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Satellite stocks moon on elevated call options activity

A big day for AST SpaceMobile, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab.

9/23/25 2:14PM

Satellite stocks are the latest thematic moon shot — literally — to benefit from a wave of buying appetite.

Volumes and call activity in AST SpaceMobile are each more than double their one-month average with an hour left in the trading day.

Peers Planet Labs and Rocket Lab are enjoying elevated options activity and massive gains as well.

Separately, there is also an unconfirmed report that Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim plans to boost his stake in AST SpaceMobile, which is building out a satellite-based broadband cellular network and whose board his daughter sits on.

In an interview earlier this year, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck told Sherwood News that, in a sense, the end game of the company’s growing space launch and satellite business is ultimately to build out a satellite-based suite of services including broadband, cellular communications, and television.

“What we’re trying to build is an end-to-end space company that does all those things,” Beck said at the time.

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Retail traders are “skipping the dip” this time

Here’s one noteworthy feature of the recent market downturn that has the S&P 500 poised for its worst week since reciprocal tariffs were announced in early April: retail traders seemingly aren’t eager to buy the weakness in single stocks the way they used to be.

JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain has flagged that retail traders instead appear to be “skipping the dip.”

“In contrast to the behavior observed during the post-Liberation Day selloff, retail investors did not seize the opportunity to buy-the-dip on Tuesday, with a few exceptions such as META,” he wrote of the day where the benchmark US stock index fell 1.2%. “In fact, they scaled back their ETF purchases and turned net sellers in single stocks.”

Then on Thursday, when the S&P 500 fell 1.1%, Jain projected that retail traders sold $261 million in single stocks. Through noon ET on Friday, his daily outflow estimate stands at $851 million.

With that intel, it’s little wonder why the carnage this week has been particularly intense in more speculative single stocks that had been favored by the retail community, including IREN, IonQ, Rigetti, Cipher Mining, Bloom Energy, and Oklo.

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Archer Aviation plunges on $650 million share sale following its third-quarter results

Air taxi maker Archer Aviation is deep in the red on Friday morning after reporting its third-quarter results after the bell Thursday. The stock is down more than 12%.

Investors don’t appear to be thrilled about the company’s $650 million direct stock offering, announced alongside its results.

The move marks at least the third major equity raise, and dilution, for Archer this year. The company raised $300 million from a new stock sale in February, and sold $850 million worth of shares in June.

On Archer’s earnings call Thursday, interim CFO Priya Gupta said the company came to the decision after “substantial inbound interest.” According to Gupta, the company has heard from government and commercial partners that liquidity is a “key driver to their decisions of who to partner with.” With its latest share sale, Archer said its total liquidity is more than $2 billion.

Satellite stocks moon on elevated call options activity

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