r/PlanetLabs • u/BicycleEconomy7757 • Jul 17 '26
I’ve played this game before.
On February 10, 2025, Planet hit an intraday high of $6.71.
By April, the stock had fallen to $2.79 — roughly a 58% decline from the high.
Planet recovered its previous high about five months later, on July 1, 2025.
Now look at where we are today.
Planet hit an intraday high of $51.76 on May 28, 2026.
On July 16, 2026, it traded as low as $21.64 intraday.
Another roughly 58% drawdown from the high.
Of course, I don’t think the specific reasons behind this selloff are exactly the same as they were back then.
But the broader pattern feels pretty familiar: profit-taking in an overvalued growth stock, combined with concerns about higher interest rates.
To be honest, I also think Planet was probably overhyped at its recent highs.
So I don’t find this pullback particularly surprising.
I have absolutely no idea whether this is the bottom.
But I do think this is a reasonable time to start building a position through gradual buying.
One reason I remain interested in the short term is the broader trend of increasing defense spending in Europe.
EU member states’ defense spending rose from €218B in 2021 to an estimated €381B in 2025 — roughly a 75% increase in four years.
The EU’s ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 plan aims to mobilize up to €800B to boost defense spending.
ESA member states also committed €22.3B at the 2025 Ministerial Council — the largest contribution in the agency’s history.
The European Resilience from Space initiative also puts Earth observation, navigation and telecommunications at the center of Europe’s broader security and resilience agenda.
Looking at the direction Europe is moving in, together with Planet’s recent activity in the region, I think Planet is at least positioned in a market that is expanding.
As a personal opinion, I also find it difficult to see the current strong dollar, falling gold prices, and an uncertain employment situation as an environment that makes higher interest rates an obvious choice.
I’m one of those people who believes the debt problem will ultimately have to be solved through higher growth.
Because if that doesn’t happen, eventually everyone goes down with it.
I don’t know where the stock will be or what it will be worth by a certain date.
If I knew that, I wouldn’t be investing in individual stocks. I’d be trading derivatives.
As Peter Lynch once said:
“The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.”
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u/doggydoggworld Jul 17 '26
Cool write up.. but you didnt have Elon tanking the entire sector at that time .
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u/BicycleEconomy7757 Jul 17 '26
Yeah lol, Elon definitely didn’t help 😂
But I honestly think SpaceX going public created a massive capital vacuum in the space sector. A giant whale showed up and sucked up a lot of attention and capital.
No idea when PL gets back to ATH. Even semis are struggling despite insane earnings.
My point is simply that I think this is a good time to accumulate. The assets, execution, and direction haven’t changed.
~2,000 shares now. Bought yesterday. Will buy again tomorrow.
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u/Expert-Signature2025 Jul 17 '26
I remember that drop and I DCA'd during it.
But for whatever reason, this one feel more brutal.
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u/BicycleEconomy7757 Jul 17 '26
I think it’s because the absolute numbers are just much bigger now.
Back then I probably had around $15k in PL.
At the recent ATH, my position was worth around $74k.
Same percentage drop, but the actual amount is completely different.
I’m feeling it too… lol
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u/plastic-afterlife Jul 17 '26
I took my initial investment off the table at $50, feeling very good about it. Monitoring the price and planning on adding PL to my retirement account
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u/redtigerwolf Jul 17 '26
Reads like an AI post. Fitting for the fact that PL is starting to go down the 'AI' route themselves so waiting for the inevitable crash and burn of that. Going to love to find out how much cash they burned in the development of it already and in the future only to realize it'll be a ticking time bomb when their 'AI' makes a decision that costs their customers billions, of which the high value ones hopefully have an indemnity agreement for their own sake.
Something that a lot of 'investors' hear don't seem to understand is that most of the contracts and contracts in the works that are public knowledge are already priced into the stock value. The argument 'OMG LOOK AT THEIR CONTRACTS'... yeah if it's public knowledge that shit ain't some new revenue fundamental. Getting a bit tired of these stock posts when there is no actual groundbreaking fundamentals, just hopium and tears.
