Rocket Lab enters the final trading day of May with a new story emerging: the executives are selling into strength, short covering has paused, and options traders are the most defensive they have been in weeks.
The insider activity is the standout this week. CFO Adam Spice and COO Frank Klein both sold shares on May 26, together offloading roughly $6.9 million worth of stock at prices between $139 and $143. The General Counsel followed a day later, selling a further $10.2 million across two transactions at up to $150. That puts total insider selling in the past two days alone above $17 million. The 90-day net figure is a positive $43.5 million, meaning these are sales into a powerful rally rather than a retreat — but the clustering of C-suite disposals near the recent highs is worth flagging. Peter Beck, the founder and CEO, appears separately in the institutional register with a reported addition of 5 million shares as of May 26, though the nature of that transaction warrants scrutiny alongside the concurrent C-suite selling.
Short covering, which drove the bulk of the narrative over the past three weeks, has lost momentum. Short interest ticked back up to 5.9% of the free float as of May 28, reversing back toward the levels seen before last week's note, after a brief dip to a five-week low. The ORTEX short score has edged to 39.1 — essentially flat — suggesting the directional conviction in the covering trade is no longer one-sided. Borrow remains extraordinarily cheap at 0.41%, and availability is a very wide 1,388%, so there is no mechanical squeeze pressure. The shorts still here are making a deliberate choice to stay, not being forced out by tight supply.
Options positioning has shifted more cautious than at any point in recent weeks. The put/call ratio has climbed to 0.84, running above its 20-day average of 0.79 by roughly 1.5 standard deviations and approaching its 52-week high of 0.85. That is the highest demand for downside protection since May 14. The move has come in the same window as the stock's 3% pullback on Friday — from near $150 intraday to a close at $143.48 — and may reflect some participants hedging after the 83% one-month run. LUNR and VOYG, the two most correlated peers, fell 4% and 4.3% on the day respectively, suggesting sector-wide selling pressure rather than a company-specific move.
The Street angle is complicated. Analyst price targets cited in recent notes sat around $105, a level the stock has now blown well past — those targets appear stale relative to the current $143 print and should be treated with caution. Factor scores tell a cleaner story: EPS surprise ranks in the 92nd percentile, reflecting a consistent pattern of beating estimates, while the short score rank of 33 confirms the positioning is not extreme by historical standards. The EV/EBITDA multiple is a striking 5,738x on trailing figures, and price-to-book has expanded to 48x — up nearly 19 points over the past month — numbers that reflect the market pricing in a very long growth runway rather than current earnings power.
The next confirmed earnings event is August 6. Between now and then, what to watch is whether the insider selling at current levels is absorbed by the ongoing institutional accumulation — BlackRock added nearly 5 million shares in its most recent reported period — or whether the C-suite distribution signals a near-term ceiling that options traders are already beginning to price.
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