SpaceX shares fell 5.5% Friday to $122.12, about 9% below the $135 IPO price, extending a ten-day slide that has wiped 44% off the intraday high of $225.64. The $1.6 trillion company is now the rare mega-cap IPO that has handed immediate losses to both retail call buyers and the underwriters who upsized the deal by $11 billion after a strong debut.
The Nasdaq-100 has fallen 6% from its level at SpaceX's peak, so the stock's decline is not purely idiosyncratic. But the options tape tells a more specific story: just over 500,000 contracts changed hands by late morning, making SpaceX the 11th most-traded ticker, behind Micron, the VIX, the small-cap ETF IWM and Apple, a modest showing for a company of this size.
Of the $350 million in premium traded, $290 million went to puts, and seven of the ten highest-volume strikes were puts, according to SpotGamma. That looks like capitulation until you see the other side: more than half of that put premium was sold, not bought, and nine of the top ten volume trades were bullish, per SpotGamma and Cboe LiveVol data.
One large trader bought $2.6 million of 140-strike puts expiring Friday while selling the same quantity of 135 strikes, cutting the ticket cost by $1.6 million, a defined-risk bearish bet rather than a panic exit. Don Kaufman, co-founder of TheoTrade and a former TD Ameritrade director, said he has been selling far out-of-the-money puts and would buy the stock all day at $100. "Valuation will still be well over a trillion but it is what it is, a monster and will continue to be a monster," he said.
The split tape suggests the market is still arguing about what SpaceX is worth rather than fleeing the name. Underwriters Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who added $11 billion of equity after the pop, are sitting on paper losses alongside the retail crowd that chased calls. Kaufman's line, "now you can go in there and get as much SpaceX as you want", captures the odd comfort of a broken IPO: the fear of missing out has been replaced by the luxury of choice.
The next test is whether the $135 IPO level becomes resistance or a magnet. With the Nasdaq-100 down 6% from its recent high, a broader recovery could lift SpaceX by association, but the options skew, heavy put volume, mostly sold, implies dealers are short gamma and may need to hedge aggressively if the slide deepens. For now, the monster is just cheaper.