SpaceX Stock Sinks to Fresh Low as Index Glow Fades and Lock-Up Clouds Gather

Spacex stock nears 52-week low, down 38.67% from record despite FAA clearance and NASA contract. Passive buying from Nasdaq-100 inclusion underwhelms as structural risks loom.

The spacecraft maker’s shares aren’t getting any lift from the headlines. SpaceX stock closed at €119.26 on Tuesday, just 18 cents above its 52-week low of €119.04 — a depth reached earlier that same day. The equity has now tumbled 38.67% from its record of €194.46, struck in mid-June barely a week after its historic Nasdaq debut.

Yet the same stretch brought two unambiguous operational wins. On Monday the Federal Aviation Administration closed its investigation into the May Starship failure, accepting SpaceX’s root-cause analysis of heating damage to propulsion components and faulty engine alarm settings. The agency cleared the path for Flight 13, now slated for as early as Thursday. A day later, NASA redirected its SunRISE solar observation mission from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, citing persistent certification delays at ULA. The contract is at least the fifth major mission to defect from Vulcan to SpaceX’s stable.

None of it has arrested the stock’s slide. The relative strength index sits at 39.9, a reading that points to sustained selling pressure but not yet oversold territory, while annualized volatility of 97.75% underscores a market still jittery after a 28.17% rout over the past 30 days. The price action suggests the market’s focus has already moved past regulatory tailwinds and toward a pair of looming structural challenges.

The first is the fading tailwind from SpaceX’s lightning-fast entry into the Nasdaq-100. The company joined the index on July 7 — less than a month after its June 12 market debut and the fastest ascent any stock has ever made into the benchmark. The feat was enabled by a Nasdaq rule change on May 1 that lets mega-cap newcomers apply for inclusion after only 15 trading days, compared with the prior three-month waiting period. But the anticipated buying wave from passive funds tracking the index landed with less force than expected, because only about 5% of shares were floated in the IPO. Despite a market capitalization equivalent to €1.671 trillion, the narrow float left index-tracking funds holding smaller positions than the headline figure suggests.

CNBC’s Leslie Picker estimated that more than $800 billion in assets directly track the Nasdaq-100, with over half of that flowing through the Invesco QQQ ETF. JPMorgan pegged the forced buying triggered by the inclusion at roughly $4.3 billion — a material sum, but one that appears to have been quickly absorbed.

History, meanwhile, offers an uncomfortable precedent. An analysis by The Motley Fool draws parallels to Palantir, which peaked in late December 2024 almost exactly when it entered the Nasdaq-100 and then shed nearly 25% of its value. More stark is the case of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy): its all-time high came in November 2024, one month before its own index admission, and the stock has since lost about 80% of that peak. While SpaceX’s eventual addition to the index will generate some recurring passive demand as the free float grows, the analysis warns that the selling pressure from lock-up expirations and valuation concerns could dominate for quarters.

That brings the second cloud: the approaching lock-up expiration on August 6, the same day SpaceX is due to report its first quarterly earnings as a public company. Roughly 20% of insider shares become tradable that day, with an additional 10% potentially coming free if conditions tied to the IPO price are met. Research firm 22V Research warns that by early September, insiders could sell as much as 44% of total shares, effectively boosting the current float by about 900%. With the index-related buying impulse fading, such an avalanche of new supply could trigger further convulsions.

The immediate test, however, is Flight 13. This will be the 13th integrated Starship test and the second flight of Version 3 hardware. Crucially, SpaceX plans to deploy 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites — each capable of up to 60 terabits per second — and attempt a controlled re-entry of the upper stage over the Indian Ocean, recorded by six specially equipped satellites with white-painted heat-shield tiles serving as camera targets. A successful mission would offer concrete proof of the V3 platform’s maturity. A failure would reinforce the skittishness that has kept the stock pinned near its lows, as investors weigh the “fly, fail, fix” ethos against the immense capital demands of the Mars infrastructure program.