Jet engine makers are having their best month in years. Rocket and satellite stocks are having their worst. The Stoxcraft data explains why one industry can produce two completely different stories at once.
Aerospace and defense score overview this week
The average Health Score, a read on a company's underlying financial strength on a 0 to 10 scale, sits near 4.5 across aerospace and defense. That's below most industries. The average Performance Score, which tracks how a stock's price has done against the broader market on the same 0 to 10 scale, tells the opposite story. It's close to 6.9, well above a typical 5.0 baseline.
The average Risk Score, which measures how volatile a stock's price has been, runs hot too, near 6.1. A higher Risk Score means more risk; a lower one means less. A handful of pre-revenue space names sit at the maximum reading of 10.
The legacy primes are having a moment
GE Aerospace is up 10.6% over the past month. It carries a Performance Score of 9.3, good for the top 20% of the industry, and a four star overall rating. Its RSI sits near 54, a steady climb rather than an overbought spike.
Rolls-Royce and Airbus are moving too. Rolls-Royce gained 13.7% this month. Its Risk Score of 3.8, where lower is safer, is lower than almost every other name in the industry.
Airbus is up 11.5%, and its Risk Score of 2.8 ranks among the lowest in the sector. Airbus just delivered about 350 jets in the first half of the year, up from 306 a year earlier. That's its strongest first half since 2019.
RTX rounds out the group, with a Risk Score of 2.1 and a Buy entry signal.
General Dynamics is the one with no weak link
General Dynamics is a rare stock. It combines a high Health Score, high Performance Score, and low Risk Score all at once. Its Health Score of 7.3 ranks in the top 8% of the industry. Its Risk Score of 1.4, where lower is safer, is the lowest of any aerospace and defense stock tracked.
That combination pushed General Dynamics to a four and a half star overall rating. That's just behind the industry's small cluster of five star names. Strong fundamentals, solid performance, and low volatility rarely show up together in one stock.
New space is a completely different trade
Metrics feed into the three Core Scores: Health, Performance, and Risk
Three core scores
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Rocket Lab, Planet Labs, Intuitive Machines, and AST SpaceMobile all carry the maximum Risk Score of 10. Health Scores for the group sit between 1.0 and 1.5, near the bottom of the entire industry.
Performance tells a wilder story. Rocket Lab's Performance Score hit 9.4 even after the stock fell 26.7% in the past month. AST SpaceMobile dropped 18.6% over the same period. That pressure showed up directly: AST SpaceMobile fell 6% and Rocket Lab dropped 10% in one session after SpaceX's public debut pulled bullish attention away from the smaller names.
Every one of these four carries a Strong Sell entry signal right now. High performance, high risk, thin fundamentals. It's the same setup that shows up whenever a hype cycle runs ahead of the balance sheet.
Every one of these four carries a Strong Sell entry signal right now. A Strong Sell is a timing read, not a verdict on the business itself, and it can flip quickly.
Where Boeing fits, or doesn't
Boeing is the industry's clearest outlier. Its Performance Score of 1.1 is the lowest of any stock in the industry. That's even lower than the space names losing money every quarter. Its Health Score of 1.5 ties it for last place too.
The surprising part is the Risk Score. At 3.5, Boeing is actually less volatile than most of the industry. Weak fundamentals do not always come wrapped in wild price swings. Boeing is proof.
The real story hiding inside aerospace and defense scores
This is not one aerospace rally. It is two. Established engine and defense names are compounding steadily on strong fundamentals and low risk. Space stocks are swinging hard on performance and sentiment alone.
Watch General Dynamics and RTX for the steady case. Watch Rocket Lab's Neutron debut and AST SpaceMobile's next satellite launch for the volatile one. Both trades are real. They are just not the same trade.
