full replay here.
The creative trader wins
Jonathan Rose
founder, Master of Commerce
Note Jonathan Rose He has a completely different way of looking at the market than most analysts – and frankly, that’s probably why his work has been getting so much attention lately. Instead of chasing headlines, he focuses on where institutional money may already be quietly sitting before it comes to the public’s attention. That’s exactly what he and the Wall Street veteran said Mark Chaikin It was discussed during Peak convergence The event is Thursday night. If you missed the live broadcast, you can Catch the replay here.
