SpaceX shares have cratered 23% from their June 16 peak, wiping out roughly $600 billion in market value over three trading days, and the establishment press can barely hide its satisfaction—but the company that just completed the largest IPO in history is still worth $2 trillion and still building rockets, not peddling fiat vaporware.
The sell-off matters to Main Street because it exposes how rigged this market is against ordinary buyers. The average investor who bought SpaceX on its June 12 debut at $160.90 has now watched most of their gains vanish, with shares closing Monday at $154.60 and premarket trading Tuesday sliding further to around $149, according to Reuters. NBC News framed the story around those retail investors "seeing gains wiped out." Business Insider called it a "post-IPO hangover" and quoted an IG analyst declaring that "euphoric sentiment" was "sputtering." The glee was palpable.
What the crowing outlets buried: SpaceX trades on a thin float, meaning only a small fraction of shares are available to trade, so every move gets amplified. CoinDesk was the only outlet to note this structural reality. When a stock swings 16% in a single session on one headline, that's not a verdict on the business—it's a function of market structure.
The trigger for Monday's 16% drop was Bloomberg's report that SpaceX plans to raise at least $20 billion through its first-ever bond sale to fund its AI buildout following the February acquisition of Elon Musk's xAI. Interactive Brokers senior economist Jose Torres said investors are "wary of the substantial cash required to fund technological ambitions." But here's what the skeptics won't tell you: SpaceX chose to borrow rather than issue new shares, which would have diluted existing holders. That's the responsible move—the kind Wall Street claims to want until a builder actually makes it.
The broader context matters more than the SpaceX-specific narrative. The Nasdaq fell 1.3% Monday with futures pointing to a 2.5% drop Tuesday, putting the index on pace to shed over $1 trillion in market value. The so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks are all under pressure as investors question whether the billions being poured into AI infrastructure will ever generate returns. Reuters reported that traders now expect the Federal Reserve under new Chair Kevin Warsh to raise borrowing costs by 50 basis points by December—up from expectations of just a single 25-basis-point hike two weeks ago. That's the real story: a central bank threatening to squeeze the economy again while the financial press blames the guy trying to get humanity to Mars.
Meanwhile, CoinDesk noted that bitcoin held near $63,600 through the same three-day stretch, barely dropping 1%, while SpaceX swung 23%. The U.S.-Iran peace process is pushing oil below $78 a barrel, which eases inflationary pressure—a slow tailwind for risk assets that the hawks at the Fed would rather you ignore.
SpaceX remains more valuable than Walmart or Meta. It raised $85 billion in its IPO. It is building real infrastructure, not financial derivatives. The question isn't whether a stock that surged past $2.7 trillion in its first week was due for a pullback—it was. The question is why the financial press saves its enthusiasm for the downfall of builders while the fiat machine at Goldman never gets the same scrutiny.
