SPCX is now Wall Street's most shorted new stock

(invezz.com)

55 points | by lbrito 7 hours ago ago

88 comments

  • mikewarot an hour ago ago

    I'm not crazy enough to try to short it, but getting out of the money put options a year or two out seems like a good idea.

    If you're going to short it, you better have a buffer big enough to cover it going up to $500 for a moment somewhere before Elon is free to sell next summer. Someone will do a short squeeze, and slowly sell into it.

  • fsuts 7 hours ago ago

    In a few weeks the pre-ipo share owners can offload the first batch of their shares (after q2 results release)

    So guessing non investors in SpaceX are shorting for this event in expectation of a drop

    • echrisinger 7 hours ago ago

      Typically this would be prohibited (at least as an employee)

      • cj 7 hours ago ago

        If you have holdings that are locked up, are you allowed to short stock or use options to hedge your position?

        • unknownfuture 2 hours ago ago

          No. Typically lockup agreements prevent any kind of trading of derivative or synthetic positions (think: shorts, swaps, options, etc).

        • BobbyJo 6 hours ago ago

          Almost certainly, outside of standard trade restriction windows. I don't think they have any control over what you do in the market outside of preventing insider trading.

          • unknownfuture 2 hours ago ago

            Yes they absolutely can and do. Lockup provisions are contractual and typically quite strict.

      • axus 7 hours ago ago

        I'm not an employee :)

      • s1artibartfast 6 hours ago ago

        Sorta, there are no SEC requirements for lockup. It is all depends on the agreement between the IPO company and the IPO underwriters syndicate. Spotify and Slack notably skipped lockup entirely.

        Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BoA, ect are the ones who set the IPO lockup terms based on their risk and exposure post IPO.

        Indexes, exchanges, underwriters, ect are all private institutions who mostly can and do set their own rules.

        • fsuts 6 hours ago ago

          The terms are public so you can read them

          Something like 20% can be sold after the q2 results are released

          • s1artibartfast 4 hours ago ago

            I am fully aware of the terms. There are lots of schedules. I was speaking to the origins of "prohibitions".

            It is also worth noting that typical lockup contracts can be waived early at the sole discretion of the underwriters.

  • himata4113 7 hours ago ago

    Hasn't the stock already collapsed below IPO price? Does that mean the IPO was simply overpriced? Do these people expect the stock to go down even further? Shorting is way more risky I don't see why this would be the case unless my questions turned out to be predictions.

    • mrweasel 7 hours ago ago

      I wouldn't say that it collapsed, it's only slightly under its IPO price, $134 vs. $135.

      However it's not going up and later this month the first lockup period ends and people who got stock options are allowed to sell some of their stocks. These people don't care if the price is $134 or $135, because they go in much much lower, down to $30, from what I can tell. So starting this month there's going to be new shares available to buy, and the sellers are less critical of the price your offering.

    • hattmall 7 hours ago ago

      Yes, people expect it to trade much lower, around $40 per share, still would be a huge valuation for what the company has done. Goldman Sachs analysts had an extreme range, of like $6 Billion to $5T, but the consensus $2T required 100x revenue multiple by 2030. If revenue was less than 10x by 2030 it's less than $100B company, and only $6B if it remains flat. So a lot of downsides and the upside requires a continuation of some insane magic.

      • kirubakaran 7 hours ago ago

        > Goldman Sachs analysts had an extreme range, of like $6 Billion to $5T

        What a weird way for them to say "we don't know"! It's like saying this house has 0 to 100 bathrooms.

        • hattmall 7 hours ago ago

          True, but it's the range from different analysts. Saying "we don't know" isn't really an option. Gotta say something when your IPOing a trillion dollar company.

        • marcosdumay 6 hours ago ago

          To keep the proportions correct, it's between a model house the size of a piece of paper or a normal 2-bedrooms.

        • PaulDavisThe1st 7 hours ago ago

          "So you're saying there's a chance? It might actually be possible to have 100 bathrooms! I knew it!"

      • AviationAtom 7 hours ago ago

        I haven't seen anything saying $40. The lowest I have seen is $70.

        • rconti 7 hours ago ago

          From TFA:

          > "I think it could be half over the course of the year," Noble said, adding that he believes a fair value for the shares is around $30, implying a decline of roughly 78% from current levels.

          • AviationAtom 6 hours ago ago

            That's an absurd valuation. Typically stocks are valued at what people are willing to pay, with earnings partially driving that value.

            • unknownfuture 2 hours ago ago

              I'd argue the opposite. If the price is largely vibes, you could see wild swings if sentiment changes dramatically. The bitcoin market is an excellent example of this. Worse, the recent BBB- rating on their bond issuance suggests a lack of lender confidence, and if their stock continues to decline those factors could compound.

