想买的人已经买完了：SpaceX散户狂欢退潮，真正的抛压还在8月

Original Author: Tyler Durden (ZeroHedge pseudonym)

Original Translation: Source: ZeroHedge

Introduction: SpaceX has fallen for three consecutive days, with a single-day plunge of 16.4% on Monday, wiping out $600 billion in market value and falling back to its opening price of $150. This analysis is blunt: everyone who wanted to buy has already bought, and more importantly, the real selling pressure hasn't even arrived yet. This pump-and-dump involved only 5% of the circulating shares, and insiders could sell up to 44% of their shares by early September.

It started with a bang. SpaceX went public on June 12, opening at $150, well above its IPO price of $135. Within two days, aggressive traders began frantically buying $380 call options expiring in two days, attempting to send the stock price to the moon, triggering a gamma squeeze (where market makers are forced to buy the underlying stock to hedge options, pushing the price higher).

@zerohedge tweeted: They are actually going for it.

In a report this morning, Canaccord described the "renewed wave of optimism" accompanying the SpaceX listing as follows:

"The SPCX order book shows the market has entered a new level of frenzy. Before this historic IPO, we thought AI optimism was already full, sometimes overdone, but the buying was primarily from rational (if exuberant) institutions – large, well-capitalized public companies and PE investors. In our view, SPCX has opened a new chapter with a significant surge in retail participation, propelling the stock into the top six globally by market cap, adding the equivalent of half a META in its first week of trading. Its market cap already dwarfs sister company TSLA, while its revenue is only about 20% of TSLA's. Despite the company name 'SpaceX', its revenue is tilted towards its connectivity business – Starlink contributed $11.39 billion, launch services only $4.1 billion, and AI computing $3.2 billion in 2025."

Vanda Track was even more emphatic. In a review earlier on Monday, it wrote: "SpaceX's first trading week was record-breaking. Retail investors net purchased $405 million of SPCX in the first five trading days, the strongest retail participation in an IPO in recent years. Buying was exceptionally ferocious in the first few days, cooling somewhat later in the week. The capital flow increasingly looks like long-term position building, not chasing a short-term meme stock."

Figure Note: Retail capital flows for SPCX in the first five trading days

Source: Vanda Track

In context, the scale of retail buying of SPCX is even more staggering. Last week, retail purchases of SPCX exceeded their total purchases of all other Mag 7 stocks combined – NVDA, MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL, and GOOG totaled only $278 million over those five days. Retail buying of SPCX also surpassed the combined retail inflows into the SPY and QQQ ETFs over the same period ($352 million). A stock that only started trading last week is already competing with the market's largest individual stocks and ETFs for retail money.

Figure Note: SPCX retail buying vs. Mag 7 individual stock retail buying comparison

Source: Vanda Track

The old playbook unfolded again. As retail investors piled into the stock, they quickly flocked to various SpaceX leveraged products, with equally strong demand. In the first few trading days, retail investors bought $65.8 million worth of the Leverage Shares 2x Long SPCX Daily ETF – a significant number, but still far below typical levels seen during periods of extreme retail speculative frenzy. Even so, it crushed recent thematic newcomers: Roundhill's storage ETF (ticker DRAM) attracted only $5.6 million in its first four trading days, and it took DRAM 22 trading days for cumulative retail buying to surpass what the SpaceX leveraged ETF absorbed.

Figure Note: Retail capital flows comparison between SPCX leveraged ETF and thematic ETFs over the same period

Source: Vanda Track

After bursting out of the gate, the momentum quickly fizzled, and the fantasy of "riding a reusable rocket via gamma squeeze into orbit" dissipated. June 16 was the peak, with SPCX hitting a record high of $225, briefly surpassing Microsoft in market cap. After that, daily retail capital flows collapsed, and retail turnover nearly ground to a halt.

Figure Note: SPCX retail daily capital flows – cliff-like decline after peaking on June 16

Source: Vanda Track

This brings us back to Canaccord's statement. Based on SpaceX’s early trajectory, the investment bank judged that "tech stocks can probably maintain momentum in the short term," but it also warned: "There is a more dangerous layer of vacuum beneath these stocks now."

Sure enough, once momentum faded, coupled with the market realizing that trillions of shares were about to unlock, the stock fell for three consecutive days, culminating in a crash on Monday. That day, as SpaceX, taking advantage of the still-exuberant bond market, attempted to issue over $20 billion in investment-grade bonds – its first-ever such issuance – to replace a much higher-rate bridge loan before the bond issuance window closed, SPCX plummeted 16.4%, wiping out a record $600 billion in market cap in a single day. Adding in the 5% drop on Wednesday and the 3.5% drop on Thursday, the stock is now only slightly above its opening price of $150 from two weeks ago.

Figure Note: SPCX stock price trend since listing – falling back to around $150 from the $225 high

Source: ZeroHedge

Worse still, SPCX briefly touched its IPO opening price of $150 in after-hours trading. If it breaks below this level when the market opens tomorrow, everyone who bought and held in the secondary market will be underwater.

Figure Note: SPCX falls to around its IPO opening price of $150 in after-hours trading

Source: ZeroHedge

Crucially, this pump-and-dump occurred with only 5% of the free float available for trading – 95% of the shares were still locked up. But that will change soon.

Figure Note: SPCX unlocking structure – currently only 5% in circulation, 95% locked

Source: ZeroHedge

Jeff Jacobson, strategist at 22V Research, notes that after SpaceX reports earnings in early to mid-August, 20% of insider shares will be unlocked. Additionally, if the stock price is 30% above the IPO price, it triggers another 10% unlock; there are also 7% unlocks scheduled around August 21 and September 10.

Figure Note: SPCX lock-up expiry schedule

Source: 22V Research

Jacobson says insiders could potentially sell up to 44% of their SpaceX shares by early September, expanding the current free float by approximately 900%.

In other words, pushing the stock price higher will only become more difficult from here. Meanwhile, Michael O'Rourke, Chief Market Strategist at JonesTrading, stated that "the sellers have regained control," adding: "Everyone in the world who wanted to buy has already bought."

Bloomberg, commenting on today's decline, wrote that SpaceX's drop "dragged down most of the market with it."

Whether that's entirely true remains to be seen. But in this market – which has relied almost entirely on retail frenzy and momentum chasing since the March lows – once retail investors truly get spooked, first SpaceX, then the storage bubble, and finally the semiconductor stocks that have fully capitalized on the AI trade...

@zerohedge tweeted: The divergence between the hyperscalers and semiconductors is untenable: massive CapEx is the key variable.

…That's when you reverse T.S. Eliot's line: Not with a whimper, but with a bang.