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A drone maker that went public at $20 in April lost a third of its value Wednesday on a single news report, then answered it with a statement that says less than it seems. SpaceX posted a 161% revenue jump, the small space stocks rallied with it, and the part of SpaceX they actually compete with barely grew. On Thursday the Nasdaq fell 2.6% on AI spending worries while the Russell 2000 slipped just 0.2%.

Here's what's inside today:

🚀 Read the segment before you buy the sympathy move
🚤 The drone maker's denial, read line by line
📋 159 AI stock picks, losers included
📈 Thursday's biggest gainers (and losers)

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results.

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SpaceX reported Tuesday night, and on Wednesday the small space stocks rallied with it. Rocket Lab closed up 5.4%, and every newer space name opened higher after a month in which the typical one had fallen about 26%.

The rally ran on the headline number: revenue up 161% to $14.6 billion. SpaceX's earnings release breaks that into three businesses, and only one of them looks like Rocket Lab or Firefly:

SpaceX flew 12 launches for paying customers in the quarter, down from 15. The part of the business the small launch companies compete with grew the least and lost money. The part that drove the beat is an AI company.

Four questions before buying a small cap on a bigger company's report:

The last question answered itself on Thursday. With the Nasdaq down 2.6% and up to 1.3 billion SpaceX shares coming off lockup, SpaceX fell 9.1%, Rocket Lab gave back 4.6% and AST SpaceMobile 5.2%. A sympathy rally runs on someone else's numbers, so it has little underneath it when the tape turns.

Aevex (AVEX), the military drone maker that went public at $20 in April, fell 33% on Wednesday, its worst day as a public company, after Bloomberg reported that the Navy had stopped buying its GARC autonomous speedboats. That evening Aevex called the report inaccurate. On Thursday the stock rose 13.2% to $10.96, on a day the Nasdaq fell 2.6%, and won back about a quarter of what it lost.

What the denial says. Aevex's statement opens with "no orders have been halted." The rest of the same paragraph explains why:

Bloomberg says the Navy stopped buying GARCs. Aevex says the Navy had already finished buying them. Both can be true. The release does not address the independent assessment and the hardware problems Bloomberg described.

Why it matters: Aevex paid up to $650 million for BlackSea, the GARC's builder, in September, $350 million of it in stock priced at $27.50 a share. With no new hulls on order, that unit now runs on upgrades and on next-generation boats the Navy has yet to buy at scale. The drone business is healthier: second-quarter revenue doubled to $201.8 million, and about 95% of 2026 guidance is already in backlog.

The honest risk: Funded backlog fell nearly by half in the first six months, to $260 million, as the largest drone program shipped, so 2027 depends on new awards. A class action alleges the IPO documents hid a plan to waive the 180-day lockup for a June share sale. The stock sits 45% below its IPO price, and the BlackSea question is one only the Navy can answer.

Most stock-picking services show you the winners. Our partners at AltIndex publish every AI Stock Pick they've made, timestamped at the closing price on the day it went out, with no losing picks deleted.

The ledger covers 159 picks from April 2025 to April 2026, each given six to 18 months to play out. The headline numbers: a 59% win rate, a 15.7% average return and one pick, TeraWulf at $3.21, that gained 298%.

The useful part is the full list. It shows which kinds of calls worked (semiconductors, steel, a run of AI hardware names) and which didn't (Kratos, AeroVironment and Ondas among the drone and defense names, and three sub-$10 stocks that lost more than three-quarters). If you're deciding how much weight to give a model's next call, its last 159 are the place to start.

AltIndex is a partner; Invested Inc. may earn a commission on referrals.

See the full track record →

Here's where Thursday's biggest moves landed. Chip and AI hardware stocks led the Nasdaq lower, while drug-trial and FDA news drove big moves at both ends of the table.

Biohaven jumped 25% after the FDA accepted its resubmitted application for troriluzole in spinocerebellar ataxia. Exascale Labs filed nothing new; its 73% gain extends a run that began with an $8.2 million GPU server contract, small money for a company now worth $430 million.

Avalo fell 39% after AbbVie's rival skin-disease drug beat placebo by only 8 points in a Phase 3 trial, raising doubts about Avalo's similar drug. TTM Technologies lost 28% despite record quarterly revenue, on a lighter fourth-quarter outlook.

(Data: Yahoo Finance.)

A drone stock caught between a news report and its own press release, and a space rally that rested on the one SpaceX business that barely grew. In both cases the filing said more than the headline.

We'll be back soon. Watching a name we should cover? Hit reply and tell us.

Cheers,
— Brandon & Blake of Invested Inc.