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Hey, If you turn on the financial news right now, they will tell you everything is fine. The market is pushing new highs, and the talking heads are celebrating. But if you look at the actual data, something is deeply broken. While the market rips higher, consumer sentiment is sitting at historic lows. Everyday Americans feel worse about the economy than they did during the 2008 financial crisis. At the same time, the VIX (the market's fear gauge) remains stubbornly elevated, and institutional put options are costing significantly more than calls. The smart money is hedging against a massive drop. They know that with ongoing tariff uncertainty, geopolitical tension, and stretched valuations, holding stocks overnight right now is essentially gambling. That is why I refuse to do it. Instead, I use a specific strategy that allows me to extract capital from the market without exposing myself to overnight gap-downs. I call it the "Opening Bell Breakout." I look for one specific pattern that triggers right at the 9:30 AM open. I take the trade, ride the morning institutional volume, and I am completely in cash by 10:00 AM. If the market crashes at 2:00 PM, I do not care. If futures tank overnight, I sleep perfectly fine. I recently used this exact 30-minute window to capture a 113% gain on GOOGL and a 240% gain on META. Because of the massive divergence in the market right now, I have decided to release my personal playbook on exactly how this works.
Click Here to Download the FREE Opening Bell Breakouts Guide Inside, you will see the exact 15-minute window I trade, and how you can use weekly options to trade stocks like TSLA and META with as little as $75 in risk capital. Grab it before the volatility spikes again. Thomas Wood Pro Trader, Base Camp Trading Today’s editorial pick for you Intuitive Machines’ $1.8 Billion Backlog Is Building A Different CompanyPosted On Aug 17, 2026 by Grayson Cavern 
Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) just delivered the kind of quarter that makes the -$0.29 adjusted EPS headline feel almost deliberately incomplete, because revenue surged to a record $206.2 million, up 310% year over year, while the company continued adding major contracts across the space business. Table of ContentsThe earnings miss is real, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but Intuitive Machines is accumulating work at a pace that could fundamentally change the scale of the business, with Q2 bringing $920 million in new awards and another $300 million already awarded in Q3. That is where this earnings report starts to get a lot more consequential than the quarterly EPS number, because the company is no longer relying on one lunar mission or one type of customer to carry the story; something much broader is taking shape in the order book, and the numbers are beginning to show it. This is why I want to start with where that demand is coming from, why national-security work suddenly accounts for 30% of Q2 revenue, and whether the $1.8 billion backlog can turn LUNR’s spectacular revenue growth into a business that eventually produces cash rather than continually consuming it. The Moon Is No Longer Carrying LUNR’s GrowthThe lunar missions still get most of the attention, but they are no longer doing all the heavy lifting for Intuitive Machines, and that shift is becoming difficult to ignore now that national-security work jumped from 3% of revenue a year ago to 30% in QAMDT At the same time, Intuitive Machines picked up a $600 million-plus commercial GEO satellite contract, another NASA CLPS award and two prime contracts tied to lunar reconnaissance, while its national-security business added an 18-spacecraft award under the AMDT3 program. That is a very different company from the one investors were primarily betting on through its lunar landers. The Moon is still part of the story, but now there are satellites, communications, mission operations, ground infrastructure and defense programs sitting alongside it. And the order book is starting to look the part – backlog reached $1.76 billion at the end of Q2, compared with just $213.1 million at the end of 2025, after the company booked $1.34 billion in new awards during the first half. That changes the risk-reward conversation around LUNR. A bigger and more diversified backlog gives the company considerably more room to grow, but it also raises the bar for execution – and that is where the financials become much more important. The Backlog Is OutGrowing Cash GenerationThere is one part of Intuitive Machines’ numbers that keeps the bullish case from becoming too easy: the company is winning work much faster than it is converting that work into cash. LUNR finished Q2 with $367 million in cash, but operating cash flow was negative $59.8 million for the quarter and negative $111.9 million through the first six months of 2026. That is not fatal for a company building spacecraft, communications infrastructure and other capital-intensive systems, but it does put a limit on how aggressively I would price in that $1.76 billion backlog. That puts LUNR in an interesting part of the space race. Rocket Lab? (NYSE: RKT) has been building a vertically integrated space business around launch, spacecraft and satellite systems, while AST SpaceMobile? (NASDAQ: ASTS) is building a satellite network designed to deliver connectivity directly to phones. Intuitive Machines is taking its own route, combining spacecraft manufacturing, lunar infrastructure, communications, ground stations and national-security work into one increasingly broad platform. But investors are ultimately asking how much capital has to go into the business before all that contracted demand becomes durable economics? Because while backlog gives it visibility, only cash conversion will determine how much of that visibility belongs to shareholders. LUNR’s $19.34 Test Could Decide What Comes NextThe stock has already done some of the work for the bulls, climbing from the mid-$14 area earlier this month to $19.16, while reclaiming both its 20-day moving average at $14.72 and 50-day at $18.29. The problem is that LUNR is now sitting almost directly beneath its 200-day moving average at $19.34, which has become the first serious technical hurdle. I wouldn’t call this a breakout yet. A clean move through $19.34, followed by a hold above it, would give the recent recovery more credibility; failure here would leave LUNR trapped beneath a level it has struggled to reclaim. The setup is still constructive, though, particularly because the stock is attempting to make that move while the fundamental story is expanding rather than deteriorating. If the $1.8 billion backlog keeps converting into revenue and the stock can finally reclaim the 200-day, the market may have to start valuing LUNR as something much bigger than a lunar-lander trade. 
More Than A Moonshot, But…I wouldn’t chase LUNR blindly after the recent run, not with the stock sitting at the 200-day moving average and cash generation still lagging the pace of its expansion. But the $1.76 billion backlog, $920 million of Q2 awards and rapidly expanding national-security business give the bulls something far more substantial than another lunar-landing headline. For me, that puts LUNR in the moderate BUY region. The execution risk is real, but so is the transformation underway – and $19.34 is the level I’d want to see the stock conquer next. This is a PAID ADVERTISEMENT provided to the subscribers of StockEarnings Free Newsletter. Although we have sent you this email, StockEarnings does not specifically endorse this product nor is it responsible for the content of this advertisement. Furthermore, we make no guarantee or warranty about what is advertised above. Your privacy is very important to us, if you wish to be excluded from future notices, do not reply to this message. Instead, please click Unsubscribe. StockEarnings, Inc |
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