Chart Advisor: There’s a sneakier way into the SpaceX IPO trade

Investopedia is partnering with All Star Charts on this newsletter.  The contents of this newsletter are for informational and educational purposes only

There’s a sneakier way into the SpaceX IPO trade

AST SpaceMobile is breaking out right before the SpaceX IPO. 

The only publicly traded competitor to Starlink is moving this morning, three weeks ahead of the listing that will force the market to decide whether the smaller company can survive.

ASTS is up over 18% to $125 and pushing through the upper-anchored VWAP of a pattern that has been tightening for weeks. 

The recent high near $130 is now within reach.

SpaceX is set to list on Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker SPCX. Reports point to a valuation between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO in history and put the company among the seven largest in the world on day one.

That kind of attention will pull the entire space ecosystem back into focus, but the most compelling opportunities in this trade often sit beneath the surface in smaller, higher-beta names. 

In emerging themes like space, the biggest percentage moves tend to come from smaller companies with strong narratives and improving price structures. The upside potential in those names can be astronomical.

AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS) fits the description. 

The company is building a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites designed to connect directly to standard, unmodified smartphones with no special hardware required. 

In April, the FCC granted it commercial authority for up to 248 satellites across the United States.

The deployment runs in partnership with AT&T, Verizon, and FirstNet. TELUS recently signed on to bring the service to Canada, and Alphabet sits as the fourth-largest shareholder. 

That makes ASTS the only publicly traded company in the world competing for the same direct-to-phone satellite market that Starlink is now scaling into.

From a chart perspective, the setup has been months in the making. Heading into this morning, ASTS had been tightening into a highly constructive pattern, coiling in a narrow range between two anchored VWAPs.

An anchored VWAP is a moving average with a fixed starting point on the chart, usually anchored to a major high, a major low, or a breakout. From that point forward, the line tracks the volume-weighted average price and gives traders a moving line of support or resistance that reflects where buyers and sellers have agreed to transact since the anchor.

In ASTS, the lower anchored VWAP had been acting as rising support across the consolidation, while the upper anchored VWAP had been acting as falling resistance just overhead. 

Technicians would call that a textbook pinch setup, and once price resolves out of the compression zone, the resulting move can often be sharp and explosive.

The catalyst behind today’s resolution is the SpaceX listing itself, and the market is just starting to reframe ASTS ahead of it.

Start with the bullish reframe: it’s the cheaper version of the same theme. 

With SpaceX commanding a $1.7 trillion price tag, ASTS’s market cap starts looking like the more accessible way to play direct-to-cell satellite service. 

A weekly close above the recent high near $130 would confirm the breakout.

The bearish path remains the risk. If today’s move fails and the stock loses the lower anchored VWAP back below, traders will start pricing ASTS as the smaller fish that cannot survive the contest. 

The next major support shelf comes back into play below.

We can’t be dogmatic about whether this morning’s move holds through the close, but the structure was already set up to break, and the SpaceX listing is the kind of catalyst that tends to force these resolutions through.

By the time the SpaceX IPO prices on June 11, the chart will have told us whether ASTS survives. 

Right now, it looks like it might.

For more coverage on this opportunity and others we’re covering, check out free daily letters at All-Star Charts.

—

Originally posted 26th May 2026