Aerospace and defense stocks have been displaying leadership for awhile now. They derive significant benefit from global governments pledging to allocate more capital to national security. Market participants following the industry know that for the better part of a year, it’s felt as though every week a government pledges to ramp up defense spending.
Related to that, research firms frequently issue accelerated defense spending forecasts, highlighting opportunity with ETFs such as the Direxion Daily Aerospace & Defense Bull 3X Shares ETF (DFEN ).
That Direxion fund is designed to deliver 200% of the daily performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Select Aerospace & Defense Index (DJSASDT), which is a basket of some of the most widely known domestic large-cap aerospace and defense equities. Recent reports suggest DFEN is an ETF tactical traders should monitor going forward.
Defense Spending Just Keeps Climbing
In what amounts to be good news for members of the Dow Jones U.S. Select Aerospace & Defense Index, defense spending is gaining altitude, no pun intended. A new Oppenheimer report confirms this.
“The firm highlighted that global military budgets have climbed sharply amid rising geopolitical tensions, with the U.S. House authorizing $900.6 billion in Defense Department funding for fiscal 2026. Oppenheimer estimates that worldwide defense expenditures now total roughly $3 trillion, up about 50% over five years, and projects that figure could double within the next decade,” according to StockTwits.
A 50% jump in five years imply the laws of large numbers aren’t affecting defense spending. This is a testament to the fact that it is government that doles out the related capital. That doesn’t DFEN should be a treated as a buy-and-hold instrument. It should not be. However, the point is there will be plenty of occasions on which risk-tolerant traders can deploy DFEN.
Defense spending is very much a global phenomenon. While the U.S., China, and Russia are unlikely to be displaced, contributions are arriving from other corners of the globe. This potentially sets the stage for upside for members of DFEN’s underlying index.
For example, defense expenditures by European nations, led by Germany, now account for 21% of the global total, according to a recent report from The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). That implies breadth in defense spending and long-term durability for the trend.
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