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Okay, legitimate question: where did all the sellers go? I think they've left the building, at least metaphorically. And that's how you get this kind of incredible day where the Dow gains 97 points, close to record highs. The S&P rallied 1.79%, best day since April, setting records on both an intraday and closing basis. And the Nasdaq jumped 2.59%.
Still not quite at those early June records, but who knows when those will be taken out.
I go back to the same question: where did the sellers disappear to, allowing many stocks, but especially the data center and silver stocks, to gallop higher without much resistance at all? No supply. Well, do you know that ever since we found out that Leopold Ashenbrener's hedge fund, Situational Awareness, blew up last week, we've seen tech stocks flying all over the place.
Unleashed, unbound, roaring higher, catapulted by the lack of sellers of any size. They seem to be all gone, leaving little stock for sale in their wake, causing the buyers to take stocks up with their own buying, one after another. Listen, I used to be a hedge fund manager. I've been caught with my pants down more than once. I've seen stocks move in the wake of my failures. Millions of dollars of stock just sold out from underneath me because of margin calls. You can see my sad footprints everywhere.
But I want to tell you that this Leopold guy — I mean, captain of the Situational Awareness fund — he did this stuff maybe a million times bigger than I ever did. Even as his fund went to kingdom come, don't worry, he'll be back. They always come back. We're still living in his wake. It's his wake that's behind this magnificent rally, even as it seems inconceivable if you have never traded that it could possibly have had that kind of lasting impact. It does.
The stock market's about supply and demand. People can handle pretty much any amount of stock that trades, buy side, sell side. But now we've learned that when this hedge fund collapsed, this colossus, the positions that were for sale from Ashenbrener and his imitators were too big for these stocks to handle without being massacred.
The house of pain. They plummeted because of this man's leverage. They were smashed because he was forced to sell into a vortex, a miasma of other sell orders, much more than this stock market could handle at any one level. How come? Who let this happen?
Situational Awareness was allowed to borrow $4 for every $1 he had under management.
That alone is insane. Who the heck would give this guy, a 25-year-old rookie, that kind of power? How do you get that firepower? Of course, the brokers would. That's why. Because they make their biggest money lending on margin — no, not trading, but lending. So they gave him $4 for every dollar he had under management, helping to take his fund to $45 billion at its peak. A lot of borrowed money there.
To look at his position list is to look at the topology of this entire tech market. We know that he absolutely loved, loved, loved the data center. He adored the companies that built the data centers. This wild man bought hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Nebius, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, Arista — just crazy positions. He cherished the semis, buying them like a madman.
But as much as he loved the data centers, he hated the software stocks. He seemed to think that this whole cohort had to be destroyed by AI, so he shorted the hell out of them. Now here's the way things unraveled. Ashenbrener had a couple of great years and became a bit of a Pied Piper. Situational Awareness had a lot of investors who knew what he was up to and they wanted to own his stocks.
He had these 13Fs he had to file with the government each quarter, revealing his positions. And when you've got a hot hand like this guy had, there are always imitators, even if those positions are old by the time you see them. The brokers he used — oh, they probably bought his stocks. I'm sure they were probably doing like this: 'Yeah, go in the hall and say, listen, the big kahuna is buying some Nebius. Go buy some Nebius. Get ahead of him.' Or maybe after him.
The investors in his fund knew what he owned, too. They probably cherry-picked their favorites of his positions. We'll never know how many people were piggybacking off this guy when his fund reached $45 billion, but there were a ton of them. When Ashenbrener's big trade started going awry in June, all these imitators began to panic. Remember, these people don't know jack. They don't do their homework. They have no conviction. Do you think they're like, 'Hey, the kahuna is selling'? Uh-uh.
Of course, it took a lot to derail Situational Awareness. I mean, it was a freight train. Of course, it took higher oil, a huge inflation scare, much higher interest rates on the macro side. At the same time, a host of red-hot stocks went parabolic thanks to terrific earnings. One after another — memory stocks, semiconductors, capital equipment, data center builders — they all just kept going higher as a surprisingly large group of camp followers bought them with borrowed money.
