A single catalyst is doing the sorting in the AI hardware trade today. SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) released its first quarterly report since its June 2026 IPO after the close on August 4, and although the top-line numbers beat expectations, investors focused on the eye-watering pace of AI capital spending.
On the same evening, SpaceX named NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) its exclusive AI chip supplier for its new Starmind orbital compute program, with Elon Musk calling NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin architecture the best available. That one storyline is powering today’s two headline ETF movers in opposite directions, while AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), which lost out to NVIDIA, trades lower.
Defiance Daily Target 2X Short SpaceX ETF (SPCQ)
Defiance Daily Target 2X Short SpaceX ETF (CBOE:SPCQ) is the standout of the session, up 21.03% intraday to $24.83. The fund seeks daily 2x inverse exposure to SpaceX common stock, so it rises when the underlying falls, and SPCX is doing exactly that. SPCX is down 8.24% at $115 this session on top of the 8.04% earnings-day slide, even though the company posted revenue of $7.81 billion against a $6.82 billion consensus and a much narrower-than-feared loss of $0.09 per share.
As noted earlier, the problem was underneath the beat. Q2 capital expenditures reached $18.37 billion, of which $15.83 billion went to AI compute infrastructure. The company also flagged a $25 billion inaugural investment-grade bond issuance and integration risk around the $60 billion Cursor deal expected to close in Q3. Starlink ARPU also drifted from $85 to $66 year over year as the subscriber base broadened.
SPCQ is a complex, higher-fee, leveraged inverse single-stock ETF with a 1.31% net expense ratio that resets its 2x inverse exposure every day. Over any multi-day window, compounding and volatility decay cause returns to diverge from a simple double of the inverse move. It is a short-term tactical instrument built for single-session trades.
GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NVDL)
GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NASDAQ:NVDL) is up 6.6% today to $34.87, amplifying a 3.12% intraday gain in NVDA to $218.56. The fund’s mandate is daily 2x long exposure to NVIDIA shares, achieved via swaps, and it also resets each session.
The pop is fundamentally about the Starmind announcement, but the setup was already constructive. NVIDIA’s most recent quarter delivered revenue of $81.61 billion with non-GAAP EPS of $1.87, and management guided to $91.0 billion for the current quarter. CEO Jensen Huang framed the environment as “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history”, and the SpaceX capex line, more than $15 billion in a single quarter directed at NVIDIA-anchored compute, is precisely the demand signal the bull case rests on. Polymarket priced a 0.967 probability of NVDA closing higher today.
Like SPCQ, NVDL is a complex, higher-fee leveraged single-stock ETF built on daily resets that matter materially over time. NVDL is up 15.1% over the trailing week and 15.91% over the trailing month, but only 9.3% over the past year, while NVDA itself is up 17.9% over that year. That badly trails two times the underlying, and it is the textbook decay pattern that compounding introduces once the holding period stretches past a session.
The Loser Side: AMD
Advanced Micro Devices is down 6.94% to $482.57 despite reporting record Q2 revenue of $11.54 billion, up 50.1% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $1.66. Data Center revenue more than doubled to $6.72 billion, and CEO Lisa Su described the quarter as delivering “record revenue and profitability as Data Center revenue more than doubled year-over-year.” Guidance for the current quarter is roughly $13 billion. Reddit captured the disconnect in real time, with a top r/stocks thread titled “AMD’s revenue climbs 50% and data center sales doubled, but the stock is down” gathering 229 upvotes overnight. Losing the Starmind socket to NVIDIA is the market’s answer.
The Structural Read
Same news, three payoffs. SpaceX’s willingness to spend more than $15 billion in a single quarter on AI compute confirmed the demand curve for accelerators but also spooked its own shareholders on dilution and integration risk. SPCQ converted that anxiety into a leveraged inverse payout on the day. NVDL amplified the incumbent’s win as SpaceX crowned NVIDIA the exclusive chip supplier. AMD’s record quarter got repriced against a lost design win. The leveraged single-stock wrappers make each of those bets sharper for a session and worse over a year, which is the trade-off the products are designed for.
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