            • mattas 6 hours ago ago

              A rational person isn't willing to pay more than the present value of future cash flows. Just like how a rational person wouldn't pay $101 for a $100 bill.

              Where it gets fun is that: (1) we have people selling $100 bills for more than $100 and, (2) we have people gladly buying $100 bills for more than $100.

        • axus 3 hours ago ago

          Verizon + AT&T + Boeing was my estimate for SpaceX value.

    • mikeryan 7 hours ago ago

      I think the pullback from the initial IPO bump was expected. I think the news here is expectations that it has a lot more downside to come.

      Particularly once it gets past the lockup period. If I had to guess I say a lot of folks are thinking a lot of people will sell post lock up and they’re timing their shorts around that date.

    • anthonj 7 hours ago ago

      Tbh I'm no5 sure I've even seen an IPO where the price didn't collapse initially.

      • dofm 6 hours ago ago

        More than half of IPOs fall below their price in the first year and AFAIK it’s something like more than half underperforming market over the first five.

        Basically an IPO is a bad bet for a five year position. But SPCX is especially bad.

    • downrightmike 7 hours ago ago

      JPM still thinks its a $300 stock

      • ryandvm 7 hours ago ago

        It is... as long as somebody else thinks so.

      • jgalt212 7 hours ago ago

        so does Jack Grubman, after being instructed to take a "fresh look" at it.

  • quantummagic 7 hours ago ago

    Every single shorted stock, was purchased by someone else who is taking the long side of the trade. So there's as many people betting the stock will go up. This says more about volatility and volume of trading, than anything else.

    • seanhunter 7 hours ago ago

      That is true for the stocks but not options. Anyone with a brokerage account can write some calls and if they get exercised it’s up to them to find the stock to buy. Most pricing models assume the liquidity is always available but that’s not necessarily the case.

      • maxcan 7 hours ago ago

        true, but the other side of that trade is almost always an options market maker who will hedge their delta by trading the underlying stock. so, yes, buying a call doesn't directly represent share ownership, but it almost always results in a commensurate share purchase. not 1:1, but reflecting the delta of the option.

    • Terr_ 7 hours ago ago

      > Every single shorted stock, was purchased by someone else who is taking the long side of the trade.

      > So there's as many people betting the stock will go up.

      The first sentence is a useful reminder, but second has a error: A single person can have multiple bets, and not all bets are the same volume.

      For example, Alice has a budget of $10 and believes the coin-flip will land Heads. Alice makes a $5 wager with Bob and a $3 wager with Carol and a $2 wager with Dan. The equilibrium is in money, rather than opinion-havers.

      • quantummagic 6 hours ago ago

        You're absolutely correct, and I should have been more precise. The value is always identical, but the number of participants, need not be the same for each position. Mea culpa.

      • 6 hours ago ago
        [deleted]
    • WarmWash 7 hours ago ago

      This isn't saying anything, anyone selling a stock is selling to someone going long.

      • quantummagic 7 hours ago ago

        That's exactly the point. The clickbait title wants you to forget that fact and draw an incorrect conclusion. It could have also been, "SPCX is the most purchased new stock", but that wouldn't have fed the desired narrative.

        • M3L0NM4N 6 hours ago ago

          You're conflating two things though. Shares are being borrowed to sell in this instance, referred to as short-selling. These shares can theoretically be borrowed multiple times over to sell (ex. Gamestop fiasco). This is not current owners of the shares selling to new buyers, they are selling already-owned shares of SPCX.

          • quantummagic 6 hours ago ago

            It has nothing to do with the shares being borrowed. That's a separate transaction that comes with a fee. The point is that the share is then sold. It's sold to someone who is taking the long position. The original owner of the share, from whom it was borrowed, makes their money in fees, and by investing any security deposit given by the borrower. They are not taking a long or short position.

            • M3L0NM4N 6 hours ago ago

              Yes, that is how short-selling works, but you're claiming that the only reason the headline isn't "SPCX is the most purchased new stock" is for narrative reasons, which is patently false. Shorting necessitates that someone decides to sell a stock they do not own, which creates downward pressure on the price. Saying "there's always someone on the other end of the transaction" is true, but not at the same price. If what you were implying were true, the price of shares would never change. You probably understand this, but share prices decrease and increase due to the number of buyers and sellers. Hence, the more people that short-sell a stock, the lower the share price goes until it can find buyers.

              • quantummagic 6 hours ago ago

                I never intended to imply that the law of supply and demand was nullified. And I didn't say that the price was unaffected, just that there is as much money thinking they're getting a valuable long term investment, as there is as money shorting the stock. (By definition, since every sale is consensual, and of the opposite position)

        • WarmWash 6 hours ago ago

          But the act of selling (and shorting) puts downward pressure on the stock. Those buyers are buyers at a lower price, not a higher one (like you would find in a stock with lots of buyers).

