Retail and Wall Street are underwater on SpaceX — but not going down without a fight
Billboards in Times Square celebrate SpaceX’s initial public offering on Nasdaq on June 12, 2026.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
good times for SpaceX This is short-lived as Elon Musk’s intergalactic IPO feeds the bears who say the US stock market is not ready for a $2 trillion market cap injection.
Shares of the satellite and exploration sector fell 5.5% on Friday, extending a 10-day decline to $122.12, roughly 9% below the $135 IPO price. The stock is currently down 44% from its intraday high of $225.64. The Nasdaq-100, which is less than one percent behind SpaceX’s record high, is now 6% off that peak.
Retail bulls piling into all manner of call contracts on SpaceX are either underwater or getting crushed; This is not unlike Wall Street underwriters like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who chose to add $11 billion to SpaceX’s equity after its strong start.
“People always think they’re missing out on these IPOs; look at the positive side of this, now you can go out there and buy as much SpaceX as you want,” said Don Kaufman, co-founder of TheoTrade and former director of retail brokerage TD Ameritrade. “I’m also surprised that the banks that led this haven’t sold more.”
SpaceX traded just over 500,000 option contracts late Friday morning; it is the market’s 11th most traded stock; is certainly respectable, but this figure surpasses it. Micron, VIX, small-cap ETF (IWM) And AAPL This is a notable decline for the giant, which currently has a market cap of $1.6 trillion.
According to data from SpotGamma, $290 million of the $350 million SpaceX option premium traded on Friday was tied to puts, and seven of the top 10 contracts traded by volume were puts.
But a closer look shows that those who believe in Musk’s mission are not giving up without a fight. More than half of the total put premiums were sold, and nine of the top 10 deals by volume were bullish, according to data from SpotGamma and Cboe LiveVol.
One large transaction on the record reflected a bearish but measured tone: the trader bought a $2.6 million 140-strike put that expired today, but sold the same number of 135-strike puts against it, reducing the cost of the trade by $1.6 million.
“I sell bad-money puts,” Kaufman added. “I’ll be buying at $100 all day long. The valuation will still be over a trillion but that’s the way it is; it’s a beast and it will continue to be a beast.”
