SpaceX shares dropped below their original $135 IPO price on July 7, 2026, the same day the company was added to the Nasdaq-100 index, before bouncing back 2.4% by day's end, Al Jazeera reported. That dip briefly wiped out roughly $600 billion from the company's total market value. The index addition happened just 15 trading days after SpaceX started trading publicly — the fastest such addition ever, Fox Business noted.

Price swings have been the story since day one. SpaceX raised $85.7 billion through its IPO, the largest amount ever raised in a public stock offering, according to Nasdaq's newsroom. Shares were originally set to price at $162 each but actually sold at $135, per the company's filing made on June 4, 2026. Trading began on June 12 under the ticker SPCX.

On the first day of trading, the stock jumped 19% and closed near $161. More than 510 million shares traded hands worth roughly $84 billion in a single day — a trading volume so large it exceeded what most other giant companies raise in their entire IPO, Reuters reported. By the end of that first day, SpaceX was valued at $2.1 trillion, making it one of the world's largest public companies.

Then came the wild ride. From that first-day peak, SpaceX shares climbed as much as 67% higher before tumbling 35% from that high point, Reuters found in an analysis published June 23. On that same date, the stock briefly fell below $2 trillion in total value for the first time since listing, as the broader tech market shed over $1 trillion. By June 18, shares were down 6.5% at $178.50 — still well above the $135 offering price — after dropping nearly 5% the day before, Reuters reported.

Why does this kind of price jumping happen? When a company is new to trading, fewer people own shares and trading volumes are often thin — like a smaller pool of water where even small ripples look large. SpaceX began its public life already enormous at $2.1 trillion in value, but its stock was still finding its footing. Think of it this way: imagine a new restaurant that opens in a major city and draws massive crowds on day one. The crowds create lines and chaos that wouldn't occur if the same restaurant had been around for years. Stock price swings work similarly.

Then index funds added fuel to the fire. When SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 index — a collection of 100 large tech and growth stocks — investment funds that track that index were forced to buy the stock automatically. JPMorgan estimated those index funds would pour roughly $4 billion into SpaceX, Reuters reported. That massive wave of automatic buying hit a stock already prone to wild price swings, explaining why it initially dropped below its IPO price but then bounced right back the same day.

One important fact: SpaceX was losing money when it went public, Reuters noted. Unprofitable companies do trade on public markets — especially fast-growing ones — but their prices rest almost entirely on what investors think the company will earn in the future, not what it earns today. That makes them much more sensitive to buying and selling pressure, which is exactly what we saw with SpaceX.

The pattern of price dips followed by same-day bounces, driven by mechanical buying from index funds landing on an already jumpy stock, will be worth watching. Whether that pattern repeats as a normal feature of trading in SpaceX shares, or settles down as the stock matures, will tell investors something real about how the largest IPO on record behaves when it stops being the newest story in the market.