Rocket Lab USA rips

Midcap commercial space company Rocket Lab USA jumped Wednesday, erasing last week’s losses from an earnings miss.

The company issued a press release touting its second Earth return operation in two months, after landing at a test range in Australia.

But like other meme-adjacent stocks — like SoundHound AI, which is also enjoying a sizable gain — the outsized move may have something to do with the sizable short interest in the stock. As of the most recent data, nearly 15% of Rocket Lab’s float was in the hands of short sellers.

Market volatility aside, Rocket Lab’s business focus remains on bringing its next-generation Neutron rocket online, with an initial launch slated for the second half of 2025. The larger rocket would allow the company to charge higher prices and help stem the rapid cash burn at the company.

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Max Knoblauch

12m

GM surges on better than expected Q3 earnings, forecasts a smaller hit from tariffs and higher profits

GM reported third-quarter earnings before the market opened on Tuesday.

The General Motors world headquarters office is seen at...

GE Aerospace releases Q3 results, beating on strong air-travel demand

The company upped its full-year outlook again.

Matt Phillips, Millie Giles15m

Claire Yubin Oh43m

IonQ rises after company releases two technical papers which claim to demonstrate 99.99% two-qubit gate performance

IonQ is up in early trading on Tuesday after the quantum computing company shared two technical papers that demonstrate 99.99% two-qubit gate performance.

According to IonQ’s press release this marks a new “quantum computing world record,” topping the previous world record of 99.97% set in 2024 by Oxford Ionics, which the company acquired earlier this year. Although 99.99% and 99.97% sound very similar, the former represents an error rate of 1 in 10,000 operations, the latter represents an error rate of 3 in 10,000 operations.

The company says it is the first and only quantum computing company to cross the “four-nines” benchmark, per the release, putting IonQ on track to scale up towards millions of qubits by 2030.

The “two-qubit gate fidelity,” or the error rate of quantum computers’ two-qubit operations, is an important yardstick to measure the performance of a quantum computer. When accuracy improves, the technology’s window for commercial operations widens — a welcome development in the nascent industry which has been fueled by increased US government interest, and speculative trading, as much as it has been by technical breakthroughs this year.

In CEO Niccolo de Masi’s words:

“This level of quantum performance has been the industry’s north star for decades and crossing it brings fault-tolerant quantum systems years closer to mass market adoption. For our global customers, it means unlocking more value from quantum computing sooner, while dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of large-scale systems.”

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

Market Wrap

15h

US stocks romp higher ahead of Big Tech earnings releases

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both rose more than 1%, while the Russell 2000 gained nearly 2%.

Luke Kawa18h

CoreWeave slumps after filings show top shareholder Magnetar Financial sold over $500 million in stock last week

CoreWeave is sinking after one of its earliest backers and top shareholders, Magnetar Financial, sold over $500 million in stock last week.

Filings released after the close on Friday showed the Illinois-based investment firm, its subsidiaries, and executives dumped $486 million from Wednesday through Friday, while separate statements released last Wednesday revealed $60 million in sales from earlier in the week.

After these divestments, Magnetar and its affiliated parties still own north of 72 million shares of the neocloud company.

Magnetar previously put on what looked to be a massive collar trade that protected the value of its CoreWeave position through mid-March of next year by selling calls with strike prices of $160 and $175 and buying put options with a strike price of $70. There were no derivative transactions reported along with any of last week’s sales.

In late March, Magnetar senior managing partner David Snyderman called CoreWeave “the gold standard now for AI infrastructure” and told Bloomberg that the firm had not used the IPO as an opportunity to reduce its stake. Synderman was among the Magnetar-affiliated parties that reduced their positions last week.

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