The crowd chased the missile. Lewis follows a trail of money behind him.
Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by artificial intelligence).
Editor’s note: per day Smart moneywe are featuring a guest article from Luis Navellir, one of America’s most respected quantitative investors.
Lewis has been watching SpaceX’s IPO closely, but not because he’s inclined to buy it. What he finds fascinating is how markets react when millions of investors are chasing the same story at the same time.
This dynamic is no longer limited to high-profile IPOs, he says.
Now, AI-powered trading tools are quietly pushing retail investors into the same crowded positions across the entire market. When institutional money – “elephants” as Lewis calls them – starts heading for the exit, the investors left behind may not see it coming until it is too late.
Below, Lewis explains the risks, names one space stock his system currently rates “A” that has become cheaper for no fundamental reason, and presents the framework he spent 47 years building to track where the smart money is moving before the public realizes.
Without further ado, here’s Louis…
There are some stories that can’t help but make you proud to be an American.
Victor Glover is one of them.
Glover is a Navy captain, test pilot, engineer, and NASA astronaut. He holds three master’s degrees from three different institutions. During his naval career, one of his commanding officers gave him the call sign “Ike” – short for “I Know It All.” That was partly tongue in cheek. But it fits.
In April 2026, Glover will fly Artemis 2 around the Moon. In doing so, he became the first African American to leave low Earth orbit and travel beyond it. He and his crewmates helped set a new record for the furthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.
This is the kind of accomplishment that people remember.
But as an investor, I look at this story a little differently.
I see the astronaut, the rocket and the mission. But I also see the massive industrial machine behind it all. Artemis II was not just a triumph of courage and exploration. It was a triumph for supply chains, chips, sensors, navigation systems, advanced materials, communications equipment, and thousands of private-sector components that had to work together perfectly.
Artemis II was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of a much larger campaign.
This is the part that most investors miss. Which brings us to SpaceX’s recent IPO – and the real lesson it has to teach us.
In this article I’ll explain why the IPO passed – and I’ll give you one stock that my system currently rates as “A” that got cheaper for no fundamental reason.
A great story isn’t always a great stock
when Space Exploration Technologies Company (Spex) was made public, the crowd did what crowds normally do. They saw the name. They saw Elon Musk. Then they chased the arrows.
The stock price is $150 per share. Within two trading days, it rose more than 40%, surpassing $200. Then gravity appeared. The stock has fallen back to earth, down to $150 the last time I checked.
Many investors were reminded of a lesson I’ve learned time and time again in my nearly 50 years in this business: A great story isn’t always a great stock.
SpaceX is a great company. Starlink has changed the world. I would never bet against Musk. But IPOs are different. By the time a hot private company hits the public market, early investors have already gotten their first bite. Wall Street bankers have every reason to make the story irresistible. Individual investors are often left trying to calculate risk with very little useful data.
This is not how I invest. I need quarterly earnings, analyst reviews, and institutional purchasing data. I need to run inventory through my system. Even then, buying an IPO is not an investment. It’s a guess, and I’m not guessing with my money.
There is also a structural problem that no one is talking about. Currently, only 5% to 6% of SpaceX shares are tradable. The rest is closed. Those 4,400 employees who became millionaires on paper? When their confinement period is up, they’ll start cashing out — not because they’ve lost confidence, but because that’s what humans do when the number on the screen becomes life-changing. Even if they sold 10% or 20% of their holdings, it would be a wall of supply hitting the market.
SpaceX won’t be profitable until at least 2028. It is betting everything on its Starship rocket, which is still in testing and not yet ready to launch satellites or carry humans.
I miss all the IPOs, for lack of a better word. Even if it’s a great company — and the jury’s still out on SpaceX — there will always be a better window.
Proxy shares were penalized – and one of them has now been purchased
Here something happened as expected.
In the months leading up to SpaceX’s IPO, investors who wanted exposure to the space story bought shares by proxy – Rocket Lab Company (He rode), Planet Labs PBC (but rather), AST SpaceMobile (Estes). These were the next best options for investors who couldn’t buy SpaceX outright.
The moment SpaceX went public, those investors ditched the proxies and bought the real thing. Proxy stocks took a beating. Some really strong companies have become cheaper for no fundamental reason.
