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SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading

SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading

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Comments (234)

  • ornornor
    “Shocking nobody” I would add… This is an obvious Musk scam and anyone with financial knowledge called it as such ever since it’s been on the table. Why else lobby and change the NASDAQ listing rules for instance?
  • paoliniluis
    The IPO was meant for the VCs to cash out as all fundamentals were completely irrational, but seems like no one cares about cash flow and profitability anymore during QE times. Dumb money will keep being dumb I guess
  • petilon
    SpaceX, despite its name is an AI company, supposedly. Its S-1 states that the company estimates its total addressable market (TAM) at $28.5 trillion, of which $26.5 trillion, or 92.98%, is expected to come from AI.SpaceX is an AI company without a frontier model. Until Jan 2026 SpaceX was an aerospace company. Then xAI was merged into SpaceX on January 30, 2026, so SpaceX became an AI company less than 6 months ago.
  • MinimalAction
    As a scientific adventure, SpaceX is a worthy company full of awesome people. But the management and VCs is another story, as usual. To price it at a market cap of $1.8T, somewhere double that of Walmart is insane.
  • pfisherman
    My understanding is that an ideally priced IPO should not move much from the opening price in the near term. If it pops it means they left money on the table. If it drops, then I am not sure what the implication is exactly?Now I think SpaceX is massively overhyped, but is the share price returning to IPO opening not just a sign that the banks accurately estimated something?
  • abtinf
    I’m way out of my depth in suggesting this idea, so forgive me if I’m committing a conceptual “divide by zero” and it’s not even wrong:It seems like the SpaceX IPO really breaks the traditional notion of market cap.Market cap has an unstated assumption that most of a company’s stock could, in theory, be traded unencumbered. Thus shares * price gives a very rough view of the value of the company. Everyone understands that this valuation has problems: it attributes the last marginal trade to the entire stock, and doesn’t account for large purchases/sales. But it’s useful nonetheless.But with SpaxeX, only a tiny fraction of those shares are even theoretically tradeable, so it seems bizarre to calculate valuation using price * shares. I think this is the source of discomfort around the $2T market cap.It seems like, similar to how there are long and short term liabilities, there should be long and short term market caps.“Short term market cap” would be price * “number of shares that could theoretically be available for trade within the next year”, from all sources (including vesting employee options, expiring lockups, etc).“Long term market cap” would be price * total authorized shares.So SpaceX’s long term market cap would remain at $2T and its short term market cap would be, say, 5% of that (about $100B).
  • cmiles8
    There’s still really nothing keeping it at even these lower levels except pure hype. By the fundamentals typically applied to aggressive growth companies a “sane” price is closer to $40-60 and even that would be very aggressive considering the company’s financials.If the company doesn’t quickly show a financial picture that matches the sky high pro formas then even anything close to those levels will become extremely hard to justify.The bond markets have already turned very negative on SpaceX with extreme red flags developing there.
  • small_model
    Anyone buying IPO for short term gain would have exited at initial spike, others (like me got in at allocation price) will be holding for a decade or two so this is noise, expected not sure why it posted here, do we post every tech stock intra day price move
  • kumarski
    The sheer scale of global fiber optic, 5G, and FWA deployments is rapid enough along with middle distillates (jet fuel) getting rekt.Something like 100k flights cancelled. Upgrading the planes to have starlink is onerous, high idle/offline time, and capital intensive.The total potential market for Starlink shrinks by at least a few hundred thousand people each week.
  • notjustanymike
    SpaceX blasting up and dropping right back where it started feels appropos.
  • pfdietz
    I think SpaceX has a great future ahead of it.I didn't buy a single share.
  • khalic
  • manoDev
    Mid-August there’s a shareholder unlock of 20%, we haven’t seen the dip yet.
  • Lerc
    It surprises me that this seems so consequential to observers. According to a quick search, around 40% of IPOs are below their IPO price at their one year anniversary.I'm not invested in this myself, figuratively or literally.I guess for any stock to rise, there have to be people thinking it will be worth more in the future.I presume there is a way to mathematically determine how atypical the SoaceX stock is behaving. Does anyone have a reference to how this would normally be done?
  • ChrisMarshallNY
  • simonpure
    I always wonder why not more companies are using more creative approaches like Google's Dutch auction to set their IPO price.It seems direct listings gained some popularity but overall most companies seem to rely on the traditional underwriter model.According to [0] -> 22 companies went public on major exchanges using IPO auctions in the U.S. between 1999-2008, but there have been none since then, as of May 2025. Starting in 2018 when Spotify went public, there have been at least 20 companies that have gone public using a direct listing. With both IPO auctions and direct listings, underwriters do not have discretion to allocate shares to their preferred clients.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIPO
  • throw0101d
