Meme stock or moonshot? SpaceX’s post-IPO risk matrix

SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO on June 12 was a landmark moment not only for Wall Street but for global finance. The offering was underwritten by 18 of the world’s preeminent investment banks, with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Citigroup serving as lead arrangers.

Yet two weeks after its spectacular debut, SpaceX shares have fallen sharply. After surging to a post-IPO high of $225, the stock has tumbled to $154 as of June 25, wiping hundreds of billions of dollars from its market capitalisation and raising fresh questions about its valuation and risk profile.

SpaceX’s private-market investor base included sovereign wealth funds, ultra-high-net-worth family offices and corporates from all six GCC states. The IPO therefore represented a fabulously profitable endgame to a strategy that had patiently accumulated shares from Silicon Valley venture capital firms and angel investors over the course of the past decade.

Despite its size, the IPO was oversubscribed fourfold by investors worldwide, including retail buyers drawn by Elon Musk’s brand and Tesla’s track record.

The immediate post-IPO performance was spectacular. Priced at $135 a share – a $1.8 trillion valuation – under the ticker SPCX, the stock rose steadily in its first week, giving it a market cap of $2.6 trillion and making SpaceX the fifth-largest listed company on earth.

That surge owed much to SpaceX’s addition to the Nasdaq 100, which forced dozens of multibillion-dollar technology funds tracking Silicon Valley’s most prominent index to buy the shares regardless of valuation. Passive funds, along with a new breed of space exchange-traded funds, were swept into buying by the pure mathematics of indexing.

Yet SpaceX has not been immune to the broader Nasdaq tech carnage, triggered by fading confidence in AI-sector growth models. The stock is also highly volatile because it is heavily owned by retail investors, leveraged hedge funds and index trackers – all forced sellers when Nasdaq swoons.

SPCX’s implied volatility is a staggering 130 percent – a surreal spectacle for the world’s fifth-most-valuable company, trading with the volatility of a meme stock.

The initial shortage of tradeable shares will be dramatically eased by the staggered release of lock-up shares held by early investors and long-time executives, beginning July 6 and continuing through December. The recent fall is clearly anticipating this near-term supply hitting the market.

For now, only 640 million shares are available for trading on Nasdaq out of a 13 billion total share count, most held by insiders and long-term investors such as Musk, Founders Fund, Gigafund, Ron Baron Capital and Saudi Arabia’s PIF – whose $5 billion stake in xAI converted into SpaceX shares at the IPO, where PIF served as anchor investor.

This means a small imbalance between supply and demand can drive huge price swings in either direction.

From a practical standpoint, it is more rational for GCC retail investors to express a bullish view by selling put options now listed on the Chicago Board Options Exchange than by buying call options at nosebleed premiums, which can vaporise to zero if shares fail to clear the strike price.

Since GCC markets don’t normally offer listed options, regional private investors should tread carefully trading options in Chicago on a cult stock with such a limited float and elevated volatility.

SpaceX cannot be valued using traditional metrics even after its pullback: it still trades at more than 100 times annualised revenue.

Like Tesla, it is a cult stock whose valuation depends heavily on Musk’s vision for space-based communications, orbital data centres and ancillary technologies that do not yet exist. SpaceX’s IPO prospectus pegs its total addressable market at a staggering $28.5 trillion.

The best analogy may be the railroads that crisscrossed the American West in the mid-19th century – they spawned entire new industries and business models but also bankrupted many of the Wall Street and City of London investors who financed them.

SpaceX clearly enjoys a monopoly in reusable rocket launch technology, and Starlink’s broadband franchise could plausibly grow to 20 times its current 10 million subscriber base within five years.

Musk has amplified the post-IPO mania with his claim that the company will generate $1 trillion in revenue by 2030 – without explaining precisely how.

For now, lock-up expiries between July and December will keep increasing Nasdaq-traded supply by at least 20 percent. GCC investors can accumulate shares at or even below the IPO price if they are patient – as long as they still believe space is the final frontier.

https://www.agbi.com/opinion/finance/2026/06/meme-stock-or-moonshot-spacexs-post-ipo-risk-matrix/