(This is an upgraded version of its original 24 hours ago, due to more data on SpaceX options and valuation-related news from its rivals)This is Episode 1 of my new weekly, You Gotta Be Brains, which is a wrap-up of any noteworthy moves and/or news in stocks of interest in the past week. I highly recommend reading this because everyone is a genius in hindsight (especially me :)You Should’ve Bought SpaceX the Day After Q2 ResultsAfter one of the more vitriolic reviews I’ve written on the quarterly results of an Elon Musk company (here), I bought a microscopic position in SpaceX after publishing it, because I’m a degenerate trader. But I’m up by 14% in 2 days (and decided to have a steak for dinner for the first time in months). Here’s the reasoning: When CNN starts mimicking CNBC, do the opposite: Everyone & their brothers Bob were screaming from their rooftops about how “insiders” or “early investors” in SpaceX would be “unlocked early sellers” 2 days after SpaceX’s Q2 results on August 4th (and they all implied 912 million shares, or “20% of shares outstanding”, could be dumped). My risk taken (genius in hindsight): I saw that slightly more than 86 million shares bought in the SpaceX IPO had already traded hands by Day 2 after the IPO, so at least the IPO bagholders could already be washed out (less selling, bigger short squeeze). I had waited for a short squeeze from the borrow recall by the early investors who had lent out their shares before they could sell on August 6th, but this never materialized. There was a low-volume 9% spike in SpaceX the day that earnings were scheduled to be released, but I didn’t consider this the kind of squeeze that we should’ve seen from a substantial borrow recall. By Aug 5th, SpaceX was oversold: After 23 down days since its June 12th listing versus only 14 for the Nasdaq 100, I couldn’t see how SpaceX could go down too much further (it had fallen by 43% in 34 trading days since its all-time high of $202, which it hit on Day 2 since its IPO). It was also well-flagged that SpaceX, with only 5% of its total shares in circulation, I had 33% of its float shorted, so a short squeeze was in order. My risk taken (genius in hindsight): I had a hunch that Musk and the Vested Interests were saving their call options trading power for exactly the day of early investors’ lock-up (Aug 6th), and many others had shorted ahead of believing what the financial media had reported incessantly. The SpaceX options market: I didn’t have time to check the options market for SpaceX since it opened on June 16th (2 days after the IPO), but had been surprised to see that Musk and the Vested Interests hadn’t used their usual tricks to at least “paint the chart” to make it look attactive to buyers via juicing SpaceX via heavy call buying, the way they’d done so masterfully with Tesla, especially in 2024 and 2025. My risk taken (genius in hindsight): Upon checking the options trading in SpaceX after yesterday’s market close, it seems like the Vested Interests had saved their call-buying ammo for when it would count the most: after the early investors’ lock-up ended on August 6th. While I was amazed to see SpaceX drop so much in the early days after its IPO, without any help to support the chart the way the Vested Interests did with Tesla so often, Figure 1 below indicates they may have saved all they had for when early investors could start selling from August 6th: the 2 previous peaks in SpaceX call options trading were on June 18th (1.03 million contracts traded), and August 5th (1.02 million in volume), the day SpaceX plunged by 13% after reporting a weak Q2 and Musk revealing 10x higher capex than expected. It seems like the Vested Interests flaunted their return to the market on Friday, as SpaceX call options volumes soared to 1.76 million contracts, or 70.5% higher than the previous record. SpaceX put-call ratio and open interest: Some analysts use the put-call ratio as a benchmark for market timing, but I find no use for it, and feel it’s worth showing how worthless it is for SpaceX so far: if you thought that the high put-call ratio of 1.3x on July 13th was a potential buy signal, you would’ve lost 70% through August 5th when it hit $108 after its bad Q2 earnings call. What is noteworthy is that the open interest in puts versus calls for SpaceX has averaged only 1.05x since its options started trading on June 16th, while Tesla’s is 1.4x during the same period. The put-call ratio in open interest as of Friday was 0.74x for Tesla and 0.90x for SpaceX. Waiting for a higher RSI: Since I’m not an expert at technical analysis, my key indicators for market timing are the RSI, MACD, and Bollinger Bands, in that order. I prefer shorting or selling a stock at a 70+ RSI, although I get so excited at times that I’ll begin scaling in at over 50. As of Friday, SpaceX’s 14-day RSI is at 54.7, so I’m preparing to exit soon and put on a short position, as it’s insanely overvalued on the AI theme (where it has no edge), which is increasingly getting sold off. Figure 1: Here’s the Chart That Proves I’m a GeniusSource: Bloomberg. Figure 2: SpaceX Share Price vs Its Put-Call RatioSource: Bloomberg. SpaceX Should be Worth $52 Through 2028 at Best