SpaceX hits lowest price since listing, plunging to $145; joins Nasdaq 100 but falls instead of rising.

Index inclusion is usually seen as a guarantee of stable buying pressure, but SpaceX suffered a selloff in both stocks and bonds after entering the Nasdaq 100 on July 7. Analysts point out that hedge funds and short-term traders had already positioned themselves in advance, fully pricing in the positive catalyst.

(Background: Nasdaq bends rules for SpaceX, triggering $4.3 billion in passive buying tonight; Wall Street cries foul over "shameless structural manipulation")

(Background supplement: Legendary Wall Street bear Jeremy Grantham slams SpaceX, says crash probability 90%: "The prospectus will be a big joke in 50 years")

Being added to an index is usually seen by the market as an insurance policy that "big funds have to buy," theoretically bringing in steady buying pressure to lift the stock price. But that script has recently failed with SpaceX, whose stocks and bonds have both fallen in the past few days, making it a textbook case of "buy the rumor, sell the news."

Smart money sells first, passive buying catches the knife

Analysts bluntly state that the buying frenzy triggered by this index inclusion was likely already priced into the stock. Hedge funds and short-term traders had long positioned for this inclusion event. In other words, while the market expected $800 billion in tracking funds to come in and prop up the price, the informed capital was instead waiting to unload shares onto the uninformed. This is the blind spot of passive buying: it is mechanical, rule-driven capital movement — not a reflection of genuine conviction in SpaceX's fundamentals.

In numbers, the cost of this "irrational optimism" is not small. Behind the Nasdaq 100 index, the combined assets under management of mutual funds and ETFs total as much as $800 billion. After SpaceX's inclusion, its weight is about 1.3%. JPMorgan estimates that passive rebalancing by index funds alone would bring in approximately $4.3 billion in buying.

That sounds like a surefire tailwind, yet the stock responded by hitting new lows for two consecutive days: SpaceX is now just a step away from its IPO price of $135. On the 8th, it briefly dipped to $145.20 during intraday trading, setting a new record low since listing, before closing slightly lower at $148.30 — down 0.78% and marking a second straight closing low.

Bonds also slump, 30-year trading at 94 cents on the dollar

Shareholders are not the only ones caught in the trap. Going back to June, shortly after its IPO, SpaceX quickly issued an additional $25 billion in corporate bonds, spanning five maturities from 5 to 30 years, primarily to repay existing debt.

How hot was the demand then? Oversubscribed by more than 3 times, allowing the company to price the bonds at a tighter spread than expected. The problem is that since listing, these bonds have been steadily declining. Looking back, those who rushed in are now sitting on losses: if purchased on June 23, the original principal has suffered an unrealized loss of about 5%.