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Rockets, Rerates, and a Small-Cap Spacer Trying to Stick the Landing

Author

Noah Zelvis
November 14, 2025

AI steals the headlines, but there’s another arms race happening 100 miles up.

NASA and the Pentagon keep parceling out missions to a wider bench beyond the usual giants, and one newcomer just printed a cleaner quarter with higher guidance.

It’s still bruised from a rocky debut year, but if execution firms up, this one could go from space SPAC to a real business.

Crash Expert: “This Looks Like 1929” → 70,000 Hedging Here

Mark Spitznagel, who made $1B in a single day during the 2015 flash crash, warns markets are mimicking 1929. Yeah, just another oracle spouting gloom and doom, right?

Vanguard and Goldman Sachs forecast just 5% and 3% annual S&P returns respectively for the next decade (2024-2034).

Bonds? Not much better.

Enough warning signals—what’s something investors can actually do to diversify this week?

Almost no one knows this, but postwar and contemporary art appreciated 11.2% annually with near-zero correlation to equities from 1995–2024, according to Masterworks Data.

And sure… billionaires like Bezos and Gates can make headlines at auction, but what about the rest of us?

Masterworks makes it possible to invest in legendary artworks by Banksy, Basquiat, Picasso, and more – without spending millions.

23 exits. Net annualized returns like 17.6%, 17.8%, and 21.5%. $1.2 billion invested.

Shares in new offerings can sell quickly but…

*Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd.

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Infotainment

A Shocking Connection: Tesla Tests the Forbidden Fruit of CarPlay

Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) infotainment system may soon play nice with Apple CarPlay, something drivers have begged for since the Model S hit the road.

Reports suggest Tesla is quietly testing the feature and could integrate it directly into its software stack.

If true, Tesla would join the list of automakers giving in to CarPlay’s charm instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with in-house systems.

When Apple Meets Autopilot

CarPlay lets drivers mirror their iPhone’s interface on a car’s display; that means your favorite navigation, music, and messaging apps come along for the ride.

Tesla has long resisted this, opting to build its own media apps and charging for premium connectivity.

But for tech-savvy drivers who live inside the Apple ecosystem, the lack of CarPlay has been a deal breaker. A fix could steer a fresh wave of buyers toward Tesla’s EVs.

Why Drivers Are Buzzing

The arrival of CarPlay would make Tesla’s dashboard feel more open, customizable, and modern.

You could stream Apple Music without extra fees or jump between Maps and Messages without clunky menus.

For many owners, that’s not just convenience; it’s the missing link between Tesla’s hardware and the digital world they already live in.

AI

Google Turns NotebookLM Into Your Always-On Research Sidekick

NotebookLM just picked up a major upgrade as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) rolls out a new Deep Research tool that behaves like a tireless digital researcher working in the background.

You ask a question, the system builds a research plan, crawls the web, and delivers a clean, source-grounded report that slots straight into your notebook.

You can keep adding files while the assistant digs for more answers, giving you a workflow that finally feels modern and uninterrupted.

Research Without the Rabbit Holes

Deep Research sits inside the source panel, where you can pick between two modes.

Fast Research is for quick lookups, while Deep Research is the full deep-dive package for layered topics.

You get organization, source tracking, and structured summaries without flipping between tabs.

Your work starts feeling less like browsing chaos and more like having an analyst focused on your exact project.

Your Files Just Got Smarter

NotebookLM now supports Google Sheets, Drive URLs, PDFs pulled directly from Drive, and Microsoft Word documents.

You can turn spreadsheets into summaries, load complex documents in a few clicks, and stitch everything together with NotebookLM’s existing multimedia tools.

Add this to the earlier Video and Audio Overview features, and you end up with an AI workspace that keeps expanding its reach while you stay in one place.

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Data Center

The Networking Dinosaur Learns New Tricks

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is pushing its Silicon One chips straight into the center of AI infrastructure, and the timing could not be better.

Hyperscalers have been begging for networking silicon that can handle cluster-sized AI traffic, and Cisco is finally shipping hardware built for that pressure.

Engineers are using Silicon One to build unified fabrics that keep GPUs talking at high speed.

The focus is on raw bandwidth, lower latency, and smarter routing that adjusts on the fly when traffic spikes. You can feel Cisco trying to reclaim space in the world of serious compute.

Optical Muscle for AI Superclusters

AI clusters drink bandwidth like water, and Cisco’s optics team is suddenly the star of the show.

The Acacia-powered optical gear is helping operators connect rows of accelerators into one giant compute organism.

Optics used to be background noise in networking, but AI flipped the script.

When your GPUs need nonstop data flow, the right optical engine becomes as important as the chips doing the math. Cisco is finally leaning into that reality.

Building the AI Datacenter Spine

Networking used to lag behind compute upgrades, but Cisco is stitching silicon, optics, and software into unified AI-centric architectures.

Operators want a stable backbone as models explode in size, and Cisco sees its opening.

The company is positioning itself as the vendor that keeps the AI firehose under control without forcing constant redesigns.

