Fierce aerospace competition among global superpowers has resulted in strong public attention on satellite launch events in the U.S. Given limited attentional resources, U.S. investors pay more attention to market-level shocks than to firm-specific shocks, making stock returns comove more with the market on satellite launch days than on other days. We find that the effect is significantly stronger for military-related satellite launches, launches before the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, and international satellite launches by other competitors, highlighting a greater concern for national security. A trading strategy that exploits the potential satellite-induced mispricing yields an annualized abnormal risk-adjusted return of up to 17% within the three-day window around launch date. Our results are robust to a battery of robustness analyses that consider the different characteristics of satellite launches, the exclusion of aerospace firms, and stock return comovement with industries.</p