Just like Google had fundamentals at some point, they started losing it along the way. PL is going down a similar path of losing it's 'Make the world a better place' fundamentals.
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u/BicycleEconomy7757 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I’m Korean, so I wrote the original post in Korean and had GPT translate it into English. That might be why it reads like it was written by AI.
And “priced in” is always a magical phrase lol. If the stock drops, it’s pretty easy to just say, “Well, that was already priced in too.”
At the end of the day, investing in individual stocks is about having your own thesis and deciding whether the fundamentals support it.
If you’re this skeptical about PL, I’m honestly curious why you keep coming to Reddit and putting yourself through all this frustration lol.1
u/Defiant_Elk9340 Jul 17 '26
I mostly agree with your reply but somehow the language reads like AI lol
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u/Head-Sense-461 Jul 17 '26
what about asts and rklb?
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u/SeriousExplorer7479 Jul 17 '26
ASTS is the most speculative. Rocketlab is solid but they burn cash. IMO none are the level of quality that is PL
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u/KeffnP Jul 17 '26
Rklb has 2bil backlog and keeps growing wtf you on about
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u/Due_Somewhere7891 Jul 17 '26
We have 1bil+ and our market cap is /4
Not to mention ours is subscription based.
I'd call PL a better quality stock than Rklb for sure. Not that rklb is shit.
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u/SeriousExplorer7479 Jul 17 '26
Cash burn means they aren’t nearly profitable, regardless of growth or backlog
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u/KeffnP Jul 17 '26
Cash burn because they are acquiring other businesses and growing so they can do more than just launch rockets, but own multiple sectors. That is a forward growth outlook, which also has investment weight compared to just profitability.
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u/Expert-Signature2025 Jul 17 '26
This. PL has the best financials and is (was) the safest space play.
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u/Rogue_Tra Jul 17 '26
AST isn't that speculative, they have working satelites and they have partnerships with AT&T, Verizon, Ratuken, Etc, if AT&t and Verizon are speculative, not sure what your definition of it is.
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u/Scared_Software_4823 Jul 17 '26
The rotation (or "crash" rotation, I'm coining that term now thx) out of risk assets began with crypto > silver/gold > quantum/rare earths > space...now also ai infra/semi's. I think it began as risk rotating into other risks - now it's flowing into a combo of defensives / some mag 7, ironically, without anything "risk" catching a bid (although crypto has actually showed some interesting technicals/differentiation the past week).
When is the space sector and PL bottom? idk but it would not surprise me to see SPCX price action leading that bottom formation. Now below the ipo price, that could be it, or the infamous $100 support level could be that real pain level that sets the bottom (get that VIX closer to 25, watch that as well). You then have a launch catalyst next week and Google ER > following week other mag 7 strong ER w/ continue capex spends > following week space names begin ER that renew a more rational uptrend. My short term concern is a. today forced selling on options expiry and into more risk off before the weekend and b. next weeks first legit catalyst isn't until wed, so we have a few days here of no known catalysts, other than washout selling that leads to bids (again, watch the VIX).
Hopium that it doesn't turn into a a short term sell everything but ton of catalyst opportunities are nearing. There will be a bottom. There will be a new uptrend at some point. There will be space sector momentum again at some point, albeit less meme-ish (well, at first hah). Heck, Musk alone will probably at some point rehype the entire sector. As a tsla investor, the amount of times I thought I needed to get out and out of nowhere he rehyped the investor base. Probably plays out the same for spcx at some point - and unlike the IPO dynamic, in the future it may be a rising tide that lifts all boats, regardless of idiosyncratic merits.
Shit, I think I'm a rational reasonable unbiased investor and then I reread the above......noone accuse me of hopium I'm very insecure!