BREAKING: The Quantum boom 💥

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

This week, a special Friday edition:

Washington just made the biggest single-day bet on quantum computing in history, and put itself on the cap table.

The Commerce Department signed nine letters of intent Thursday committing roughly $2.013 billion to U.S. quantum firms in exchange for minority government equity stakes in every single one.

Quantum stocks ripped as a result:

• Infleqtion up around 36%

• D-Wave roughly 24%

• Quantum Computing Inc. +14%

• IonQ +10%

• IBM +7%.

The “Intel-style” industrial-policy playbook lives on.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

^{SPONSORED BY BTQ}
Post-quantum security is becoming a real deadline trade 👀 

The U.S. government is now pushing agencies and defense systems toward post-quantum cryptography, with major milestones hitting in 2026, 2027, 2030, 2033, and a hard federal cutoff in 2035 for quantum-vulnerable algorithms.

Today’s encryption protects almost everything online, but future quantum computers could break the systems securing banks, payments, defense networks, private messages, and digital assets.

To that end, BTQ Technologies (NASDAQ: BTQ) is worth watching in this cycle (investors seem to think so, it popped ~20% on yesterday’s news).

The company recently opened a New York City commercialization hub in the Flatiron District to accelerate its QCIM program, a quantum-secure silicon platform designed to make post-quantum cryptography fast, efficient, and practical for real-world deployment.

In a post-quantum world, keeping tabs on teams like BTQ that are focused on defense against quantum capabilities could be the longer, less-crowded play.

4 Quantum stocks to keep an eye on this cycle:

• BTQ Technologies (Nasdaq: BTQ)
  BTQ is the defensive side of the quantum trade. It is building the security layer for a quantum-era internet, spanning post-quantum cryptography, hardware-rooted security, and network-level protection. The federal post-quantum migration mandate (2035 civilian, 2030 defense) creates a major policy-driven demand backdrop. Market cap ~$400–600M, much smaller than the grant recipients.

  BTQ was selected as the core post-quantum cryptography (PQC) security provider for South Korea's first bank-led KRW stablecoin proof-of-concept, led by one of the largest regional banks in the country. It's not only stablecoins the company is securing, they are also helping secure post-quantum Bitcoin through their Bitcoin Quantum initiative.
  

• Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT) 
  Photonic chips plus quantum-networking gear. Q1 revenue surged from $39K a year ago to $3.7M after two acquisitions (Luminar Semiconductor for photonics, NuCrypt for quantum comms) plus a NASA contract. Still loss-making. Not on the Commerce grant list, but rallied 14% Thursday on the sector pull.
  

• Rigetti Computing (Nasdaq: RGTI)
  Superconducting qubits, the same architecture Google uses. Just shipped its 108-qubit Cepheus-1 system to the cloud. Q1 revenue +193% YoY to $4.4M; $569M in cash, no debt. Won one of the six ~$100M Commerce grants. Up high teens Thursday.
  

• Infleqtion (NYSE: INFQ)
  Neutral-atom quantum (try to picture lasers trapping individual atoms in a grid 🤯 ). Went public via SPAC earlier this year. Q1 revenue $9.5M (+14% YoY). Also won a ~$100M Commerce grant. Up around 36% Thursday, the biggest single-day move in the group.

Other news and movers:

🛒 Walmart closed down 6.43% Thursday after CFO John David Rainey warned that Iran-war fuel costs hit Q1 operating income by about 250 basis points (~$175 million absorbed) and could be larger in Q2. The retailer beat Q1 revenue ($177.75B, +7.3%) but Q2 EPS guidance of $0.72–$0.74 missed the $0.75 consensus, and full-year EPS of $2.75–$2.85 fell short of the $2.92 estimate. Walmart was the Dow’s biggest drag — even as the Dow closed at a record 50,285.66. (CNBC)

👕 Ross Stores delivered the cleanest retail print of the quarter, beating on Q1 EPS ($2.02 vs $1.70 expected) and revenue ($6.01B vs $5.64B) with record comparable-store sales driven by double-digit customer-count gains skewing younger. Management raised FY26 EPS guidance to $7.50–$7.74 (Street was $7.31). The stock popped nearly 7% — a sharp counter to Walmart’s tape and a reminder that off-price keeps eating share when the consumer gets stretched. (The Motley Fool)

🛢️ Oil slid for a second straight day as Iran reviewed Trump’s latest peace proposal. WTI fell about 2% to settle at $96.35 and Brent dropped 2% to $102.58, the lowest closes in weeks. Trump said he’s willing to wait “a few days” for the right answer but kept military options on hold. Iran said no deal has been reached but acknowledged narrowing gaps. Pakistan continues to mediate. (CNBC)

The Commerce Department, through NIST, signed nine letters of intent Thursday committing roughly $2.013 billion in CHIPS-Act-funded grants to U.S. quantum computing firms.

In exchange, the government receives minority, non-controlling government equity stakes in each.

IBM is the marquee recipient at $1 billion, which the company will match with $1 billion of its own and anchor in a new Albany, NY 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry called Anderon.

GlobalFoundries gets $375 million, and six others (D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Quantinuum, Infleqtion, Atom Computing, and PsiQuantum) get approximately $100 million each.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news pre-market. Commerce made it official by midday, and the public quantum names ripped across the board.

This is the same playbook Washington ran with Intel last year:

1. Federal money in

2. Government on the cap table

3. The U.S. gets paid back on the upside and shares the downside risk.

The U.S. wants the quantum supply chain on home soil for the same reason it wants leading-edge logic chips on home soil.

The market logic is even more immediate: as of Thursday's close, the public quantum names — D-Wave, Rigetti, Infleqtion, IBM, GFS, and QUBT (which isn't on the grant list but rallied with the group) — now operate inside a sector that has a permanent, deep-pocketed shareholder with no fiduciary obligation to sell when valuations get silly.

That changes how every other holder thinks about the group. 

The "venture-style" framing also means the federal government becomes a co-investor, not just a customer (a meaningful re-rating of quantum from R&D moonshot to a real industrial vertical).

What to watch: 

1. The deals are letters of intent. They aren't final, and the White House said it's still soliciting proposals from additional firms. Watch for the next round to expand the list (IonQ is conspicuously not in the announced nine).

2. Whether the gap-up holds. Every previous quantum rally this cycle has eventually round-tripped, and a lot of these names entered Thursday in negative year-to-date territory.

3. China's response. Beijing has been quietly funding its own quantum champions, and a public response is likely within weeks.

4. Watch the post-quantum cryptography side of the trade.
   

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.