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The initial SpaceX frenzy is cooling off — but a new wave of cash is waiting to strike
SpaceX is expected to secure index entry in the coming days and weeks, unlocking a new source of investor demand after there’s been ‘striking’ breadth so far
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Published: June 20, 2026 at 12:32 p.m. ET
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SpaceX shares are ever-so-slightly coming back down to earth — but stock indexes represent a fresh catalyst that lurks on the horizon.
At its intraday high on Tuesday, SpaceX’s stock
was up 67% from its initial-public-offering price of $135, en route to a third straight gain since its debut. But as momentum cooled over the course of the week, SpaceX shares now stand just 33% above their IPO price.
See more: Inside the wild week for SpaceX and the traders who pushed up its stock price
That pullback doesn’t diminish the intense investor fervor. Retail investors have demonstrated unprecedented interest in SpaceX’s IPO, while exchange-traded funds leveraged to SpaceX are likewise displaying eye-popping flows. Options for SpaceX’s stock launched on Tuesday and volume there has also been immense.
“Demand for SpaceX was never the question, access was,” Jake Behan, the head of capital markets for ETF provider Direxion, told MarketWatch over email. “The breadth of the market response has been striking.” His firm launched an ETF leveraged to SpaceX, “LOFF”
, within the early days of trading.
The initial market action has been enough to spur heightened optimism among the few analysts who’ve already been able to launch SpaceX coverage. Major banks that were involved in the IPO still have to wait until early July.
The research firm Zephirin recently initiated coverage on SpaceX with a buy rating and a $310 price target, reflecting what it called an “underappreciated supply-demand imbalance.” Oppenheimer analysts on Thursday raised their target to $250 from $190, citing SpaceX’s plan to acquire the artificial-intelligence firm Cursor, which is seen as a leading in agentic coding.
New demand drivers lie ahead. Later this month, SpaceX is set to be added to a handful of major indexes, which will mean that passive funds tracking those indexes will start to scoop up some stock.
On Thursday, it was announcedthat SpaceX would be added to the Russell 1000 Index
as part of its June reconstitution, set to take effect on June 26, which is next Friday. FTSE Russell said that SpaceX will be fully evaluated in December.
Some index providers have passed rules making it easier for large companies to gain entry shortly after their IPOs. The Center for Research in Securities Prices tweaked its policies to allow for newly public companies to join its indexes after just five trading days. Nasdaq and MSCI also have rules that could make SpaceX eligible for index inclusion after 10 and 15 trading days, respectively.
Combined, around $8.9 trillion worth of assets are in passive funds benchmarked to those index providers, according to Morningstar. S&P Dow Jones Indices also considered proposals that would have allowed SpaceX quick entry to the S&P 500, but opted against any changes to its policies.
“The IPO structure created a very powerful short-term technical setup,” Shay Boloor, the chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, told MarketWatch.
Boloor also pointed to SpaceX’s low float and staged lockup of insider shares, which will potentially prevent a single mass-selling opportunity. The first tranche of insider shares is set to be released from lockup just days after SpaceX reports June-quarter earnings, which FactSet projects to be in early August.
“While index inclusion alone is typically insufficient to drive sustained repricing, we see the combination of passive flows, momentum and limited float driving upside beyond historical index-addition moves,” the Zephirin analysts said.
SpaceX is also preparing to launch a bond sale, according to a Bloomberg report which said the company would start reaching out to investors on Monday. The offering is expected to be at least $20 billion, Bloomberg reported, with proceeds going toward refinancing a $20 billion bridge loan that matures in September 2027.
The company already raked in $85.7 billion in proceeds from its IPO last week. In its paperwork, SpaceX said it is requiredto use the proceeds from certain debt financings, as well as an IPO, to repay amounts outstanding under the bridge loan. Overall, SpaceX has $29.1 billion worth of debt, according to its IPO filing.
The bond sale would be SpaceX’s first issuance of investment-grade dollar bonds. On Thursday, the company received a “BBB” credit rating from S&P Global Ratings. Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Ratings, respectively, assigned SpaceX “BBB+” and “BAA1” ratings.
That’s a good sign for SpaceX, which will likely continue to raise capital in the future, primarily by taking on more debt, according to Oppenheimer analysts. The firm sees SpaceX following a template set by Musk at Tesla
, which it said leaned heavily on debt in its early years.
Read: Is Tesla succeeding in AI? Watch this for a clue.
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About the Author
William Gavin is a tech reporter for MarketWatch. He is based in New York.
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