Parabola. Parabola. What do I tell you? They always end in tears.
And in the end, Situational — well, you know what? It wasn't so much a topple as kind of a game of Jenga. We had a huge amount of supply hit the market at the same time: offerings from Google, SpaceX — yeah, they reported, fine — and ultimately SK Hynix, the Korean semiconductor company that decided to list here. In the end, we ran out of buying power.
Looking back, that SK Hynix deal was a deal too far, which he participated in, by the way, and that might have been the Jenga piece that only brought down this hedge fund. When the Jenga tower crashed, two things happened: the huge positions Ashenbrener bought on margin and the copycats who took similar positions — they all got wiped out. Being wiped out means that a huge amount of stock hit the market all at once.
The stocks had been unnaturally high; then, because of his selling, they went unnaturally low. At the same time, the stocks he was shorting in software started flying when ServiceNow reported a real good quarter. And unlike the last few times, it actually went higher. No one was leaning on it. That too caused an avalanche of buying.
Now looking back, you can see the footprints of the margin butchers who went to work slashing Ashenbrener because he couldn't fork up more money as collateral. Oh, they were everywhere in tech. An unbelievable conflict. Just when the tower Situational Awareness built tumbled, we hit earnings season. And it turns out that so many of the broken stocks that Asher likes are reporting amazing quarters. But the companies he hated are reporting terrific quarters too.
Spectacular rallies and amazing short squeezes abound all over the place. And the collapse of Situational Awareness — what we realized we had was a clearing event. It wiped out all of your fellow shareholders with weak hands. Once it ended, there were no more forced sellers. Many of the remaining large shareholders liked the stocks and bought more on weakness.
At this point, I think the big tech names are still too low, and maybe concerned about AMD's guidance. This very evening will give you another bite at the tech apple. The bounce back from Situational's demise is why we've been rebounding like crazy, and AMD will not derail that. Same thing on the software side, as we realize that these companies were being kept down by endless short selling, not by the fundamentals. They're exploding higher now.
Yes, Adobe's business has been truly weak. Workday is not so good. Maybe Salesforce down weaker. However, these stocks got way too cheap, and with the shorts running out of juice, well, they got nowhere to go but up.
This is why I say to Robert in New York, who called last night, that he could be really right buying into it. A classic wise-guy AI short by traders who think that ChatGPT or Grok or Claude can do your taxes. Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. Can you imagine being audited by the IRS and you blame Gemini? Hey, listen, Grok maybe do it. I'll stick with TurboTax.
What's amazing is that we're still seeing these short positions unwind. They were just so large, and now the stocks are coiled springs. In the end, I come here neither to praise nor to bury Situational Awareness. As I said, I'm sure the guy will be back. I mean, everybody loves a comeback story, and stock selection plus a little risk management would have probably led to a super year.
But Situational was so big at its peak, and there were so many copycats, that the Jenga pieces fell all over the place. Situational's remaining positions that Ashenbrener couldn't sell fell to a smart alpha called Citadel. I have no idea what Citadel did with them. Whatever overhang they might have had, though, from Citadel, that seems to have ended too.
The bottom line today is still one more day where there seems to be no overhang, no stock for sale of any size. So much of tech, freed of the forced selling, goes ever higher. We all owe Leopold Ashenbrener a gigantic ocean of thanks. This is his rally. Too bad he didn't get to enjoy it. Let's go to Dave in Illinois, please. Dave.
Dr. Cramer, how are you on this Palantir breakout day? That Palantir is a serious breakout. A lot of fun to listen to that conference call. Those guys do have game. No matter what you say, they are Shakespearean. They really are. I like them. What's up?
