SpaceX Down 44% From High as Put Sellers Hold
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- SpaceX shares dropped 5.5% on Friday to a low of $122.12, roughly 9% below the $135 IPO price and 44% below its intraday high of $225.64; the Nasdaq-100 is now down 6% from its peak versus less than 1% off when SpaceX hit its high
- Friday's SpaceX options flow told two stories at once: of $350 million in premium traded, $290 million was tied to puts and 7 of the top 10 contracts were puts — yet over half of those put premiums were sold and 9 of the 10 highest-volume trades were bullish, per SpotGamma and Cboe LiveVol
- Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, underwriters who elected to raise an additional $11 billion in SpaceX equity after its strong start, are now also underwater on their positions
- One notable bearish-but-measured trade: a trader bought $2.6 million of 140-strike puts expiring that day while selling the same number of 135-strike puts, cutting the trade's cost by $1.6 million
- Don Kaufman, co-founder of TheoTrade and a former director at TD Ameritrade, said he's been selling way-out-of-the-money puts and would buy SpaceX 'all day long at $100,' adding 'it is what it is — a monster and will continue to be a monster'
Why it matters: SpaceX is now 44% off its high, leaving Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and retail call buyers all underwater — yet Friday's options flow shows conviction rather than capitulation, with most put premiums sold as income rather than bought as protection and Kaufman ready to buy at $100.
