SpaceX shares looked poised to fall again as US markets reopened after the long weekend, extending a slide that has already erased much of the euphoria from the largest stock-market debut in history.
The stock closed last week around $185, down roughly 18 per cent from the $225.64 it touched on 16 June, four days after listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX.
The round trip has been fast even by the standards of a hot IPO. SpaceX priced at $135 a share on 12 June, raising about $75bn, then rallied some 67 per cent over its first three sessions before a single quarterly report had landed.
It fell 5 per cent the following Wednesday and 3.6 per cent on Thursday, its first two-day decline as a public company, before the Juneteenth holiday paused trading.
Most of the explanation is mechanical rather than fundamental. Only a sliver of SpaceX is actually trading. Roughly 4 per cent of the shares are free to change hands, with the rest locked up under a staggered schedule that does not begin to ease until around the company’s first earnings report in the summer and does not fully clear until well into next year.