Sure do, Jim. This $35 billion Canadian company provides product and service solutions for hardware platforms, supply chains, and cloud connectivity. 18 of the 19 analysts following Celestica, Inc. call it a buy or strong buy. You called them a long-term buy in the robust AI buildout. It's down 20% from its 52-week high. Jim, your thoughts on CLS?
Dave is a wise man to bring me this. Now look, here's what I do: I read the Celestica conference call every single time. They are incredible at what they do. I think it is a buy. I suggest that people say, 'You know what? It's up 29. It's probably going to be too much.' I say, 'Buy some and then hope it comes down.' Now, we're going to go to Keith in Pennsylvania. Keith.
Mr. Cramer, how you doing?
I am good, Keith. How are you doing?
I'm doing good. But I need you to please educate me on something.
On your way. What's going on?
A few weeks ago, GE Vernova reported earnings and missed, and you stated that their order book was full and people simply weren't pricing in gigawatts. Could you please teach me how you value gigawatts in the future?
Absolutely. No, Keith, they did not miss. They had a terrific quarter, but the stock is very — it's expensive. They hit it on a wrong day. I liked everything they had to say. I thought Scott Strazik did a good job. But what he was saying is, listen, we are putting on more. We are putting on more machines so we can generate more gigawatt power.
Remember, what they do is they turn whatever fuel source — typically natural gas — into electrons, and then that's what they turn into energy. And they are able to turn only so many machines into energy, and so much natural gas and energy. It takes a long time to make the machines. So what I think people feel is, you know what, they're not moving fast enough. But I think they really are. I think it's a terrific situation, and I think the stock can go higher. It was and is a rich stock, though, right?
Tech has finally been freed from its forced selling, and that's why we're seeing this levitation on Mad Money tonight. Voyager Technology is shooting for the moon to power the new space economy. I'm finding out more about the company with the CEO. Then, what's in the pipeline for drug banker Merck, with the stock acting great? I'm going to go one-on-one with the top brass after earnings. And Pinterest reported earnings after the bell. I'm getting the latest on the quarter and all the consumer trends. So stay with Cramer.
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We look at this phenomenal run in Voyager Technologies, the space and defense company that makes key components for satellites, missiles, and spacecraft. It's been racking up government contracts left and right. Last night, Voyager reported a very strong quarter with revenue up 51% just versus the previous three months, a narrower-than-expected loss, and the backlog jumping 22% sequentially. That's versus last quarter, not last year.
Demand is building faster than they can convert it into revenue. High-quality problem. They also raised their full-year revenue forecast pretty substantially. Some of that's thanks to the recent acquisition of Astrobotic. It's a space robotics play, and some of it's the core business. The stock jumped 14% yesterday even before the quarter, and then rallied another 19.6% today in response to these results, although it's still down roughly 55% from its post-IPO highs last summer.
So maybe I haven't missed as much as you might think. Should it keep running? Let's check in with Dylan Taylor. He's the co-founder and chairman and CEO of Voyager Technologies to find out. Mr. Taylor, welcome to Mad Money.
Thank you, Jim. Great to be with you.
Okay, so I'm going to tell you — usually, when someone I've not seen, I look at the company and I think, is it really possible that you could be at the intersection of everything people care about — defense technology, national security, the space economy? You put it all together. Tell us about your company, because particularly for younger people — I'm going to say that because you're still losing some money, but I get that — how did you put this whole recipe together? Because it's what people want, and it's where the puck is going.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate the question. So we're going to turn seven years old as a company in about two weeks. And the original thesis for the company was exactly this: that at the intersection of national security, defense, and space, a company like Voyager needed to exist. Because at the top of the heap you had the primes — highly capable, but maybe not particularly innovative, maybe a bit slow-moving. And at the bottom you had highly innovative entrepreneurial companies that weren't necessarily going to scale or couldn't enter and access the public markets.
So the thought was, can you build a purpose-built operating platform, all at Danaher or Haeco or one of these high-quality companies, that's at the intersection of these things that are really important? And we're a mission-driven company, Jim, because this is important not only for the U.S. but for the Western world, because we're in a big race.
