Socialists win big… Dr. Ron Paul warns what comes next

Three Space Stocks, Five Binary Events, One Week
Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile report Monday night. SpaceX targets a historic double catch Friday. The calendar is loaded for defined-risk options trades.

Four days. That is the gap between Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile posting Q3 results after Monday’s close and SpaceX’s Starship Flight 15 lifting off from Starbase on Friday, November 13, 2026. Each event carries a hard outcome: numbers beat or miss, the booster and upper stage land in the arms or they don’t. That compression of binary catalysts into a single week makes this one of the most favorable defined-risk options windows on the 2026 calendar.

The Story Behind the Trades

Rocket Lab enters its November 9 call carrying more baggage than its revenue line suggests. Analysts expect the company to post earnings of roughly negative $0.07 per share on revenue of about $257 million, continuing the pattern of top-line strength alongside persistent losses. The harder question Monday’s call must answer is Neutron. Shares plunged in mid-October after the company again delayed the debut of its more powerful Neutron rocket, pushing the vehicle’s first flight to 2027 following a newly identified manufacturing issue affecting parts of the rocket’s propellant tank structures. To fund the pending Iridium Communications acquisition, Rocket Lab completed a $1.944 billion at-the-market equity offering. That dilution already hit the stock; whether management can reframe the Iridium story as a margin and recurring-revenue accelerator will likely determine where RKLB trades Tuesday morning. Morgan Stanley reiterated a Buy rating on RKLB with a $105 price target on November 6, following the Neutron delay news.

AST SpaceMobile is a different animal. The stock is down roughly 50% year-to-date, raising questions about valuation in a competitive satellite communications landscape. Analysts expect a loss of $0.42 per share and revenue of $45.73 million for Q3, up sharply from about $14.7 million in Q3 2025. The growth rate is real. So is the execution risk: ASTS last reported earnings on August 10, 2026, posting a loss of $0.77 per share versus a roughly $0.32 loss expected. Then there is the Firefly overhang. AST SpaceMobile announced on November 6 a deal with Firefly Aerospace to supply engines and related engineering services for its planned reusable Blacklift rocket, plus a licensing arrangement for AST to manufacture those engines later. The announcement improves the story on launch control for BlueBird satellites, but it also adds funding, dilution, regulatory, and execution questions.

SpaceX rounds out the week. SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13, 2026 for Starship Flight 15, and company and local reporting has pointed to a plan that could include a catch attempt of both the Super Heavy booster and the ship, pending readiness and regulatory approval. On the company’s Q3 earnings call, Elon Musk said Flight 15 would try to catch both stages and put the odds of a successful ship catch at “more likely than not.” SpaceX listed in June at $135, closed its debut at $161, and has since pulled back sharply. Shares are now roughly 40% below their post-IPO high of $225.64. A successful double catch on Friday would provide the kind of technical milestone the stock has not had since its IPO run.

Options Perspective

The options market is already pricing in substantial moves. In the November 6 session, RKLB options volume was about 142,000 contracts and 30-day implied volatility sat in the mid-90s percent range. Around the earnings window, seven-day implied volatility near 132% implies roughly an 18% one-standard-deviation move over the next week. For ASTS, options markets have been pricing a high-teens percent move into the week that includes earnings, depending on the specific data source and cut of the chain. Both readings are elevated versus recent realized volatility, which argues for spreads over naked long options to control premium bleed.

The preferred structure for RKLB and ASTS heading into Monday is a bull call spread expiring November 14, keeping debit low while capping the IV crush risk on the morning after. For SPCX into Friday’s launch, a call debit spread gives defined participation in a Flight 15 success without full exposure to a scrub or partial failure. The key: the put/call picture for RKLB is directionally constructive, with open-interest ratios in recent sessions running below 1.0.

Risk Management

ASTS has a recent track record of missing expectations, and another miss would likely override any positive Blacklift commentary. For RKLB, guidance on Neutron’s 2027 path and any update on Iridium close timing are the swing factors; revenue beats alone won’t move the stock meaningfully if management sounds defensive on either. For SPCX, a scrub to a later date is not a thesis-breaker but could shave 5% to 8% intraday given how efficiently flight speculation is now priced into the shares.

The Beast Verdict

The Monday-to-Friday arc gives options traders something rare: three distinct names, five discrete outcomes, and premium already elevated by uncertainty on all fronts. The edge here is not picking which company “wins” this week. It is building positions with enough distance between debit paid and maximum loss to survive a wrong call on any single name. RKLB is the highest-conviction long given the analyst consensus and the Iridium re-rating potential. ASTS is the highest-volatility swing, appropriate for smaller sizing. SPCX is the week’s headline event, and Friday’s catch attempt, if successful, would be the clearest catalyst any space stock has seen since RKLB’s own launch cadence records were set.