SpaceX ended its first day of public trading last Friday at $160.95, fixing its market capitalization at $2.1 trillion. The listing still created the largest IPO in U.S. stock market history, but the first-day outcome did not fully match the expectations built up before the debut. Research firm CFRA directly assigned SPCX a “Sell” rating, and the capital-market appeal of Elon Musk’s “Mars story” did not immediately translate into a stronger first-session share performance.
Monday’s rally reset the post-IPO pricing narrative
On Monday, SPCX changed the tone of the discussion after the U.S. market opened. According to Gate U.S. stock market data, SPCX climbed throughout the session and closed at $192.5, up 19.6%. The closing price was also the day’s high. At that level, SpaceX’s market value rose to $2.519 trillion, making it the eighth-largest company in the world by market capitalization. Hyperliquid data also showed SPCX trading above $214 in pre-market activity. The original report said that, after the U.S. market opened on Tuesday, SPCX had a high probability of extending Monday’s gains and overtaking Amazon, which ranked seventh by market value.
At the macro level, the understanding reached by the United States and Iran was described as an important positive factor for U.S. equities. On June 15, Trump announced that an agreement with Iran had been reached and that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open. Unlike several previous one-sided statements, this agreement was also acknowledged by Iran. On the same day, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi said the text of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding had been finalized and would be formally signed in Switzerland this Friday, June 19.
The agreement was also confirmed again by the Iranian president. U.S. Vice President Vance said the agreement between the United States and Iran had been signed electronically over the weekend, indicating that the terms had taken effect. The original report described the chance of either side tearing up the agreement as limited. After the news developed, U.S. equities rose broadly at the open and finished higher: the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.92%, the S&P 500 rose 1.65%, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 3.07%.
Morgan Stanley said that a long-term agreement between the United States and Iran, together with lower oil prices, would ease inflation pressure. The firm also said U.S. equities were shifting from a “single-leader market” toward a healthier broad-based rally. In that view, the momentum in U.S. stocks was no longer limited to the technology sector and was gradually spreading into a wider range of cyclical industries.
Retail inflows and the greenshoe option intensified the supply-demand imbalance
From the perspective of market sentiment, SpaceX remained the stock most aggressively pursued by retail capital. According to Vanda Track, on June 16 U.S. local time, SpaceX attracted about $93.8 million in net retail buying in a single day. That amount accounted for about 73% of the total net retail inflows into all U.S. individual stocks that day. In other words, for nearly every $4 of incremental retail capital flowing into the U.S. stock market, about $3 went into SpaceX.
With demand for SPCX running at that level, SpaceX’s underwriters exercised the over-allotment option in the IPO, also known as the greenshoe mechanism. They purchased an additional 83.33 million shares, bringing the total IPO issuance to 638,888,888 Class A common shares. The move increased the total proceeds of the offering to $85.7 billion. The original report said this scale exceeded almost all recorded over-allotment arrangements in technology-company IPOs.
Even after the additional allocation, reports cited in the original article said most qualified retail investors in the United States received only about one share in the SpaceX IPO subscription. Under an extremely tight free-float structure, concentrated retail buying was enough to push the share price sharply higher. On June 16, financial media outlet zerohedge wrote that, once SPCX options begin trading, the stock could rise to $400 through a gamma-squeeze effect and surpass Nvidia.
Options, gamma squeeze mechanics, and investor commentary
A gamma squeeze is an upward spiral driven by options market makers being forced to buy the underlying stock as prices rise. SpaceX’s free float is extremely low at 4.2%, while retail buying enthusiasm is high. Retail investors who have not yet obtained SPCX common shares may turn to cheaper call options. If large amounts of capital aggressively buy call options, market makers must continue purchasing SPCX spot shares to hedge their risk. That buying can then push the stock higher and create a positive feedback loop. The 2021 surge in GameStop (GME) was cited in the original report as one of the classic examples of this effect.
Institutional ratings and comments from well-known investors also shaped the pricing narrative around SPCX. Before the U.S. market opened on June 15, Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan initiated coverage of SpaceX with an “Outperform” rating and set a short-term price target of $190. After the U.S. market opened on Monday, SPCX eventually closed at $192.5, essentially in line with Oppenheimer’s target.
On June 14, entrepreneur, XPRIZE founder, and early SpaceX investor Peter H. Diamandis wrote that SpaceX was the “railroad in orbit” and would open the era of human multi-planet civilization, creating huge wealth just as 19th-century railroads opened the American West. He also predicted that SpaceX and Tesla would merge within the next year and become the first $100 trillion company.
Diamandis added that over the past decade, whenever he freed up capital from other transactions, he invested those funds in Bitcoin. Now, however, whenever he has idle capital, he invests in SpaceX. He acknowledged that the stock price would decline when locked-up shareholders are able to sell shares and some shareholders cash out, but said his SpaceX investment was not aimed at pursuing quarterly share-price gains. Instead, he framed it as a bet on advancing the extraterrestrial economy.
On June 16, well-known Silicon Valley investor Brad Gerstner described SpaceX in the latest episode of the BG2 podcast as an asset that institutional investors must buy and hold. His reasoning was that the company sits at the intersection of two major themes: the space economy and the expansion of artificial-intelligence computing power.