Not just to the moon. No, I know. I mean, I went through the Palantir call multiple times last night, and it's very clear that this is existential for our country. Maybe kind of like when I was a little boy and I knew we had to get on the moon, or we couldn't let the Russians win — which was true. We couldn't, because it turned out to be more than just symbolic. It really was a fight that we had to win.
Now, let's do some defense first, because Golden Dome — a lot of people say, 'Well, we have Golden Dome.' Well, we know that Israel's got some gold on them. Where are we in this incredibly important project, given the fact that some countries can launch missiles further and further and further, and we should be worried?
Yeah. So think of Golden Dome as a moniker, okay? And think of it as a defense shield with layers, almost like layers of an onion. So obviously, you're not going to have a hypersonic missile interceptor for drone activity, and vice versa, but you need an architecture that addresses all the threats.
So at the very top of the heap is a program we're on, Next Generation Interceptor, which is intercepting hypersonic missiles from adversaries, typically nuclear-tipped. Mission critical. If you miss the missile, you lose a city. So that's kind of the highest standard. Even sitting above that, a new part of Golden Dome are space-based interceptors. So this is intercepting threats that generate or emanate from space and then trying to eliminate those threats.
So there are lots of different programs of record, all being worked, all addressing different threats, depending on what the stratosphere might be, or whether it's coming from space, or whether it's something like a drone, like we see in Iran.
All right. Now it sounds like we're definitely ready for that. Now, Astrobotic acquisition — the moon. We're going back to the moon. People don't even know we're going back to the moon. Tell us what's going to happen.
Yeah. So there's going to be several lunar landing attempts with rovers. So, for example, we actually have a mission roughly December called the Griffin mission that'll be part of Moonbase 2, and on that lander there'll be a rover, so demonstrating mobility. And ultimately, what we want to do — we, the royal we, the U.S. and allies — is build infrastructure on the moon: power, propulsion, mobility, to ultimately be able to live and work on the moon. And think of it almost like the eighth continent, Jim. That's the way I like to think about the moon.
The eighth continent. Because you know there's...
Yeah. Well, I mean, I tell you, people say, how big can this lunar economy be? Well, I say, well, what was the economy for a new continent when it was opened up? I think it's unlimited, truly.
No, you're right. I mean, for us it was like it was Tang.
We discovered Tang. All right. Now, how about Star Lab? Another — I mean, I can't believe where you are. You should be so excited to come to work every morning.
I am. I am. Star Lab — Airbus, Mitsubishi, great partners.
So the International Space Station — humans have been up there for 25-plus years. Best things probably humans have ever built, Jim, honestly. But it's a — I think so, because not only for international diplomacy, but it's a complicated machine, and I think it's an expression of what humanity, you know, could be possible for, right? However, it's aging, and so the intention is to replace that, instead of a government-owned station, with commercial space stations.
So our effort, as you mentioned, is Star Lab. Palantir, Airbus, Mitsubishi, and others are part of that group.
Great partners. And we're the controlling shareholder of that. And that'll be — we won phase one with NASA. This will be an effort for phase two, which should be selected later this year, early next year.
Okay. So people are going to say, well, listen, he does satellites, whatever. Where is he with space? Where is he with SpaceX? I mean, you know, and I say, look, there's a lot of companies. It doesn't have to be with SpaceX, but you're obviously an observer of them. Something to do with them.
Yeah. I mean, they're a partner, really. I mean, they're launching our space station. We were one of...
So they are — there's only a couple that do it, right?
They have to. You know, you need them or one or two others. I mean, Blue Origin, obviously.
And our space station is so large that we need that heavy-lift rocket capability. So I think we're one of their first commercial customers.
So they're great partners. We love working with SpaceX, and they've done a lot for the industry. I think Starship is a game-changer for the industry.
