We have been living in space for almost two decades.
The first crew, Expedition 1 — an American and two Russians — lived on the International Space Station for 136 days in 2000 and 2001.
Since then, 236 people from 18 countries have been there … many more than once. One astronaut has lived on the space station for more than two years in total.
As time marches on, the number of us traveling to — and eventually living in — the cosmos will grow even faster.
The U.S. alone has spent more than $1 trillion (adjusted for inflation) on its NASA space operations.
Those expenditures have grown in 43 of the 60 years since NASA started, and 13 of the 18 years since 2000.
And the U.S. isn’t alone. Many other countries spend billions of dollars a year as well.
Today is a new era in space too. Billionaire pioneers like Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) are working to make space travel possible.
I believe galactic trips for non-astronauts will happen sooner than most of us expect.
If you are interested in profiting from space, read on…
All About Space
Two investing veterans just launched an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that’s all about space.
As more and more resources are allocated to the galaxy, this makes practical sense.
Bob Tull and Andrew Chanin are the cofounders of ProcureAM.
More than two decades ago, Tull helped launch the first ETFs with access to country-specific indexes.
Chanin is an innovator too. His company PureFunds is well known for working with the world’s first cybersecurity ETF. The current version of the fund has $1.6 billion in assets.
These guys know how to create ETFs that investors want to buy.
Tull and Chanin recently launched a new ETF. It’s the first fund to invest in the space industry, and it’s called the Procure Space ETF (NYSE: UFO).
It’s taking advantage of the fact that private industry is rapidly joining the governments that are spending money on space.
UFO has 31 holdings. Chanin says 80% of its names generate the bulk of their revenue from space operations.
The top three holdings are all satellite companies: Iridium Communications, Inmarsat and Viasat.
The fund has several defense companies with space operations as well. These include Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Harris, among others.
These names show that some of our defense budget is spent in the heavens too. In the 2019 budget, lawmakers gave the Pentagon $8.1 billion for investments in space systems.
As our presence there increases, more and more dollars (and rubles and other currencies) will be allocated to space in the coming years. As such, investing in this ETF is sensible.
However, UFO is a brand-new ETF. It just started trading on April 11.
Shares are up nearly 3% today. But I suggest you wait a few weeks to let the price stabilize.
It’s also a good idea to let it accumulate more assets under management. $50 million is a solid rule of thumb. This helps ensure it’s making its fund’s sponsor enough money.
You can find its current assets here.
The Highlight of the Group
For me, one of the holdings stood out from the others. Its stock chart and fundamentals look great.
You see, I like to track the activities of a particular kind of buyer.
The chart below is a great example of what I like to see:
The green and red symbols in the above chart represent the actions of corporate insiders. These are officers, directors and owners of more than 10% of the shares of a company.
The green symbols represent insiders who reached into their own pockets to buy their company’s stock. The red symbols represent sales.
You can see the stock in the above chart has a huge amount of recent insider activity. One of its insiders bought more than $11 million in shares since the end of May. Another bought $3 million.
The share price is well below its highs … but it’s making a comeback.
Since its December 24 bottom, the stock is up 40%. And it continues to surge higher.
As governments and billionaires put more money into space — and investors put more money in the UFO ETF — that will also help support shares.
The Best Place to Find out More About This Name
Unfortunately, I can’t give you the name of it because Mike Carr just recommended it in his Peak Velocity Trader service.
If you would like to learn more about it, I highly suggest you subscribe to Mike’s work.
His options analysis is top-notch. And his subscribers rave about his weekly updates. They are chock-full of information that will help investors of all levels.
Mike reached his conclusion to buy the stock using different parameters than me. But we both got to the same place.
To the moon and back,
Brian Christopher
Editor, Insider Profit Trader