Optimism greeted the trading week's start, with several long-running bears in major institutions, suddenly talking about rally for the next several weeks or months. Wow.. that almost ensured failure for the out-of-the-box rally, but let's not be too cynical, it makes sense when one looks at how many managers did avoid the market altogether (focused on Treasuries) for the year's start.

Freepik

I think they'll get that move, it's the next phase for a pattern dating from parts of our 'inverse head & shoulders bottom' in October with a tax-selling 'test' just ahead of Christmas, and that was the outline. Not easy, but essentially what it was. Then the 'January Effect' upside, February's erratic contraction, and a set-up for upside, which either is underway or pending this month. Remember there's a significant Quarterly Expiration after we get the 'Ides of March'. So I still believe we'll horse around with a Fed and Jobs 'mixture', then advance.

Technologies tailored for unique challenges in 'Defense' or in 'Space' are for sure the domains of advancement and leading-edge science. While not really thrilled about the need to focus national interest on quasi-military expenditure or excess, there's a need that Washington concluded, so we're exploring that.

Given what China (and to a lesser extent Russia) are focusing on (along with rogue players like North Korea or even Iran) is the ability to either overwhelm the U.S. and NATO, or conversely knock us out with an EMP-type assault. It's been decided to address this, and the bias is also overwhelmingly bipartisan.

A huge contract we wrote about for Terran Orbital was from Rivada (private company mostly planning to serve Europe). I will share a few graphics from my weekend reading-up on the activities, noting that LLAP (yes it really does stem from Star-trek 'live long and prosper') has previously-unknown working partnerships with others, not just Lockheed but also BigBear.ai and maybe LightPath, though we don't know. More LLAP info. graphics later this week.

These stocks may be small-cap, but not very low-float by the way. But when they get contracts they tend to be 'big awards', the nature of the Defense Dept so .. it's why you see huge jumps then retreats and then ideally up over time. It is also why one should be careful and 'if' accumulating do so patiently and a bit at a time either before news if 'betting' or 'after' the dust settles after news.

We won't worry much about the mostly-German Rivada deal that brought this to our attention, because I'll presume nobody does better due diligence than Lockheed, without blessings nothing would go forward. And that company had been viewed as competing with SpaceX, but that too is old history, given that none other than SpaceX will be launching the satellites into low-Earth orbit. If we hear LightPath is 'really' involved too, I'll note that, but we may not hear.

One big focus is miniaturization. We've seen that in computers, satellites and even rockets themselves. In-essence you get increased resiliency as well as increased security through low size, weight, and power. Makes smaller targets for an enemy, which in flat-out war would include risk of Space-laser combat.

I'll expand more on this in the future, while we already touched on advanced software-defined applications, such as BigBear.ai is working on with the U.S. Army, Air Force and newly the U.S. Navy. These are critical programs not just to bolster our nation’s dominance in space, but for-instance the very important area of 'predictive analysis' (Ai) which is central to 'battle-space management'.

In-sum:

 'Bleeding edge' science and technology may not be appropriate for a lot of investors, but certainly is of-interest to speculators who want to keep a pulse on this 'market stairway' into the heavens. I'm in no rush to climb steps, but I do find the expanding of what America does best (technology more so than anything requiring masses of people) important and worth some study.

Monday was a decent session for some of the major tech stocks, but migration there was not cohesive and there are many debates about predictable results, cash flow and so on. That includes Apple, which really tilts S&P either way.

More By This Author:

Market Briefing For Monday, Mar. 6
Market Briefing For Thursday, Mar. 2
Market Briefing For Wednesday, Mar. 1