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Luke Kawa10/15/25

Rigetti Computing tanks amid souring retail sentiment, bearish options bets

Rigetti Computing is getting taken to the woodshed on Wednesday amid souring retail trader sentiment and options bets on near-term downside.

In particular, one post on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum from user bespoketrancheop, which shows the Google Street view (circa March 2025) of Rigetti’s listed headquarters, is generating a lot of attention. It’s the most popular Rigetti-centric post on the subreddit in the past seven months.

Rigetti HQ — r/wallstreetbets via bespoketrancheop

Per our executive editor, it’s giving this:

Clinton meme — Source: imgflip

But as one commenter noted, this isn’t exactly new news: “People been posting this since it was $11,” with another pointing out that “making an assessment on a google street view is lazy dd [due diligence].”

For what it’s worth, Rigetti’s Quantum Fab manufacturing facility in Fremont looks a lot more like a place where next-gen technology is being developed and a lot less like the middle school one of my colleagues went to.

Of course, it’s impossible to single this out as the specific catalyst for the price action in Rigetti today. But since there have been dozens of days in the past couple months where quantum computing stocks went up on no news whatsoever, it stands to reason there are also going to be days when they go down for no (good) reason whatsoever.

More important, perhaps, is the flurry of major options bets positioning for downside in the quantum computing company this week. Put options with a strike price of $50 that expire this Friday are in demand. That contract had open interest of under 7,000 heading into today but has already seen volumes of more than 30,000, suggesting fresh wagers made on a pullback in the formerly high-flying stock.

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Companies closely tied to the former, like Broadcom, which codesigns the TPUs that Gemini 3 was trained on, have benefited from their relationship with the hyperscaling search giant. Conversely, Nvidia, which sells to both Google and OpenAI but is besieged with worries about how custom chips might impact its AI market share (and profitability), has been selling off.

“NVDA stock is now trading at its widest ever ~40% discount to AVGO’s current 42x forward PE versus historical -10%/+7% discount/premium over the past 1/2 yrs, respectively,” Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya wrote. “In other words, consensus has already implicitly shifted at least 10+ points of (2H26E/27E) AI market share towards AVGO, conceptually.”

The abrupt shift in valuation amid this divergent price action is reversing course on Monday: Nvidia’s up about 1.5% as of 10:55 a.m. ET, while Broadcom is off 2.6%.

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Air taxi companies are in the red as Goldman initiates coverage on Archer, Joby, and Beta

Goldman Sachs initiated coverage of the major US air taxi companies on Monday, including Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Beta Technologies. All three are trading down as the bank’s first notes hit investor inboxes.

Though Joby “appears to be in pole position” on certification, analyst Anthony Valentini gave the stock a “sell” rating and a $10 price target — 30% below the value of Joby’s stock at Friday’s close. Valentini wrote that it’s unclear where competitors stand in the process.

Goldman gave Archer a “neutral” rating and an $11 price target, highlighting the company’s ability to cut spending. Beta Technologies, which went public last month, received a “buy” rating and a $47 price target.

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The digital treasury company also lowered its outlook for full-year operating income, net income, and earnings per share by more than 90% compared to its October 30 guidance.

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Crypto-adjacent stocks drop to start the week

Crypto-adjacent shares slid in early trading along with unprofitable tech company shares, as animal spirits ebbed to start the US trading week.

Goldman Sachs’ basket of bitcoin-sensitive stocks — heavily weighted toward Coinbase and treasury companies like MARA Holdings and Strategy — was down more than 3% early, reflecting another tumble in bitcoin overnight, though bitcoin prices stabilized a bit in early US trading. Robinhood Markets — shares of which have at times taken cues from the price of crypto, which is traded on the brokerage app — was also down.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.)

It would take a talented druid and a flock’s worth of bird entrails to the divine precisely what’s driving the downdraft. But S&P’s recent assessment of the vulnerability of Tether’s stablecoin, USDT — the world’s largest of these supposedly safer forms of crypto — to the bitcoin sell-off might be playing a role.

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