          That's why saying "most shorted stock" is saying something and "every seller has a buyer" is not.

          • quantummagic 6 hours ago ago

            Yes, stocks go up and down; hardly revelatory. The point, regardless of the imprecise wording of my alternate title, remains. There are people who think they are getting a valuable investment, at the price short-sellers are willing to sell at. There's just as much optimism as pessimism about the stock, at that price. And that's my complaint about the title, it wants to only highlight one side of the trade -- for narrative reasons.

            • WarmWash 5 hours ago ago

              >There's just as much optimism as pessimism about the stock, at that price.

              No, there isn't, because the price breaks in the direction that there is more optimism or pessimism. When the pessimists run out of optimists at $135/share, they start digging for them at $134/share. The price ran out of optimists and had to move down to find more. Otherwise the price would lock at a single point.

              And abundance of pessimists indicates that a lot of "downward digging" is taking place, it's very relevant.

              You're hyper focusing on the tree here and missing the forest.

              • quantummagic 5 hours ago ago

                People respond to market forces. When they see that there are other people making irrational valuations, they may wait to buy even lower. It's not a judgment about the intrinsic value of the stock at the current price, but of opportunities in the market.

                It's still a hard fact that for every single trade, there is someone as fully optimistic, to perfectly match the pessimistic side. And people have to be pretty committed to a narrative to deny that fact.

                • WarmWash 2 hours ago ago

                  Your hard fact is correct, but it's your extrapolation that it tells you something meaningful that isn't. The fact provides zero information. Its on par with "every gallon of milk is sold to a person" or "every leaf comes from a tree".

                  • quantummagic 2 hours ago ago

                    No, you're just working very hard to miss the point. Nobody can place the pessimistic bet, unless there is someone equally optimistic in the other direction. The fact that you're fixated on the price varying as each side attempts to do the best it can is just a commitment to a narrative, not a useful insight.

                    Here's the simple way to know you're wrong. The stock price isn't zero. That means there people willing (at some price) to put their money where their mouth is, that the people betting against the stock at that price are wrong.

                    But at that point they're both just making bets.. all it says is that there are an equal number of dollars willing to gamble at that price point. It says nothing about which side of the gamble will win.

                    Shorts don't exist in a vacuum. They literally can't be made, unless there was someone in the market who thinks that at the short price, the stock is a good investment opportunity. Every trade is proof that the market thinks the stock is a good investment at that price. I don't know why you have such a hard time facing up to that fact, even after you admit it is one.

                    • M3L0NM4N an hour ago ago

                      > No, you're working very hard to miss the point.

                      It seems the opposite is true here.

                      > [Shorts] literally can't be made, unless there was someone in the market who thinks that at the short price, the stock is a good investment opportunity. Every trade is proof that the market thinks the stock is a good investment at that price.

                      Again, this isn't true. The spot price has to decrease from the point where short-selling is happening for there to be a willing buyer, unless there is a new bid. Yes, transactions happen at one singular price, but if you're only saying that every seller has a buyer and every buyer has a seller, then the guy that you replied to is correct. What you're essentially saying is that "every gallon of milk is sold to a person". This is not useful information.

    • chuckadams 7 hours ago ago

      Given the continued downward trend, it may be the buyers may just be disagreeing on how fast it drops, not necessarily taking a long term buy and hold position. I don't know much about option pricing, but aren't put options basically betting on the spread?

      • quantummagic 7 hours ago ago

        Regardless, you can't short anything without someone taking the opposite position. It's really independent of the overall downward trend.

    • tpurves 7 hours ago ago

      You are assuming there are not naked shorts out there.

      • koolba 7 hours ago ago

        There’s always a buyer on the other side of a short, naked or located. The question is whether the originating broker actually borrowed the shares.

        They are supposed to verify that before they place the trade and generally do follow the rules. Because if they don’t, they will be not allowed to allow any short sales for that security.

      • quantummagic 7 hours ago ago

        They're illegal, and you can look at them just as the broker making a long bet themselves. Since they'll have to pay off the short seller, if the stock goes down.

    • u1hcw9nx 6 hours ago ago

      Almost all lenders are institutional funds like Vanguard and Fidelity.

      As index funds they were forced to buy. They are not taking any view.

  • hnburnsy 7 hours ago ago

    From Matt Levine just today...

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-07-16/sho...

      Right now, SpaceX has provided 639 million shares to trade. People want more.
      In a month, there will be 1,583 million shares to trade.
      But right now, there are actually 820 million shares to trade: the 639 million provided by SpaceX, plus another 181 million provided by short sellers.
    • downrightmike 6 hours ago ago

      $4T was 20% of all US currency ever printed in 2020. What makes this worth 10%? China and Japan are already catching up.

