SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) just did something it had never done before: it traded below its $135 IPO price. Shares fell as much as ~2.9% on Wednesday to an all-time low near $132, barely a month after the biggest listing in history — a record ~$86bn IPO that briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. From its mid-June high of $225.64 (when it was worth more than Microsoft or Amazon), the stock is now down roughly 34%.

Why it’s sliding

The debut ran on pure hype, and reality is catching up. Three things bit at once: the valuation looks stretched for a company still deep in the red (a reported net loss of ~$4.9bn in 2025 and ~$4.3bn in Q1 2026); a China wake-up call — state-owned CASC launched a reusable Long March 10B rocket and landed it at sea, narrowing SpaceX’s biggest edge (cheap, reusable boosters); and a Starship stumble in May, when the Super Heavy booster took heat damage at stage separation and was lost. Put together, the new-IPO “honeymoon” snapped.

The ripple: a wobble in the sector’s poster child pressures the whole space-and-satellite trade — think Rocket Lab (RKLB), Intuitive Machines (LUNR) and AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) — and the China-reusability headline is a quiet read-through for defense and launch names.

The one thing that flips it: a clean, fully successful next Starship flight (or a blockbuster Starlink number) could reignite the story fast — more than 80% of analysts covering the stock still carry buy-equivalent ratings, so sentiment is one good launch away from turning.

As of ~2:05 pm ET / 11:35 pm IST, Wed 15 Jul 2026. Sources: Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance. For discussion and education only — not investment advice. Verify before acting.