SpaceX Stock Just Tanked — but Debt Is the Bigger Issue

SpaceX just did something no one thought the year’s hottest IPO would do this soon: It went underwater.

Shares fell below their $135 offering price and 40% from their peak as investors started second-guessing their commitment to a stock that always had some serious asterisks attached.

But that’s not all. 

The bond market might be the bigger red flag.

A Trillion Dollars, Gone

SpaceX stock ripped more than 40% in its first two trading sessions, briefly pushing its valuation above that of Amazon and Microsoft.

But in the weeks since, it’s relinquished all of that value — shedding 16% in a single session after the company announced a surprise bond sale.

In that time, its market cap has fallen from roughly $2.6 trillion to around $1.75 trillion — meaning more than $800 billion of paper wealth has simply vanished in a month.

Now even the people who bought at the $135 IPO price — the ones who got the “good” allocation everyone wanted — are sitting on losses for the first time.

And it could get a whole lot worse in just a few weeks.

That’s because SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company is set for early August, and it comes with a trigger: 911.5 million insider shares become sellable two trading days after that report.

That’s roughly $123 billion of stock potentially hitting a market where only about $86 billion currently trades freely.

You don’t need me to tell you what a supply shock that size does to a stock that’s already sliding.

Still, share price aside, the bond market might be an even bigger concern…

The Bond Market Doesn’t Lie

Less than two weeks after its IPO, SpaceX went back to the capital markets — this time for debt.

It priced $25 billion in senior notes across five maturities, from 2031 out to 2056, at rates between 5.35% and 6.65%.

On paper, the demand was staggering.

Nearly $90 billion in orders for a $25 billion deal, a 4x oversubscription that let underwriters upsize the offering and tighten pricing.

Then it fell apart.

Within 48 hours, the bonds were trading meaningfully below issue price, and traders who cover this market for a living said they couldn’t remember a recent investment-grade deal widening that fast.

The longest-dated tranches — the 2046s and 2056s — have seen spreads blow out to levels that put them closer to junk-rated paper than to the BBB rating SpaceX actually carries from S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch.

Bloomberg columnist Nir Kaissar put it bluntly: “SpaceX is junk.”

That’s what the bond market says, anyway — ratings notwithstanding.

Kaissar also drew a direct comparison to 2008, when AAA-rated mortgage bonds started trading like something much riskier well before the ratings agencies caught up.

You can also compare SpaceX to its peers to get an even clearer picture.

Nvidia raised its own $25 billion bond deal around the same time, and its spreads widened by about 11 basis points. Alphabet’s, on the other hand, actually tightened. But SpaceX’s blew out by nearly 30 basis points.

What this means is that bond investors and stock investors are pricing two completely different companies.

Equity buyers are still paying more than 100 times sales for the “multiplanetary” story.

However, credit investors are looking at a company that lost $4.9 billion in 2025 and another $4.28 billion in the first quarter of this year and wondering whether or not this thing can actually pay back what it just borrowed.

Where the Real Money Is in Space

In many ways, this was predictable. 

I spent months warning investors to steer clear of the SpaceX IPO.

Still, the space economy itself is real, and it’s growing fast.

Satellite constellations, national security launch contracts, space-based missile tracking for programs like the Golden Dome, in-orbit manufacturing…

The Pentagon and Space Force aren’t slowing down their spending on any of it.

But SpaceX at a trillion-plus valuation, financed with junk-priced debt, isn’t the best way to own that growth. And it’s certainly not the only way.

I’ve put together a report on three smaller, far less talked-about companies that are positioned to profit from the same space and national security build-out — without the debt load, the lockup overhang, or the 100x-sales price tag.

One is a launch and satellite manufacturer that’s already flying national security payloads for the Pentagon, at a fraction of SpaceX’s valuation.

Another is a newer space company building infrastructure the government is quietly funding, years ahead of when most investors will notice.

And the third is a defense contractor whose targets, drones, and space-tracking systems put it directly in the middle of America’s missile defense and space-domain-awareness build-out — the same trend Golden Dome money is flowing into.

These are the kinds of companies that make money whether or not SpaceX’s stock ever finds its footing again. And right now, while everyone’s watching the SpaceX headlines, they’re still flying under the radar.

Get the full report on all three companies here.