      This was just a bag drop on retail and trying to force it into retirement funds proves it.

  • orsorna 7 hours ago ago

    Over two weeks ago, calls outnumbered puts 5 to 1 according to an article by SeekingAlpha. I am wondering if this flip is too reactive. I can't discount the "Musk premium" that keeps people enamored with his securities and cause unpredictability.

  • ge96 7 hours ago ago

    I just hope this doesn't destroy the company that would suck lose their edge and then China comes in

    • mattas 6 hours ago ago

      No one forced them to IPO well above the present value of their future cash flows. Or claim their TAM was $28 trillion.

  • ChrisArchitect 6 hours ago ago

    Related:

    SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933344

    SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920181

  • chuckadams 7 hours ago ago

    It's almost as if the market is returning a verdict on Elon's unilateral decision to burn barrels of company cash on xAI.

    • M3L0NM4N 6 hours ago ago

      I would argue the current price action isn't even driven by any company decisions. The stock needs to settle for a while after IPO.

    • AviationAtom 7 hours ago ago

      Anyone that thinks Musk approaches anything for short-term results doesn't understand Musk.

      • 7 hours ago ago
        [deleted]
      • klaff 7 hours ago ago

        I don't think Musk understands Musk.

      • sneurlax 7 hours ago ago

        anything nonhuman*

      • mjhay 6 hours ago ago

        It must be some 5-dimensional chess he’s playing, it couldn’t be that he’s just an edgelord Nazi whose brain has been liquefied by ketamine abuse

      • dofm 6 hours ago ago

        Someone who really understood long term results wouldn’t keep repeatedly promoting absurdly short timescales for major developments.

        He has a malignant narcissist’s distorted grasp of time: any future he promises is always nearer than is plausible, but the past is never finalised.

      • CamperBob2 7 hours ago ago

        What's the long game behind alienating well over half of Tesla's customer base by throwing Nazi salutes? How does that pay off in the end?

        • s1artibartfast 6 hours ago ago

          Under this analysis, what was the short term motive? How does that pay off?

          • CamperBob2 4 hours ago ago

            Ingratiating himself with Trump, I imagine. It certainly paid off in the short term, since he was given a golden ticket to sack the government.

            A lot of tech execs successfully brown-nosed Trump, which (unfortunately) is understandable to some extent given what was at stake with his tariffs and other assorted threats. But Musk is the only one who evidently enjoyed it.

        • Rover222 6 hours ago ago

          it's so weird and kinda disturbing how many people really believe that was a Nazi salute. It's so easy shape public opinion with media and algorithms.

          Same thing happening with "datacenters will destory the world because of their water use" BS

          • dofm 6 hours ago ago

            It was plainly obviously fascist signalling, whether trolling, joking or serious. Nazi? The detail doesn’t matter. But he knew what that looked like and he did it deliberately. It’s just not really plausible to pretend that he he wouldn’t have known what it looked like.

            • chuckadams 6 hours ago ago

              I personally think he really is a fascist, but I still don't think he was deliberately throwing out a Nazi salute. Just naive about waving to a crowd in front of a camera, which is very on-brand for him.

              • CamperBob2 4 hours ago ago

                See the .gifs I posted below. There is no way to spin that as naivete.

              • dofm 6 hours ago ago

                He's naïve about many things but I don't believe any of these people are ignorant of fascist imagery or its trollish power, even if only in some bullshit recycled bad-sci-fi trope sense.

                He may be more ignorant than he portrays but he is a malignant narcissist — guys like him don't even think fascism is a bad idea.

            • Rover222 6 hours ago ago

              This is so ridiculous, IMO. you can find Mamdami and AOC doing the exact same pose. Doesn't mean anything, it's a natural gesture when addressing a large crowd.

              • dofm 6 hours ago ago

                The pose, as a static image, looks a little bit like someone waving their whole arm to a large crowd.

                The video, by contrast, shows a man deliberately engaging in fascist salute gestures:

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw

                Pretending otherwise, that is ridiculous.

                • chuckadams an hour ago ago

                  Yikes. I initially saw a different photo that looked a lot more like it could have been waving, but yeah, that's just blatant.

                • Rover222 5 hours ago ago

                  [dead]

          • Larrikin 6 hours ago ago

            It was a Nazi salute.

  • Rover222 6 hours ago ago

    There's another Starship launch today. It'll be interesting to watch the stock price react to the failures and successes of their testing campaign.

  • glimshe 7 hours ago ago

    SpaceX's core business is transferring money from believers in Elon Musk's enrichment schemes to banks and short sellers.

    • kibwen 7 hours ago ago

      Not quite, it's also about transferring money to the Saudi princes who financed his buyout of Twitter.