SpaceX joins NASDAQ-100, $SPCX slides 5% on first day

SpaceX officially entered the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, and the market responded with the enthusiasm of someone receiving socks for their birthday. Shares of SPCX dropped roughly 5% on debut day, closing near $151 after opening around $159.

The numbers behind the nosedive

SPCX went public in mid-June 2026 at $135 per share, in an IPO that raised somewhere between $75B and $85.7B. That made it one of the largest public offerings in history, by a wide margin.

The stock then ripped higher, peaking around $225 shortly after the listing. So even after Monday’s selloff to $151, early IPO buyers are still sitting on roughly 12% gains from the offering price.

The trading range before the Nasdaq-100 inclusion was between $147 and $226, meaning the stock is now sitting near the bottom of that band. The market cap, which exceeded $2 trillion at its highs, has pulled back meaningfully.

This is textbook “sell the news” behavior. The Nasdaq-100 inclusion was widely telegraphed, thanks to Nasdaq’s fast-entry rules for large IPOs. Every passive fund tracking the index, including the massive QQQ ETF, was effectively forced to buy shares.

Wall Street is still bullish, for what that’s worth

Despite the rocky first day in the index, analyst sentiment around SPCX remains overwhelmingly positive. Multiple banks issued Buy or Overweight ratings on inclusion day, pointing to SpaceX’s dominance in reusable rocket technology as a core thesis.

Morgan Stanley set the street-high price target at $300 with an Overweight rating. The broader range of analyst targets spans from $205 to $300, which implies significant upside from current levels near $151.

Why this matters beyond the stock price

SpaceX’s addition to the Nasdaq-100 means automatic inclusion in every ETF and mutual fund that tracks it. It’s worth noting that SPCX was excluded from the S&P 500 due to its limited trading history. The Nasdaq-100’s fast-track rules for large IPOs allowed SpaceX to leapfrog the usual waiting period.

The stock has now fallen roughly 33% from its $225 peak. Monitor the $147 level closely, as that represents the low end of SPCX’s pre-inclusion trading range. A break below that could signal that passive fund buying has been fully absorbed and that price discovery is entering a new phase.

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