SpaceX Shares Dipped Below Their IPO Price. Here's What Its Brand-New Options Chain Is Already Pricing In

A record IPO just hit its first real test

SpaceX's common stock (ticker: SPCX) traded as low as $132.15 on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, before closing at $135.27 — the first time shares have dipped below the stock's $135 initial public offering (IPO) price intraday since it began trading on the Nasdaq on June 12, 2026.

That's a notable moment for one of the largest IPOs in market history. SpaceX's stock popped 19% on its first trading day and reached a record closing price in the days just after its debut. Wednesday's close left the stock down 33% from that record close, per Reuters. The company's market capitalization has slipped to around $1.8 trillion from about $2.1 trillion at the end of its debut session, also according to Reuters. At current levels, SpaceX trades at roughly 49 times expected revenue — versus about 15 times for Tesla — while the company reported a net loss of nearly $5 billion in its most recent fiscal year, driven largely by AI-segment integration costs; the core launch and satellite business had been profitable the year before. Of 32 analysts tracked by LSEG, 27 rate the stock a buy, four are neutral, and one rates it a sell — a third-party consensus, not an AskProsper assessment.

Falling below an IPO price sounds alarming, but it isn't rare or automatically predictive of anything. Reuters examined 50 high-profile U.S. IPOs since 2010 and found 21 fell below their offer price within the first two months of trading. Those 21 stocks went on to post a median gain of 61% from their debut — a real, if smaller, gain than the 112% median for the 29 stocks that never dipped below their IPO price. In other words: a post-IPO dip below the offer price has historically been a bump in the road for many stocks, not a verdict.

The clock everyone's actually watching: the lockup

The more structurally important date isn't today's price — it's SpaceX's first-ever quarterly earnings report as a public company, expected sometime in early-to-mid August 2026 (not yet officially scheduled by the company as of this writing).

Here's why that date matters so much. Like almost every IPO, SpaceX's insiders — employees and early investors — agreed to a lockup period, a contractual window during which they can't sell their shares on the open market. Lockups exist to prevent a flood of insider selling from swamping a brand-new stock in its first weeks of trading. When a lockup expires, previously restricted shares become eligible to sell, which can meaningfully increase the stock's tradeable supply (its "float") almost overnight.

SpaceX's lockup structure has two tranches:

• The main unlock: 911.5 million shares — held by rank-and-file employees and some early investors — become eligible for sale starting two trading days after SpaceX reports its first quarterly earnings. Reuters estimates those shares are worth roughly $123 billion, which is more than the entire ~$86 billion worth of stock currently tradeable on the Nasdaq.
• A conditional second unlock: An additional 455.8 million shares only become eligible for sale if SPCX stock closes above $175.50 for at least five of the ten consecutive trading days leading up to the earnings report — a performance-linked trigger that gives insiders (and the market) an added incentive to watch that specific price level.

Combined, unlocks scheduled through December 8, 2026 would raise SpaceX's tradeable float to roughly 40% of the company. The remaining 60% — including Elon Musk's stake — stays locked until mid-2027. Because the eligible share count so dramatically exceeds the current public float, options traders and long-term holders alike are watching the same two things: the actual earnings-report date, and whether the stock can hold above that $175.50 trigger.

What a five-week-old options chain actually looks like

SpaceX options began trading on Cboe, Nasdaq, and other options exchanges on June 16, 2026 — just three trading sessions after the stock's debut — with a full ladder of expirations, including weekly and monthly contracts out to December 2026 and LEAPS (long-dated options, expiring more than a year out) stretching to roughly June 2028.

Implied volatility (IV) is the options market's forward-looking estimate of how much a stock is expected to swing, expressed as an annualized percentage; higher IV means pricier options. On the very first day SpaceX options traded, at-the-money IV (options with a strike price closest to the current stock price) opened around 169% for the nearest weekly expiration — extraordinarily high compared to a mature mega-cap stock, where IV in the 20%–40% range is typical — and declined across the term structure — the curve of IV levels across different expiration dates — to about 78% for the longest-dated contracts nearly two-and-a-half years out.

That 91-percentage-point gap between near-term and long-term IV is itself a teaching point. With zero trading history, options market-makers have no historical price data to anchor their volatility estimates, so they price in outsized uncertainty around known, dateable catalysts sitting close together on the calendar — the lockup, the first earnings report, and (as of July 7) SpaceX's addition to the Nasdaq-100 index. As those events pass and more trading history accumulates, that term structure typically compresses toward something closer to normal.

Two other new-listing quirks were visible on day one and are common to any brand-new options chain: open interest (the number of outstanding, not-yet-closed contracts) started at zero across every strike, since no one had traded yet; and bid-ask spreads — the gap between what buyers offer and sellers ask — ran wider than on an established stock. Options-strategist commentary from Saxo Bank tracking the day-one session put at-the-money spreads around 1.5%–2.5% of the option's price, widening to 4% or more a couple of strikes out of the money. Wider spreads mean it costs more, in practice, to enter and exit a position.

The risk side, plainly stated

Options on a newly listed, high-valuation, thinly traded stock carry real risks beyond those of a typical blue-chip name. Elevated implied volatility means options premiums are expensive relative to the stock's eventual realized moves, which can work against buyers if the stock ends up calmer than the options market priced in. Wide bid-ask spreads can erode returns on both entries and exits. And — as with any options position — a bought option can lose most or all of its value if the stock doesn't move the way, or within the timeframe, the position anticipated; options are a leveraged, time-limited instrument, not a substitute for owning shares outright. Roughly ten leveraged single-stock exchange-traded funds tied to SPCX (both 2x-long and 2x-short) also launched alongside the stock's June debut, carrying their own amplified-loss and daily-reset risks that are distinct from options.

The takeaway

SpaceX trading below its IPO price is a data point, not a verdict — and the more useful lesson for options traders is structural: a scheduled, mechanical event like a lockup expiration gets priced into an options chain well before it happens, and options on a brand-new listing behave differently — in volatility, liquidity, and spread — than options on a stock with years of trading history. Those are transferable concepts worth understanding before the next high-profile IPO, regardless of what happens to SPCX specifically.

This article is educational commentary on public market events, not personalized investment, trading, or tax advice.