SpaceX debut turnover exceeds Nvidia by 3.5x; analyst flags inverse and leveraged ETF opportunity

Rob Isbitts Wed, June 24, 2026 at 11:18 AM PDT 5 min read

• SPCX: -0.87%
• NVDA: -1.59%
• QQQ: +0.81%

We have moved directly from months of intense media anticipation surrounding the SpaceX (SPCX) IPO into a period of extreme price discovery.

SpaceX set an entirely new benchmark for initial public offerings, raising approximately $75 billion in a single day. This instantly made it the largest IPO in financial history. The enormous capital required to settle this transaction forced institutional desks to reallocate liquidity away from other sectors. Some market participants have attributed recent weakness in the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) to traders selling stocks to free up cash for SPCX.

More News from Barchart

• Ahead of Micron Earnings, Here's What Barchart Data Says Comes Next for MU Stock
• Huge, Unusual In-the-Money Call Option Volume in Intel Stock Today Shows Investors Bullish
• Lam Research Stock Just Got a New Street-High Price Target. NAND Equipment Demand Can Take LRCX Higher.
• Get exclusive insights with the FREE Barchart Brief newsletter. Subscribe now for quick, incisive midday market analysis you won't find anywhere else.

The company bypassed traditional underwriting norms by allocating a record 20% of total IPO shares directly to retail participants. The self-directed trading community responded immediately. On the debut day alone, retail net buying reached $117 million—the largest retail net accumulation for any stock market debut in history.

During its first three trading sessions, intense buying pressure pushed the share price to an intraday peak of $225.64. At that high-water mark, the company's valuation surpassed the $2 trillion threshold, briefly eclipsing Microsoft (MSFT) to become the fourth most valuable publicly traded corporation in the United States—all while currently operating without net profitability.

At one point, daily turnover in the rocket company's equity was more than 3.5 times that of Nvidia (NVDA), which routinely leads global markets in liquidity allocation. For a brief window, SpaceX single-handedly monopolized the market's attention.

If the current decade has taught me anything as an investor, it's that my late father's two rules for investing remain the best advice:

1. You never know how high a stock will go.
2. You never know how low a stock will go.

Swap out "mania" for "stock" and you'll see my point. SPCX is, by many accounts, half growth stock and half meme stock. The growth part is in the name: SpaceX is a space exploration company with a wide-moat business, huge first-mover advantages in satellites, rocketry, and more. However, its other half is a small collection of losing businesses.

Story Continues

So why the intense interest? The volume figures, the "all-in" attitude from retail investors—which started well before the stock actually came to market—reflect the investing world we now live in. One where what the masses see and hear in mainstream media has as much influence on their actual investing decisions as any fundamental, quantitative, or technical factor.

And I Like It

As skeptical as I am, the longer your history as an investor, the more you learn about human behavior. So instead of being a curmudgeon who complains endlessly about volume records for new, highly imperfect public companies, I have taken a very different approach: I'm pouncing on this market climate like a tiger.

What does that mean? More trading, a shorter time horizon, using a full toolset including ETFs, stocks, and options. And putting even more emphasis on technical and emotional trends than ever before—all with a rock-solid underpinning of risk management.

In the case of SPCX, I've already moved on from some nicely profitable put and covered call option trades and hold a smaller position in those. Beyond the stock itself, I'm embracing inverse ETFs that I suspect will be a more sustainable way to profit from future declines in SPCX. Options are great—until volatility spikes to a point where even selling calls against a position no longer makes for efficient trading.