MW The next great WFH trend will be 'War from Home,' says this strategist

By Steve Goldstein

Strategist with a knack for picking top themes says certain defense stocks have further to go

There's nothing like the end of a war that traders weren't all that worried about in the first place to give a boost to what had been a range-bound stock market.

And it's that war that leads neatly into a call appropriate on the second day of the NATO meeting, whose members are pledging to spend more on defense. It comes from James van Geelen, founder of Citrini Research, who has been profiled before in this column on how he's identified some of the biggest themes of the past decade.

His new one is what he calls "War from Home" - a play, of course, on "Work from Home," and the idea that warfare is conducted without troops actually on foreign soil. Israel, like Ukraine against Russia, used smuggled drones from within Iran at the outset of the fighting, and Iran responded entirely with missiles and drones without a single Iranian so much as flying over Israeli skies. The U.S. involvement in that conflict began with a crew that never had feet on the ground outside of Missouri, he added.

Granted, defense is not a new theme. The Global X Defense Tech ETF SHLD, which has hot plays including Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and Germany's Rheinmetall (XE:RHM), has surged 54% this year. The more widely held iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF ITA is up 25% in 2025.

Van Geelen says there's more gains in store. "We're seeing [President Donald] Trump's fiscal realignment and geopolitics converge to create a durable next leg up," he writes. Not only will overall spending rise, but a shift away from consultants and personnel will flow to procurement, technology development programs and hard asset contracts, he says.

The budget bill's funding for the Golden Dome project space layer will be focused on orbital and hypersonic technology.

It's not only the U.S. that's spending more. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP is set to inflect higher in Europe, thanks to new German budget rules and NATO pledges.

Van Geelen divides "War from Home" into four slices - missile defense, drones and counter drones, electronic warfare and modern surveillance. The missile defense segment has big defense companies like Lockheed Martin $(LMT)$ and RTX $(RTX)$, but the other slices have some less well-known companies, including DroneShield (AU:DRO), Kratos Defense & Security $(KTOS)$, Mercury Systems $(MRCY)$ and BlackSky Technology $(BKSY)$.

"Given our confidence in the upcoming wave of spending and geopolitical catalysts, we believe the following companies should be near-term beneficiaries - both in terms of actual spending and market perception," he said, while adding that investors can become more aggressive after legislation is finalized.

The markets

U.S. stock futures (ES00) (NQ00) stepped back after the S&P 500 SPX enjoyed its best day of the month on Monday. The U.S. dollar DXY rose.

   Key asset performance                                                Last       5d       1m      YTD     1y 
   S&P 500                                                              6092.18    1.83%    2.88%   3.58%   11.39% 
   Nasdaq Composite                                                     19,912.53  2.01%    3.72%   3.12%   12.39% 
   10-year Treasury                                                     4.295      -10.10   -18.80  -28.10  -3.90 
   Gold                                                                 3340.1     -1.37%   1.70%   26.55%  44.61% 
   Oil                                                                  65.02      -11.07%  5.11%   -9.53%  -19.61% 
   Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points 

The buzz

FedEx $(FDX)$ forecast earnings that came up shy of Wall Street expectations.

QuantumScape $(QS)$ stock soared on a breakthrough in battery production.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is back on Capitol Hill for a second day of testimony, after he suggested on Tuesday the central bank could act aggressively if the job market deteriorated. New-home sales data also is due for release.

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the nomination to be the Democratic candidate in the New York City mayoral race.

Best of the web

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Elon Musk's lawyers claim he does not use a computer.

The chart

Analysts at Barclays led by Julien Roch say they're changing their view on ad agencies, after attending the Cannes ad festival last week that was dominated by discussion of how artificial intelligence will change the sector. "We have been long-standing agency bulls (28 years, 9 months and 25 days apparently) but we came away from all these meetings more bearish than before," they said in downgrading Interpublic $(IPG)$ and Omnicom $(OMC)$ to equal-weight from overweight, and cutting WPP $(WPP)$ to underweight from equal weight. The chart is of the market share of the top 5 ad agencies in the U.S., lost not just to independent agencies but to brands doing their own investments directly.

Top tickers

Here were the most active stock-market tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern.

   Ticker  Security name 
   TSLA    Tesla 
   NVDA    Nvidia 
   GME     GameStop 
   AMD     Advanced Micro Devices 
   CRCL    Circle Internet Group 
   AAPL    Apple 
   TSM     Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. 
   BBAI    BigBear.ai 
   AMZN    Amazon.com 
   COIN    Coinbase Global 

Random reads

Teen DOGE staffer 'Big Balls' has left the Trump administration.

This holiday is celebrated with people hitting each other on the head with plastic hammers.

Chinese hotel told 'wake-up service' of red pandas climbing onto guest beds must stop.

-Steve Goldstein

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June 25, 2025 06:48 ET (10:48 GMT)

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