SpaceX stock rose early Friday, raising the possibility that shares will end a brutal four-week losing streak that has taken its toll onretail investors.
Shares of Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company were up 10% at $126.36, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively.
Early gains leave shares up 16.4% for the week. Better-than-expected second-quarter earnings have helped.
On Tuesday evening, SpaceX reported sales of $7.8 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, of $3.5 billion. Wall Street was looking for $6.8 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively. What’s more, analysts now project 2027 revenue of about $102 billion, up from $72 billion at the end of July, according to FactSet.
SpaceX stock is trying to end a four-week losing streak that has sent shares down 33%. That’s been particularly painful for retail investors, who were allocated about 20% of the shares sold in SpaceX’s record-setting IPO.
They have been buying since then. Data tracked by JPMorgan analyst Arun Jain shows retail inflows of at least $3.6 billion to SpaceX stock in the eight-plus weeks following the IPO.
Some back-of-the-envelope math shows the average price of those purchases is roughly $150 a share. Including the stock allocated in the IPO, retail shareholders have lost roughly $4.5 billion on SpaceX stock. In Wall Street parlance, that means retail shareholders have been the ones left “holding the bag.” They have endured painful losses partly avoided by institutions selling stock at higher prices.
Of course, institutional investors still own a lot of SpaceX stock. And it’s only a snapshot in time. No stock can really be judged over just a couple of months. And SpaceX stock has faced the typical IPO problem of locked-up shares. Millions of shares held by early investors and insiders are slowly becoming available to trade. The expectation that early investors take profits has kept a lid on shares.
That makes it tough for investors to know what the market really thinks of SpaceX stock. The lockup issue will fade as more shares are available to trade. It shouldn’t be a big factor by the end of the year. By early 2027, investors will know if all those retail purchases were made at good prices.