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Recent Tech Movers

Disney (NYSE: DIS)
Parks Print Cash, Box Office Shrugs
The House of Mouse turned in a mixed tape: flat quarterly revenue, softer Entertainment margins, but a banger year in Experiences (parks, cruises, toys) and a profitable streaming arm. 

Dividend’s going up and buybacks are back, yet the stock took a hit as investors obsessed over a lighter film slate.

Near-term tone is show me, medium-term engine remains real-world magic plus steadier DTC unit economics.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD)
“The Right Gamble,” Says Lisa Su
Shares popped after management leaned into an AI growth arc. There’s 35% CAGR aspirations over 3–5 years and a path to double-digit data-center AI share.

Translation: customers are still writing very large checks for compute. 

The risk is the multiple getting nosebleed if hyperscaler spend wobbles, but for now the market heard, demand is not imaginary.

StubHub (NYSE: STUB)
Beat, Big Charge, No Guide—And Down You Go
Revenue cleared the bar, but a chunky IPO-related SBC charge sunk the P&L and, more importantly, the CEO offered no current-quarter guidance. 

With ticket timing inherently lumpy (hi, tour cycles), the Street wanted a flashlight and got a shrug.

Long-term runway looks fine; short-term, this is a trade the volatility name until they get a few quarters of predictability.

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The Launcher That Wants a Seat at NASA’s Grown-Up Table

Firefly Aerospace (NASDAQ: FLY)

Why This Name Is Working

Second quarter as a public company, and Firefly just posted stronger-than-expected results, nearly 38% YoY revenue growth to ~$30.8M, and raised full-year guidance to $150–$158M.

The setup is straightforward: more government and civil-space work (including a ~$177M NASA contract) and a push into national-security payloads after buying SciTec.

The business model is evolving from prove we can launch to stack missions, expand services, and keep cadence.

Scorecard You Can Use

  • Beat + Raise: Cleanest signal in a noisy small-cap. Guidance walking up matters more than any single launch photo.

  • Customer Mix Improving: NASA and other U.S. government work are tangible, budgeted, and multi-year in nature. That steadies cash flow.

  • Platform, Not Just Rockets: Beyond launch, think lunar/spacecraft services and defense analytics via the SciTec deal—more levers than one engine bell.

Why the Tape Cares

  • Outsourcing Trend: NASA and the DoD are spreading contracts to multiple vendors to de-risk schedules. Every slot Firefly secures is one less coin-flip on funding.

  • Cadence > Hype: Revenue doubled sequentially, and the market loves when young space names swap slide decks for delivery notes.

  • Category Tailwind: Moon missions and responsive launch aren’t one-offs. If Firefly becomes a reliable second/third source, its addressable backlog widens.

What Could Spook It

  • Execution Risk: September’s ground-test incident was a reminder that space is hard. They’ve put corrective measures in place, but the leash is short.

  • Profitability Math: Net losses still large (IPO/FX/severance factors included). Burns must trend down as cadence trends up.

  • Small-Cap Gravity: Shares are up on the print, but still way off post-IPO highs. One slipped mission and the rerate can snap back.

What to Watch Next

  • Launch Cadence & Mission Mix: More flights, more non-launch revenue (lunar, payload services) = higher quality sales.

  • Contract Wins/Options Exercised: Especially any follow-on NASA awards or additional national-security task orders.

  • Gross Margin Direction: Hardware + services mix should start nudging margins up if the model is working.

  • Capex Discipline: Growth needs fuel, but the company can’t outrun its balance sheet.

Actionable Take

  • Builders: Starter position okay on the beat-and-raise, then add only against proof points (contract adds, successful missions, margin drift up). Treat it like an option on execution, sized accordingly.

  • Traders: Respect the post-print momentum, but use tight stops; small-cap space trades like biotech—headline-sensitive with big gaps.

Bottom Line: Firefly’s quarter showed real progress: better revenues, higher guidance, and a clearer path beyond just launch.

If they keep converting awards into cadence and broaden the services mix, the multiple can expand from distressed-space to emerging-operator.

Miss a step, and gravity still works. For now, the trend just got a little lighter than air.

Everything Else

  • 🏗️ Anthropic is going big on U.S. infra, planning massive AI data centers in Texas and New York to feed model demand.

  • 🚚 Autonomous freight gets a Wall Street on-ramp: Swedish hauler Einride is set to go public via a SPAC at ~$1.8B, betting long on driverless logistics.

  • 🎿 Uber keeps adding buttons to the super-app: the company rolled out a Skis + Share + Eats push so your winter weekend can go from lift ticket to takeout in a tap.

  • ✂️ Cost cuts hit the telco tower: Verizon plans to slash ~15,000 jobs as it reshapes for the AI era and fiber build-outs.

  • 🍎 Apple trimmed App Store commissions for mini-apps, a small change with big platform politics, especially in China.

That's our coverage for today; thanks for reading! Reply to this email with feedback or any tech stocks you want me to check out.

Best Regards,
—Noah Zelvis
Tech Stock Insider