    IPOs are generally not a good investment, at least not relative to average market return:> However, a year later, we see that the majority of companies are either outperforming or underperforming the market by more than 10%. We also see that more companies are underperforming than beating the index (the red bars stretch below the 50% line).> That seems to indicate that for some companies, the initial IPO enthusiasm wanes or expected earnings are not met, and investors reprice the IPO to reflect the actual, slower growth of the company.> Three years after their IPO, we calculate that almost two-thirds of IPOs are underperforming the market, with most (64%) more than 10% behind the market’s returns.* https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-happens-to-ipos-over-th...> 56% of IPOs bought at the offer price lost money after 3 years. That number rises to 57% after five years. The numbers are higher when bought at the first day closing price: 60% lost money after 3 and 5 years. Worse than a coin flip.> Only 19% of IPOs doubled or more after three years and 22% after 5 years when bought at the offering price. The numbers were worse when bought at the closing price.> Of course, the lottery-like returns were possible, but it amounted to about 0.4% of all IPOs after 3 years and 1% after five years.* https://novelinvestor.com/the-hype-and-hot-air-around-ipos/Interview with a researcher that has looked at IPOs over the last few decades:> We’ve previously compared IPOs to lotteries that are prone to inflated valuations and low returns. Today we welcome “Mr. IPO,” Professor Jay Ritter onto the show for a deeper dive into IPO performance, for his insights into SPACs, and to hear his research into why economic growth doesn’t correlate with stock returns. Early in the episode, Jay unpacks how long-term IPO returns perform against first-day trading. While exploring the role that venture capital plays in tech IPOs, Jay talks about why negative earnings don’t affect tech IPOs in the short-term before sharing how skewness factors tend to impact young companies. Reflecting on how IPOs are usually underpriced, Jay discusses how the interests of companies are not aligned with the interests of IPO underwriters. After looking into IPO allocation, Jay compares the 2020 ‘hot IPO market’ with the internet bubble of the late 90s. Later, we ask Jay about what special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are and why they’ve exploded in recent years. His answers highlight their investing benefits, risks, and why SPACs might be a better option for companies than IPOs. We examine how SPACs have historically performed and then jump into our next topic; why economic growth isn’t a good indicator that a country is worth investing in. He touches on why returns don’t correlate with economic growth, the place of capital gains and dividend yields when investing abroad, and how innovations in an industry can lead to higher stock returns. We wrap up our conversation by asking Jay for his take on whether the stock market is efficient before hearing how he defines success in his life. Tune in to hear our incredible and informative talk with Jay Ritter.* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/139Picking individual winning stocks can be hard:* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street
  • Balgair
    Honest question here: What does this mean for Anthropic's OPenAI's rumored IPOs?
  • amazingamazing
    Looks to still be over a trillion market cap.
  • mothballed
    If the IPO can't find institutional buyers at the price and has to resort transferring the initial shares directly to the public, safe to assume they've hyped the public into being the bag holder. What SpaceX did is rare for a reason.
  • tester756
    Obvious mess. I bought it on IPO and sold 1-2 hours later with some gain
  • ratelimitsteve
    This all feels like it was designed to artificially inject cash into xAI despite the average person being strongly against it. First they merge that company with SpaceX despite having very little in common in either of their infrastructure or goals, then they change the rules to get the stock out to the general public as quickly as possible on the promise that obviously it's going to explode in value and make everyone very rich to justify that decision, then once they have investor cash in-hand the stock price slips. I think they just tried to leverage SpaceX's relatively popular, positive image into investments into xAI by more or less giving up on SpaceX being anything but a wrapper around xAI.
  • glasffordd
    Typical IPO pattern. Hyped IPOs shoot up and then correct, some correct more than others. Traders take their profits. Nothing new here, just bigger headlines because it's a big name. The bigger the name, the bigger the hype.
  • segmondy
    something something about fools and their money are easily parted.
  • eole666
    Maybe this has to do with the technical unfeasibility of sending human to Mars and back to earth while keeping them alive ? Throwing billions at it won't make it happen magically.
  • hunmernop
    Buy low sell high
  • natas
    shocking, who could have predicted that?
  • ChrisArchitect
    Related:SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond statushttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920181
  • shark1
    It's typical to happen after IPOs. The same happened to: IBM, Meta, Google, Nvidia, Apple, and many others...PS: I am not saying SpaceX is a good investment.
  • paulvnickerson
    I think people around here just dislike Elon Musk for his politics and are rooting for his stuff to fail at every turn.
  • throwpoaster
    Could be a great buying opportunity depending on your theory of investment.
  • petesergeant
    > closing at $135.27ffs, wake me up when it's at least 10% below what it IPO'd for. The idiotic tulip mania that followed in the few days after it floated was noise, but as of today, it seems the IPO price was pretty much right. However, endless headlines about the price crashing etc.From a fundamentals perspective, it's an insane price, obviously. But the narrative that it's all coming crashing down is obviously not correct (today).
  • jitl
    noooo my stonks
  • sharts
    “The shares regained some ground later in the day, closing at $135.27.”
  • vladmk
    I’m really tempted to buy a chunk right now lol
  • tempfile
    Still 10x higher than any rational price.
  • alexlesuper
    This was completely predictable. Anyone with a brain looking at this stock would have shorted it.
  • panick21_
    Still far to high. I love SpaceX as in 'space', they were a great company, doing things nobody else could. Now its a dumb AI company that hands over cash to micron, nvidia and friends who literally print money, while financing that with delusional promises.Many people can soon sell their SpaceX stock, I don't think the S&P will safe them later.
  • xbas
    [dead]
  • defmetrix
    Ive never understood why so many people seem to cheer for Elon's companies to fail.
  • Beijinger
    SpaceX: The Biggest Money Loser in IPO Historyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD8BDFYyGI