$ASTS: Pulse Check by Anp🅰️nman

capacity that you're trying to sell has to go to short-term contracts to anybody who's buying. Right? And so while pricing may be good today, it may not be as good tomorrow. Like, let's say, if the AI bubble popped or some of the fun over the weekend about deep seek apparently being able to or being at the same level of power as some of these other AI models being as effective, but then doing it a much cheaper price. That's where you get these concerns, maybe spot pricing creators like what people are paying for compute. And so for SpaceX, they right now everything's going well and things are moving up into the right. But then if there is a change in the market, that can unwind pretty quickly. So I think you've got to be cognizant of that and careful. Right? And today what's exacerbating it, of course, is all the Neo clouds are off. So SpaceX, which have asked majority of their future earnings are coming from these leasing deals for Neo cloud companies. That is going to come under some level pressure. Then you add on top of that. There was a lock up expiry today where I think 1.3 billion shares became fairly tradable. So you're seeing a big pull back in SpaceX and then I talked with others about this dynamic where we seem to get the wrong end of any pull back in sector. So when the MNOs are under pressure, we pull back with them and then when space talks, we're pressure, we pull back with them. We don't we don't go up with either sector. So that's been a pretty frustrating dynamic recently. But yeah, I think it's frustrating and this is just kind of the environment that we're in. Right? We've had this drawdown since May, which has been absolutely brutal. We've had some rallies, but they've been sold down. But if you take a look at any number of sectors, like if you look at Corrieve or if you look at Ocklow or some of these other names, it's all pretty much the same chart. Everything has been a one way train downwards. And so I would point out that if you've made it this far and you are still in the game, meaning that you did not choose to over margin or over, you know, be fully in options and you're kind of biting your time and you're just in stock. Then congratulations. You have made it this far. Right? And that's probably cold comfort because obviously everybody is down quite a bit. I mean, I'm down to peak to trough. But I think it's important to remember like the peak that we had in May, perhaps that was a femoral. It was not reality, where the macro was very positive at that time. People saw nothing but positive things. I was in that camp too. I remember in May, ahead of the blue static fire, I had some positions on and I had taken them off in AST. Of course, in retrospect, and I'll talk a bit about it, I should have taken my entire position off. That's how everyone thinks about it and beats themselves up. But that peak, that coincided with, of course, like Blue Origin, the pad blowing up and then this big pullback in all risk. And of course, the SpaceX IPO, I think also not being a catalyst, but being a usurper of capital and liquidity. But it's been tough. You've made it this far. And with the stock price going down and the rest of the sector is going down, the fud that percolating your head, it goes stronger and stronger. Because as Tud has said, nothing drives sentiment quite like price, which is absolutely true. Just to give people an idea, there was a friend of mine who reached out to me this morning who used to be in the hedge fund industry. So pretty sophisticated guy, he's no longer managing money anymore. But he's personally invested in AST and saw that the stock was down this morning, I think like 3 to 4% and was like, man, there must be something bad coming. And I had to remind him, which I remind people, it seems like every day, no, I think it's just the market. If you look at where all the space names were trading pre-market, they were all down, 3, 4, 5%. So I had to walk them off the ledge and was like, well, let's take a step back and think about this. So maybe something bad is coming. I know people, by the way, that people's concerns are valid. And as I've talked about before in this type of environment, any concerns or issues become more acute because when the stock price moves lower, people then question, am I getting something wrong or what am I missing? And one of the common responses that I say to those people is like, well, I guess rocket lab and planet labs and black sky and some of these other companies, they must all be waiting for Bluebirds 14 to 16 ship because they're all down to. And so I think it's important to take a step back and put some context into it. But there's been concerns about the company's not communicating and then it's like, well, maybe there's something bad around the corner. Well, what happened this week? So the company had a PR on the 20th. Sorry, yeah, was it the 20th? Let me just take a look here. So the company had a PR on the 19th and talked about advancing, you know, cellular broadband in Europe in collaboration with the European M&O's, right? And so you'd have to ask yourself, is there something negative coming out where they would then, you know, prior to the negative thing, they're going to put this PR on the 19th. And then on the 20th, they put out a PR saying that they are now committing to deploying initial service by year end in a few key markets, which are five markets, right? And so when I pointed that out to my friend, he was like, oh, yeah, you know what, you're right. But this is like, this is the emotional part of investing where, look, if you get ground down to a nub and you're having a tough time, you will, you will look for reasons in human's nature. Sorry, you will look for reasons as to why you're wrong. You might try to beat yourself up. You will maybe direct that at management at a company. It's like, you guys did this to me. Why didn't you do whatever you were going to do faster or you committed to? But in reality, at this point, in this market environment, it really, it kind of doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Unless of course, a company, you know, finds a cure for cancer or it sells itself or whatever it is, right? But, you know, I think, for example, if we were able to have gotten, if we weren't as delayed on the launch of a few satellites, and let's say we had, you know, 20 in orbit right now, would that, would the stock be training at 42? 