Hey Traders,

Data centers have a neighbor problem.

Local opposition blocked or delayed 45 U.S. data center projects worth about $68 billion between April and June, according to Data Center Watch.

More than 840 opposition groups now organize across 49 states.

Nobody's organizing against a firewall, though.

"We better cut back on our cybersecurity budget" said no one ever.

And least of all right now.

Agentic AI (software that takes actions on its own instead of just answering questions) keeps spreading faster than even the biggest believers expected.

Every agent a company turns loose gives an attacker a new door to try, and the attackers have AI too.

Somebody has to guard all those doors, and nobody needs a permit to sell the locks.

That leads me right into my two plays for the week.

One to Love: The Toll Booth Nobody Protests

CrowdStrike (CRWD) gets my vote to guard those doors. It set a record intraday high of $274.23 on October 5. Over the 12 months through October 1, it returned about 113 percent, ahead of Palo Alto Networks (PANW) at about 92 percent, according to Trefis.

The business earned a lot of that run. In the July quarter, CrowdStrike added a record $333 million in net new ARR (new annual subscription revenue signed during the quarter), up 51 percent from a year earlier. Management then raised its full-year growth target for that number to 34 percent.

CEO George Kurtz told a Goldman Sachs conference in September that security has started pressing the gas pedal on IT spending instead of the brake. The AI companies have opened their own checkout lines to it, too. CrowdStrike listed its Falcon platform in Anthropic's Claude Marketplace in early September and in the OpenAI Marketplace on September 29, so those customers can spend part of their existing AI budgets on it.

One cloud cleared as well. On September 25, Bloomberg reported that federal prosecutors closed their probe of CrowdStrike's distributor-deal accounting without filing charges.

Yeah, I know. "Hans, it already doubled. You're late."

Maybe. But here's the thing.

Analysts have raised their revenue forecasts less than four percent all year, according to TIKR, so the multiple (what investors pay for each dollar of expected earnings) did most of the lifting. CrowdStrike trades around 193 times the earnings analysts expect over the next year, and the average Street price target, near $236, sits below the stock.

So I'm not chasing it. Own the theme, let the stock come to you, and watch the October-quarter report. Management guided net new ARR to $343 million to $347 million, and a clean beat would force analysts to raise their numbers.

One to Leave: The Neighbor With Deeper Pockets

My general view on space stocks: why own anything other than SpaceX (SPCX) and maybe Rocket Lab (RKLB)? AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) shows you why I feel that way.

AST wants to beam cell service from satellites straight to ordinary phones. SpaceX wants the same customers, and it just made two big moves. The FCC cleared SpaceX's 15,000-satellite direct-to-cell network, and after Thursday's close, SpaceX agreed to buy Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum, airwaves AST had chased too.

That's low-band spectrum (lower-frequency airwaves that carry farther and reach phones indoors). SpaceX said the deal fills a key remaining technical gap for its Starlink Mobile service.

ASTS dropped six percent Thursday to $56.93, then fell about 14 percent more on Friday to around $49. That leaves a broken chart nearly two-thirds below its $133.86 high from May 28.

The numbers don't bail it out. Second-quarter revenue came in at $31.5 million against Street estimates near $35 million, and AST missed on both revenue and earnings in each of the last two quarters. To hit its $150 million to $200 million full-year revenue target, it needs more than $100 million in the second half after bringing in about $46 million in the first.

AST also spent about $610 million on satellites and equipment in the second quarter alone. And the stock still trades at well over 100 times its trailing sales.

To be fair, there's a real business here. AST has about $1.3 billion in contracted backlog, more than $3.7 billion in pro forma cash, and its spectrum deals with AT&T and Verizon remain intact. Bulls have a case.

But I don't buy a good story on a broken chart. I'd rather let this one prove it found a floor before I touch it. Just sayin.

The AI buildout keeps running into town halls, power bills, and spectrum fights. Security keeps collecting while those fights play out, and that's the side of the trade I want.

Ticker Highlight Show goes live Monday at 10:30 a.m. ET with this week's pick. Want to know which name made the cut? Tap this link and join before the show starts.

Here for a good time… AND a long time,

Hans