Tesla and SpaceX Shares Drop More Than 9% as Nasdaq Slides 5%
Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX) shares each fell more than 9% on Thursday, November 5, 2026, as the Nasdaq dropped 5% in a selloff led by chip stocks.
The two companies lost a combined $100 billion or more in market value at the open, according to Business Insider. Reuters put Tesla's market capitalization, the share price multiplied by the total number of shares, at roughly $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion in early November. A 9% move on a company that size is a very large dollar figure for one session.
For a sense of scale, a move of that size can trigger margin calls, which are demands from lenders that investors who borrowed money to buy stock add cash or sell. It also reprices every index fund that holds the name.
Ownership adds a wrinkle. Reuters reported in October that Elon Musk owned nearly 20% of Tesla, including 207.5 million pledged shares. Pledged shares are posted as collateral against loans, much like a house pledged against a mortgage. When the collateral price falls, lenders can demand more of it or sell it, so a sharp drop can turn a paper loss into a forced sale.
The point for investors is that a concentrated, pledged stake sits closer to the lender's threshold than a stake spread across a broad base of owners does.
Pay is another overhang. Reuters reported that Tesla shareholders approved Elon Musk's $878 billion pay plan in November 2025. If he meets all of its targets, he would be eligible for 12% of Tesla stock, or about $1 trillion.
That award is contingent and years away, but it means the share price is part of the compensation math. Any serious look at Tesla's governance has to start from that number.
Capital spending is a more recent thread. In October, Tesla shares fell 2% after the company cut its capital spending forecast, according to Reuters. Capital spending is the money a company puts into factories, equipment, and new projects.
A lower forecast can be read two ways. It can mean more free cash flow, the cash left after running and investing in the business, in the near term. Or it can mean fewer dollars going into the long-dated projects the valuation depends on. The market's October reaction suggested it read the cut as the second.
Then there is the merger question. In October, Musk said a SpaceX-Tesla merger is “a good idea”.
That is an opinion, not a transaction. Still, with two heavily traded stocks linked by a founder with large stakes in both, talk of a combination puts a premium on how each stock trades relative to the other. Investors weighing that spread should treat the remark as a variable, not a term sheet.
The Nasdaq itself is the broader context. A 5% decline is a sharp move for an index that large, and a chip-led selloff pulls on any stock whose valuation assumes sustained growth in compute-heavy businesses. One session cannot show whether Tesla and SpaceX fell with the index or on their own news. Those explanations imply different positioning, and separating them will take more than a day of trading.
In my view, the number to watch is not the 9% headline but the gap between the two stocks' moves over the next several sessions. If they keep moving in lockstep with semiconductors, the story is about market-wide risk and leverage. If they diverge, the story is about company-specific fundamentals, pledged-share exposure, or merger expectations, and each calls for a different kind of analysis.