However, good stocks bounce like fresh tennis balls. This is my kind of take off Precursor intelligence system It was built to find.
Planet Labs is one of the things worth looking at right now. The company operates the world’s largest fleet of Earth observation satellites – more than 200 satellites providing daily imaging of the entire planet. Its clients include government agencies, defense contractors, agricultural companies, insurance companies and financial institutions that use satellite images to make better decisions.
The stock was caught in a SpaceX proxy selloff. But the work has not changed. for me Precursor intelligence system Planet Labs is currently rated “A.” This means that the fundamental score—earnings momentum, sales growth, and analyst reviews—and the quantitative score, which measures institutional buying pressure, are strong.
Planet Labs is worth putting on your radar here. It became cheaper because of SpaceX, not because of anything wrong with the business.
The best trade is the one that no one sees
But this is what I want you to understand.
Planet Labs is the obvious story next to SpaceX, and audiences will eventually find it. The most interesting opportunities are those that don’t seem like it Space stocks Absolutely.
Think about what Artemis II actually requires. And not just missiles. It needed supply chains, chips, sensors, advanced materials, navigation systems and communications equipment. The 100-year-old aluminum company makes specialized aerospace alloys for the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. A semiconductor foundry that makes analog chips that help spacecraft see, hear, communicate, and manage power in the harsh conditions of deep space.
These are not the stocks people think of when they hear the word “space.” These are not the names that AI tools direct investors towards. They’re companies three or four steps away from the main story — ones that Wall Street’s elephants have been quietly collecting before anyone else notices.
I’ve identified two of them in my new special report, SpaceX Stampede Report. Both have real profits. Both are witnessing institutional accumulation. Both are the kind of companies I’d rather own during a boom: pick-and-roll companies for the new space and AI infrastructure economy.
Do you invest like an elephant or a mouse?
The SpaceX IPO is a perfect small-scale example of something I’ve been tracking across the entire market.
There are actually only two types of investors in the stock market. I call them elephants and mice.
The elephants are the big institutional players – pension funds, endowments, and large asset managers. They move slowly and methodically. They don’t react to the headlines. They analyze the fundamentals, quietly build positions over months, and wait.
Rats are retail investors. They move in flocks, all reacting to the same information at the same time. They are quick to buy and quicker to operate.
What worries me now is that AI-based trading systems are rapidly turning millions of retail investors into mice moving in perfect synchronization — millions of people using the same tools, the same data sets, the same recommendations, all crowding into the same stocks at the same time. When all AI systems receive the same “sell” signal simultaneously, the exit door doesn’t just jam. There is simply no one left on the other side of the trade.
I call this the “AI 50 Million Coordination Trap.” And July 23 — at the height of the second-quarter earnings season, when AI systems are processing identical data and arriving at identical conclusions simultaneously — is when it faces its first real test on a large scale.
I’ve spent 47 years building a system designed to read elephants before mice. I call it Precursor intelligence. It tracks institutional money flows across 6,000 stocks, looking for signs that elephants are quietly moving in or out before the pattern becomes visible to those 50 million AIs and everyone else.
I’ve put it together Full presentation explaining exactly how this works – What does the trap look like, what types of stocks are most at risk, and where my system is seeing institutional accumulation at the moment. During this free podcast, I also named the #1 stock to buy and the #1 stock to avoid as the AI curation trap emerges.
Victor Glover didn’t get to the moon by chasing the obvious path. He got there by understanding every system behind the mission, a system that most people never think about.
That’s how I tried to invest for 47 years. The audience can chase the missile, but I prefer to follow the money trail behind it.
Watch this free broadcast here.
sincerely,
Louis Navellier
Senior Investment Analyst, InvestorPlace
note: Planet Labs became cheaper because of SpaceX, not because of anything wrong with its business. My system rates it as “A” at the moment. But the two stocks I find most interesting in the SpaceX story aren’t the obvious space names at all — they’re the behind-the-scenes materials and semiconductor companies I cover. SpaceX Stampede Report. Watch my presentation to learn how to get this report.
The Editor hereby discloses that as of the date of this email, the Editor owns, directly or indirectly, the following securities that are the subject of the commentary, analysis, opinions, advice, or recommendations contained in the article described below, or otherwise mentioned:
Rocket Lab Company (He rode)