43? Yeah, maybe. But would it have stopped this downward pressure? No, because this is, this is absolutely macro driven, right? And so nobody has spared every stock that's been sold off. I pointed to Planet Labs, which, you know, it seems like, at least to me, as someone, an outside observer who on the periphery has looked at that company and kind of followed it. Excuse me. I think that company peaked at the what? 50, let me look care, 51, 76. It's not $13, right? And from what I can tell, they've announced earnings, they've been positive, they've like raised, you know, raised their guidance as well. And stock has followed the same exact pattern. I mean, it's been ground down to 13 bucks, right? They even, I think Google actually bought a few more shares in Planet Labs and then they obviously are doing the pilot for Orbital AI. But that has not spared them, right? The company is down materially. Maybe it's at the same level or might be worse than AST. Let me just take a quick look. So it is down, oh, so didn't do that right? It's down 75%. So that's pretty rough. And, you know, I, I posted that chart and then there were some people who responded who were lambasting management for not, you know, it's the tits, the common refrain, not communicating enough, didn't do this, didn't do that, but it's like, hey, you know what? It's the market guys. Like that company seems to have executed, okay? And it doesn't, it didn't matter. And so I think, you know, that there's, there's a certain aspect where, as I've talked about this before, and this is true for institutional investors to when you're in this type environment, unless you're, let's say you're running a long short book and your hedge, hedge meaning you're short other names. And by the way, like that's not a, that's not, that doesn't guarantee success or that you're going to survive because, you know, you can be long, long certain names, short certain names and be hedged. And hopefully you're, you're extracting alpha, not, not actually when you have a book, you're just exposed to beta and maybe your January return to losing money. But having a long short book also can work against you too. I can work in a very horrible way, right? Like you, your lungs can go against you and your shorts can go against you, which is why, you know, if you look back and certain periods of time over the years, when we talk about hedge funds degrosing, you know, if a hedge fund is managing, you know, a billion dollars and they're long, one and a half billion dollars of securities and maybe they're short of billion dollars, sometimes you'll see in the market where popular hedge fund names are down and then the popular shorts that that they have on are up. And that's like typically when you see degrosing happening where it's like, you know what? You need to shut your book down and you need to sell your lungs and cover your shorts. And so sometimes you'll see these weird moves. And that's when you know like somebody is blown up, right? Where it's like the hedge hedge fund favorite names are up, or sorry, down and the ones that they hate are up. So it's not, you know, when running a hedge book, you know, you're there's always other risks involved, right? And this is why like, it is tough to be a hedge fund. Oftentimes you'll see people on Twitter saying, oh, this hedge fund manager, they didn't they didn't outperform the market. Well, hedge funds are not supposed to outperform the market. They're actually supposed to deliver more from a risk adjusted perspective. They're supposed to deliver high sharp, like they're supposed to actually deliver alpha versus just writing beta, right? Meaning just, you know, I'm going to put a bet down and just write with market. It's like, if you're truly generating alpha, the market, you know, in an up market, if it's up 20%, you might generate 12 or 13%, and a pension who's happy, you know, they got to pay out money to retirees. They are probably happy with that type of return. And then in down markets, if the market is down 30%, if a hedge fund is doing its job, you know, in a perfect world, it might be up 3% of that market, or it could be down just 10%, right? So I think I just went off and tangered there, but I think, you know, when when Fin Twit goes out and says, hey, this hedge fund underperform the market, well, that's not their job. They're not supposed to outperform the market. If you want to outperform the market, you should go by a mutual fund. That's long only, right? But for hedge funds, they're actually looking to the deliver superior risk adjusted returns. And that means in terms of a gross number, it may not be as high, but in volatile periods up or down, they should outperform. They should deliver positive results, right? Over the long run. But anyway, let's go back to the psychology. So there was a friend, another friend I was talking to, and this guy was in, he had a bunch of gratt. And by the way, I have these feelings too. I will, I have a gratt. I'll beat myself up. When I was in the hedge fund industry, and the worst was like 2008. Oh my god, I beat myself up so bad. But it was an ongoing thing. It's like over the years of my career, you always think you're an idiot, and you could have done things differently. There was someone who was saying, well, I wish I had sold everything in May. Let's theoretically think about that. If you had sold the top, let's say you sold all your shares in a tax account at 130, what would you have done? People would have, if they were smart, they would have set aside money for their taxes and put that locked that away. I'm not going to ever touch that because that's the bill that I owe. Then maybe they would have sat in cash, right? Call the day right off into the sunset, which is a hard thing to do. But most people, if you had truly sold all your position, then you saw the stock go down to, let's give ourselves some room. It went down to 100. You might have been tempted and say, I'm going to buy some back because I sold it at 130. I'm going to buy some back. Then as the stock moved lower, you might have continued to add at 90, 80, 70, 60. If you liked it at 130, you're going to love it at 40. People probably would have added back. If you're being honest with yourself, would you have kept that money that you had sold at the top? Would you have also invested it? Oftentimes, when I think about people's psychology, they probably would have reinvested that money, because it's like, hey, I've got time for the year end. This seems like a really good value. I'll trade out of it or whatever. Most likely, people would be reinvested. They would have averaged down. They would have captured some spread, meaning they sold at 130 and maybe their average price of buying back in over time to be optimistic is maybe 80 or something like that. But now, they've taken some level of losses and so they're down. Then they're looking at a massive tax bill. Whether it was getting back in today's T or maybe at the time in May, you're like,