Wall Street’s best trade this month wasn’t owning a hot stock. It was betting against one — and not just any stocks, but three of the most-watched high-flyers on the market: Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR), Strategy Inc. (NASDAQ:MSTR) and Rocket Lab Corp. (NASDAQ:RKLB).

Each had been a momentum darling, the kind of stock that runs for months and pulls in crowds of believers. In June, all three went into reverse — and the exchange-traded funds built to profit from their losses returned 65%, 130% and 55% on the month, while the S&P 500 slipped about 2%. The Benzinga Edge rankings, which track price momentum across the entire market, lit up with the proof.

The investors who had quietly bet on exactly that reversal walked away with the biggest gains anywhere in stocks. The Palantir and Strategy bets show up directly in the Benzinga Edge data, and they took a specific form: leveraged “inverse” funds.

An inverse ETF is built to move opposite to a stock, and most of these are “2x” products — engineered to rise twice as fast as the stock falls. Own one, and a 10% drop in the underlying stock is designed to hand you roughly a 20% gain. They are blunt, aggressive instruments, and in a falling stock they produce eye-watering returns fast.

When The Darlings Fell, These Soared

In June, the underlying stocks fell hard, and the math did its work. Palantir dropped about 26% on the month; the Defiance Daily Target 2X Short PLTR ETF (NASDAQ:PLTZ) rose 66%. Strategy, whose share price rises and falls with bitcoin, tumbled roughly 42%; the Defiance Daily Target 2X Short MSTR ETF (NASDAQ:SMST) soared about 130%. Rocket Lab, the space-launch company that had been one of the market’s great momentum stories, sank about 34%; the Defiance Daily Target 2X Short RKLB ETF (NASDAQ:RKLZ) — built to rise twice as fast as Rocket Lab falls — climbed about 64% in June, as of midday June 29.

This is where the Benzinga Edge rankings rule out a one-month fluke. Benzinga’s Edge Momentum score is a proprietary percentile ranking that evaluates a stock’s relative price strength using price action and volatility across short-, medium- and long-term timeframes. In plain terms, it scores how strong a trend is against the whole market, from 1 to 100.

Through June, these bearish funds didn’t just rise — they climbed toward the very top of that ranking. The 2x short Strategy fund scored in the mid-90s, among the strongest-trending instruments in the entire market, with the bet against Palantir close behind. And the signal held across multiple weekly readings of the Benzinga Edge data, not just one — the mark of a real trend rather than a single violent session.

Topping The Charts, Beating The Market

Now put those gains in full context, because that’s what makes June remarkable. The S&P 500’s slip wasn’t the half of it — even the index’s single best-performing stock, Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), gained only roughly 54%, trailed by Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) near 45% and KLA Corp. (NASDAQ:KLAC) around 42%.

Every one of these three bearish bets — up 65%, 130%, and 64% — beat the best stock in the index. The trades that won biggest in June weren’t bets on the future of technology. They were bets that three of its most celebrated names were about to fall.

The market’s giants offered nowhere to hide, either: Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) fell about 18% on the month, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) each around 10%, Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) about 8%. The selling ran straight through the market’s most crowded trades.

One caveat ties the three funds together, and it matters for anyone tempted to chase them: these are short-term tactical instruments, not buy-and-holds. Each had bled value over prior months, so June’s pops are monthly snapshots, not windfalls for long-term holders — a leveraged fund’s jump describes what already happened to a price, never what comes next.

That’s the real lesson in the Benzinga Edge data. While the headlines tracked the megacaps, June’s biggest winners were hiding in plain sight — in the quiet trades that pay off when the crowd’s favorite stocks finally stumble.

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