HAWTHORNE, Calif. — SpaceX shares closed out a turbulent week on Friday, touching a post-IPO low of $122.12, but the story emerging from the tape isn't capitulation — it's conviction. Retail investors and Wall Street alike are holding their positions, and many are adding, with a potential catalyst arriving Monday evening: Starship Flight 13.
Shares of the rocket and AI company, which trades as $SPCX on the Nasdaq, fell 5.5% Friday, extending a slide that has taken the stock roughly 9% below its $135 IPO price and about 44% below the intraday high of $225.64 reached in the euphoric weeks after its June debut. According to CNBC, both retail traders and institutional holders who bought at or above the IPO price are, in the network's words, "not going down without a fight."
Why Holders Aren't Flinching
The bull case hasn't changed — if anything, it has strengthened. As covered when analysts reaffirmed their bullish stance as SPCX dipped below its IPO price, Wall Street price targets on the stock range as high as $800, reflecting the scale of what SpaceX now contains: the world's dominant launch business, the Starlink constellation with more than 10,700 active satellites, and the xAI artificial intelligence operation folded in through this year's merger.
For long-term holders, a volatile first month of trading is noise. SpaceX's revenue engines — Starlink subscriptions, government launch contracts, and AI compute — did not get 44% smaller since June. The share price simply reset from euphoria toward fundamentals, a pattern familiar from nearly every landmark technology IPO, including Meta and Tesla itself, both of which traded below their debut prices before delivering historic returns.
