SpaceX Stock Plunges 8.5% as KeyBanc Caution Deepens Post-IPO Selloff

SpaceX shares tumbled 8.55% to $169.18 on Monday, extending a sharp pullback that has now erased much of the spectacular rally that briefly made Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company more valuable than Amazon and Microsoft in the days following its record-setting initial public offering.

A Steep Two-Day Slide

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation stock pulled back again on Thursday, falling 3.6% to close at $185 per share. That followed a 5% drop on Wednesday. It was down by about 5% in pre-market trading on Monday as well. Combined, the slide has erased most of the spectacular post-IPO rally that briefly pushed SpaceX past both Amazon and Microsoft in market cap.

The numbers tell the story clearly. SpaceX stock peaked at over $225 intraday the prior Tuesday — up nearly 67% from the $135 IPO price. Since then, shares have retreated by about 20% from that high, bringing the stock back to where it traded on day two after the IPO.

A New Catalyst for Monday’s Decline

SpaceX shares tumbled about 7% Monday after KeyBanc adopted a more cautious stance on the stock, arguing that its current valuation has run well ahead of the company’s underlying fundamentals — adding fresh analyst skepticism to a stock already grappling with post-IPO profit-taking.

A Reality Check After Frenzied Retail Buying

The decline marks a notable shift after a period of extraordinary retail investor enthusiasm that characterized the stock’s first days of trading. “We’re running out of superlatives to describe retail enthusiasm for SpaceX. SPCX has now topped the leaderboard as the most bought stock by retail investors for three consecutive sessions,” Vanda Research said in a note. “In total, retail investors have bought $369.8 million of SPCX over the last three sessions. To put that into perspective, retail bought just $100 million of QQQ and $88.2 million of NVDA over the same period.”

That buying intensity, the firm noted, has been roughly four times larger than what flows into traditionally retail-favored names like the Nasdaq ETF or Nvidia over a comparable stretch.

A Skeptical Voice From a Former Nasdaq Chief

As the rally has cooled, prominent voices in the financial industry have grown more vocal about questioning whether the stock’s valuation reflects genuine business fundamentals. Former Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld said publicly that SPCX trades on hopes instead of fundamentals. SpaceX’s journey from $135 to $225.64 to its subsequent pullback over the span of roughly a week represents the clearest evidence yet that SPCX today is a float-and-sentiment stock overlaying a fundamental Starlink and Starship story.

Why the Stock Has Been So Volatile

Much of the extreme price action tracing through SpaceX’s first weeks as a public company stems from a structural feature of the IPO itself: an unusually small float of tradable shares. It is noteworthy that only about 4.2% of total shares are free to trade, meaning the stock’s tiny float amplified its upward moves — and, more recently, its downward ones as well.

The Financial Picture Behind the Volatility

Beneath the dramatic price swings, SpaceX’s underlying financial disclosures have continued drawing scrutiny from analysts and investors alike. SpaceX disclosed in its IPO filing that it posted a net loss of $4.9 billion in 2025 and another $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026, with Starlink remaining its only profitable segment. Within 48 hours of trading, the stock had already surpassed the highest analyst price target published at the time.

A Drop Despite Strength in the Broader Market

Monday’s session continued a pattern in which SpaceX has significantly underperformed broader market benchmarks even during periods of overall market strength. The S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq have all posted gains on days when SpaceX continued declining, highlighting how sharply the stock has decoupled from broader market sentiment in recent sessions.

The Bull Case Hasn’t Disappeared Entirely

Despite the recent weakness, some analysts have continued to make the case for significant additional upside, even after the pullback. Arete analyst Andrew Beale initiated coverage of SpaceX with a buy rating, highlighting that Starlink’s V3 satellites create a substantial opportunity in suburban broadband. Beale set a street-high price target of $401 for SPCX stock, implying significant upside from the stock’s recent trading levels even after accounting for the post-IPO retracement.

Other Space Stocks Also Felt the Pressure

The selloff in SpaceX shares has rippled across the broader space and satellite sector, with several related companies posting declines of their own in recent sessions. Other space sector companies also declined, including Intuitive Machines, Planet Labs, Satellogic, and Virgin Galactic, which fell between 3% and 5%. AST SpaceMobile dropped more than 8%, while satellite communications company EchoStar, which held SpaceX shares before the IPO, fell more than 6%.

Falling Below Amazon Once Again

The scale of the pullback has been enough to reverse SpaceX’s brief tenure among the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies. The SpaceX stock drop pushed the company’s market cap to roughly $2.43 trillion, slipping back below Amazon, which closed at $2.63 trillion. Just days earlier, SpaceX had briefly surpassed both Amazon and Microsoft to become one of the most valuable companies in the world.

A Board Addition Amid the Volatility

Amid the share price turbulence, the company also made a notable governance move. SpaceX announced it has added Roelof Botha — a longtime Elon Musk ally — to its board as an independent director and audit committee member. Botha becomes the eighth board member at the company. Musk controls more than 82% of voting rights and owns shares worth over $1 trillion, which means outside shareholders have limited influence regardless of board composition.

What Analysts Say Investors Should Watch

Given the structural factors driving the stock’s volatility, several analysts have suggested investors temper their expectations for stability in the near term. High volatility will likely persist until the December 2026 lockup expiration, when significantly more shares become available for trading, or until the company’s first post-IPO earnings release, expected in early August, provides the market with a clearer fundamentals-based anchor for the stock.

With SpaceX’s market capitalization having now retreated below Amazon’s after briefly overtaking both Amazon and Microsoft just days into its public trading life, the coming weeks are likely to test whether the stock can stabilize around current levels or continue retracing further toward the lower end of its 52-week range. Given the combination of a still-tiny tradable float, a widening range of analyst price targets, and a business that remains unprofitable on a net income basis despite Starlink’s strength, SpaceX’s next major test will likely come either from its scheduled August earnings report or from the gradual unlocking of additional shares later this year — both of which analysts expect to bring considerably more clarity to a stock that has, so far, traded primarily on sentiment rather than fundamentals.