SpaceX ended its first day of trading last Friday at $160.95, fixing its market capitalization at $2.1 trillion. The listing still set the record for the largest IPO in U.S. stock-market history, but the close did not satisfy every expectation that had been built before the debut. CFRA even assigned SPCX a “sell” rating, showing that the capital-market response to Elon Musk’s Mars narrative was divided after the first session.
Monday’s Rally Put SpaceX at $2.519 Trillion
That debate changed sharply after the U.S. market opened on Monday. According to Gate U.S. equity market data, SPCX climbed throughout the session and closed at $192.5, up 19.6% for the day. The closing price was also the intraday high. With that move, SpaceX’s market capitalization rose to $2.519 trillion, making it the eighth-largest company in the world by market value.
Pre-market activity showed that demand had not faded. Hyperliquid data showed SPCX trading above $214 before the next U.S. session. Based on that level, the source described a continuation of Monday’s rally after Tuesday’s open, along with a move past seventh-ranked Amazon by market capitalization, as an extremely high-probability scenario.
U.S.-Iran Understanding Added a Macro Tailwind
The broader market backdrop also turned more favorable. This week, the United States and Iran reached an understanding agreement, bringing an important positive factor to U.S. equities. On June 15, Donald Trump announced that an agreement with Iran had been reached and that the Strait of Hormuz would be opened. Unlike previous rounds of unilateral rhetoric, 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 on Friday, June 19. The agreement was also confirmed again by Iran’s president. U.S. Vice President Vance said the agreement reached by the two sides had already been signed electronically over the weekend, indicating that its terms had taken effect.
After the news developed, U.S. stocks rose broadly at the open. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.92%, the S&P 500 gained 1.65%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 3.07%. Morgan Stanley said a long-term U.S.-Iran agreement and lower oil prices would ease inflation pressure. The firm also said U.S. equities were shifting from a “one-legged market” toward healthier broad-based gains, with upward momentum no longer limited to technology stocks and gradually spreading to a wider range of cyclical industries.
Retail Flows and the Green Shoe Option Tightened Supply
From the perspective of market sentiment and fund flows, SpaceX remained the single stock most heavily favored by retail money. According to Vanda Track, on June 16 U.S. local time, SpaceX received about $93.8 million in net retail purchases in one day. That represented around 73% of total net retail inflows into all U.S. individual stocks that day. In other words, for nearly every four dollars of incremental retail money entering the U.S. equity market, about three dollars went into SpaceX.
Against that backdrop of strong demand for SPCX, SpaceX’s underwriters exercised the IPO’s over-allotment option, also known as the green shoe mechanism. They purchased an additional 83.33 million shares, bringing the total IPO issuance to 638,888,888 Class A common shares. The total amount raised in the offering increased to $85.7 billion. The source said that scale exceeded almost every recorded over-allotment arrangement for a technology-company IPO.
Even after the expanded allocation, reports said most eligible U.S. retail investors received only about one share in the SpaceX IPO subscription process. With such a low free float and intense demand, concentrated buying by retail investors was able to lift the share price significantly. On June 16, financial media outlet zerohedge wrote that after SPCX options begin trading, the stock could rise to $400 through a gamma squeeze and surpass Nvidia.
A gamma squeeze is an upward spiral caused when options market makers are forced to buy the underlying stock while chasing the price higher in order to hedge risk. In the SpaceX case, the free float was described as extremely low at 4.2%, while retail buying enthusiasm remained high. Retail investors who did not receive or did not hold SPCX shares could instead buy relatively cheaper call options. If large amounts of capital rush into calls, market makers would need to keep buying SPCX spot shares for hedging, pushing the price higher and creating a positive feedback loop. The 2021 surge in GameStop, or GME, remains one of the classic examples of that effect.
Oppenheimer, Diamandis and Gerstner Added to the Narrative
Institutional and prominent investor comments added another layer to the SPCX discussion. On June 15, before the U.S. market opened, Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan initiated coverage on SpaceX with an “outperform” rating and set a short-term price target of $190. After the market opened on Monday, SPCX closed at $192.5, broadly in line with that Oppenheimer target.
On June 14, well-known entrepreneur, XPRIZE founder and early SpaceX investor Peter H. Diamandis wrote that SpaceX is the “railroad in orbit.” He said it would open the path to a multi-planetary human civilization and create enormous wealth in the same way that railroads opened the American West in the 19th century. He also predicted that within the next year SpaceX would merge with Tesla and become the first $100 trillion company.
Diamandis added that over the past decade, whenever he freed up capital from other transactions, he put that capital into Bitcoin. Now, he said, whenever he has idle capital, he invests in SpaceX. He also acknowledged that the share price would fall when locked-up shareholders are able to sell and some shareholders cash out, but said he is not investing in SpaceX for quarterly share-price gains. Instead, he framed the investment as support for the development of an off-Earth economy.
On June 16, prominent 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 on two major themes at the same time: the space economy and the expansion of artificial-intelligence computing power.