SpaceX Stock's First Week: 600,000 Options Contracts, 11 New ETFs, and a 17% Intraday Swing
Published on 06/18/2026 at 06:04 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The weekend after SpaceX’s landmark IPO, a Falcon-9 rocket carrying two dozen Starlink satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral. It was the company’s first launch since listing and the 69th mission of the year for the workhorse booster. The Starlink constellation now numbers more than 10,600 active units — a steady operational drumbeat that underpins the ambitious valuation Wall Street has assigned to Elon Musk’s space venture.
That valuation took on a life of its own once options trading began on Tuesday, the stock’s third day on the public market. More than 600,000 options contracts changed hands by late morning, instantly propelling SpaceX into the top three most actively traded U.S. names in the derivatives segment. The buying flood forced call-option sellers to hedge by acquiring shares, adding fuel to a rally that briefly pushed the market capitalisation past $2.9 trillion — above Amazon's at the time.
Retail investors piled in. On major broker platforms, SpaceX ranked among the most purchased stocks in those early sessions. Traders paid hefty premiums for short-dated calls, and implied volatility remained elevated as the market struggled to establish a reliable price range for the new space stock.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
Yet not all of Wall Street’s machinery is aligned with the retail euphoria. In record time, eleven leveraged ETFs have been filed and launched by asset managers including Direxion, GraniteShares, and Defiance. These funds promise twice the daily return of SpaceX shares — on both the upside and the downside — with zero portfolio diversification. The construction is treacherous: daily rebalancing means long-term returns can diverge sharply from the underlying stock’s performance. Defiance has explicitly warned that the first trading days could suffer from low liquidity, making accurate pricing difficult and potentially causing the funds to miss their stated leverage targets.
The frenzy peaked on Tuesday, but Wednesday brought a sobering pullback. By midafternoon, SpaceX shares were changing hands near $195, down roughly 3% on heavy volume. The stock had opened its public life at $150 on IPO day, well above the $135 offer price that raised a blockbuster sum — though reports vary on the exact haul. One account put the IPO proceeds at $75 billion, while a separate filing cited $85.7 billion from the issuance of nearly 639 million new shares. Either figure dwarfs the previous record held by Saudi Aramco.
For now, the fundamental story of rocket launches and satellite internet has receded into the background. Short-term speculators and the daily rebalancing flows of leveraged funds are setting the pace. Until the newly listed stock develops deeper liquidity, investors should brace for brutal intraday swings. The challenge ahead is to convert the massive retail interest into a stable institutional shareholder base. If that transition succeeds, SpaceX could cement itself as a permanent heavyweight in the technology sector. If not, the $2.9 trillion peak may prove to have been a fleeting mirage.
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