SpaceX didn’t just go public last week. It went supernova. And now, with options trading live as of June 16, investors are piling into the derivatives market with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for a new iPhone launch, except the stakes are measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the first 10 minutes alone, roughly 115,000 options contracts changed hands on the Cboe. By the end of the session, somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 contracts had traded, generating more than $400 million in premium. To put that in perspective, SPCX options instantly ranked as the third most actively traded single-stock options on the market, behind only Tesla and Nvidia.
The numbers behind the frenzy
SpaceX’s IPO on June 12 priced shares at $135. They didn’t stay there long. By the close of the first trading day, shares had surged to approximately $160.95, a nearly 20% pop that set the stage for the options mania that followed four days later.
The IPO itself raised approximately $75 billion, establishing a valuation near $1.77 trillion.
