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Elon Musk, the Trillionaire: The SpaceX IPO and the Terminal Crisis of Finance Capitalism
Campbell critically assesses the development of the world's first trillionaire following the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history as a reflection of the deepening crisis of finance capitalism, which has become a brake on real socioeconomic development and continues to starve the real economy of productive industrial investment. SpaceX has become a multitrillion dollar corporate empire, while Elon Musk has simultaneously accumulated an unprecedented level of personal wealth. This extraordinary concentration of wealth raises fundamental questions about the future of the United States, the trajectory of the global economy, the prospects for the planet, and the future of popular social struggles. Following the Wall Street financial collapse of 2007 and 2008, Simon Johnson and James Kwak warned in 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown that unless the largest financial institutions were broken up and subjected to effective regulation, the conditions that produced the crisis would remain intact, making future financial collapses increasingly likely. Two years later, Costas Lapavitsas advanced a complementary argument in Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All. He argued that finance had become increasingly autonomous from production, with profits generated less through the production of goods and services than through financial markets, speculation, and the expansion of financial claims. Central to this transformation was the growing power of investment banks, which increasingly directed capital towards speculative accumulation while reinforcing the interests of the most powerful fractions of finance capital. In June 2026, many of these same investment banks underwrote the largest initial public offering in history. This conjunction of extreme wealth concentration, speculative finance, and state support signals more than another cycle of market exuberance. It points towards a deepening crisis of finance capitalism in which corporate valuation becomes increasingly detached from production and speculative expansion depends upon the continuous socialisation of risk while the gains remain privately appropriated. On 12 June 2026, SpaceX entered the public markets with a valuation unprecedented in modern corporate history. At the centre of this process stood Elon Musk, who has emerged not only as one of the world's wealthiest individuals but also as a principal financier and political advocate for conservative, hard right, and increasingly neo fascist movements in the United States and internationally. This commentary examines the political economy of the SpaceX initial public offering (IPO). It asks whether its extraordinary valuation represents little more than another speculative asset bubble or whether it constitutes a state-supported mechanism through which finance capital is underwriting the consolidation of billionaire power and the global advance of authoritarian and neo fascist politics. The IPO of SpaceX The debut of SpaceX on the Nasdaq stock exchange on June 12, 2026, illustrates an advanced stage of financialization in the United States during a moment of industrial decline. By closing its first day of trading at $160.95 per share, the newly public company achieved a market capitalization exceeding $2.1 trillion, instantly establishing Elon Musk as the world's first trillionaire with a personal fortune anchored at an estimated $1.1 trillion. However, this unprecedented valuation cannot be understood in isolation from the broader financial restructuring across Musk's corporate network, particularly the significant challenges, subsequent reorganization, and strategic repositioning of X (formerly Twitter) and xAI. Following its $44 billion acquisition in October 2022, X experienced a severe and continuous collapse in advertising revenue, driving internal valuations down to approximately $33 billion by early 2025. Because the initial acquisition was loaded with $13 billion in debt, it generated annual interest obligations exceeding $1 billion -- a sum greater than the company's total pre-acquisition cash flow. The combination of declining advertising revenue, substantial acquisition debt, and annual interest obligations placed significant financial pressure on X. Analysts and financial reporting have documented the difficulties surrounding the debt-financed acquisition and the subsequent decline in the platform's valuation. Subsequent efforts to stabilize the company via the March 28, 2025 all-stock transaction, where xAI absorbed X, failed to reverse the trend. While framed as a strategic integration of artificial intelligence and digital communications infrastructure, the merger actually intensified the financial strain. Research indicates that Elon Musk and his operations were venturing into frontier AI development, a field focused on creating the most advanced and powerful general-purpose models at the absolute edge of technology. Because this development requires massive, capital-intensive investments in data centers and raw computing power, the venture ultimately accelerated rather than offset the cash burn of the combined entity. The IPO therefore functions as a mechanism of financial concealment. Rather than resolving the underlying losses, the multi-step restructuring relocated them onto a massive corporate structure capable of temporarily masking them through speculative valuation. By integrating these heavily cash-negative entities into SpaceX ahead of its Initial Public Offering, accumulated private deficits were bundled into a single asset priced entirely on aggressive, forward-looking projections of future monopoly control, shifting the burden onto public investors. An immediate reality check reveals an astonishing disconnect between this $2.1 trillion valuation and any recognizable process of physical production. In 2025, SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue while recording a net loss of $4.9 billion, meaning the company went public at roughly 112 times its annual revenue. Put plainly, the market is pricing each dollar of actual sales as if it were already worth $112, a multiple that assumes an extraordinary expansion of future income. By comparison, the average firm in the S and P 500 index trades at less than four times its annual revenue. To contextualize the scale of this speculative valuation, General Motors generated $187 billion in revenue in 2025, ten times that of SpaceX, yet its market valuation stands at approximately $70 billion. If General Motors were valued at the same revenue multiple as SpaceX, it would be worth about $21 trillion, a figure equivalent to well over half the annual gross domestic product of the United States. Consequently, the financial press has expressed deep skepticism regarding this $2.1 trillion milestone, viewing it as a product of market hype rather than grounded economic reality. In an analysis of the debut, The New York Times noted that the valuation relies entirely on aggressive, forward looking revenue projections, warning that the intense market enthusiasm "feels irrationally exuberant even for Musk." Reporters further cautioned that because many of Musk's past promises have failed to materialize, public investors are precariously betting on future pledges rather than current performance. Musk strategically linked SpaceX's valuation narrative to xAI's artificial intelligence ambitions, combining aerospace infrastructure with the speculative expectations surrounding frontier AI. Financial critics dismiss this combination as "wishful thinking" rather than a sound investment thesis. This speculative valuation is sustained not only by financial restructuring but also by a powerful techno-futurist narrative. In this framing, techno-optimists look past immediate quarterly deficits and instead operate on a civilizational horizon. In their "Sentient Sun" thesis, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Michael McGuinness envision SpaceX not merely as a rocket manufacturer or a satellite internet provider, but as the foundational infrastructure layer for a post-scarcity human civilization. They argue that as artificial intelligence scales, it will inevitably collide with Earth's physical and political constraints, particularly an impending shortage of terrestrial energy. The proposed solution is to move heavy computing into orbit, using SpaceX's radically low launch costs to deploy massive solar-powered data centers that harvest uninterrupted stellar energy. This vision includes targeting vast quantities of orbital AI compute, enabling off-world industrialization through lunar manufacturing, and establishing self-sustaining populations on Mars. Within this framework, the integration of SpaceX's launch capacity with xAI's intelligence systems is presented as a logical necessity. As its proponents argue, rockets and intelligence are becoming the same problem. Ultimately, where the financial press warns of a speculative bubble built on hype, venture capitalists see a necessary down-payment on the monopoly infrastructure for a post-scarcity, spacefaring future. However, as Michael Hudson demonstrates in his critique of the modern rentier resurgence, this Western model of postindustrial finance capitalism serves as a catastrophic brake on real socioeconomic development. Rather than funding tangible capital formation, the hyper-financialization exemplified by the SpaceX and xAI merger utilizes debt-leverage and speculative asset-price inflation to extract unearned economic rent. By converting cutting-edge technologies into private monopoly choke points, this system imposes what Hudson terms "debt deflation" on the broader economy -- siphoning vast capital surpluses into paper wealth at the top while actively starving the real economy of productive industrial investment and hollowing out the material foundations of society. Analyzing this structural divergence through Hudson's framework of "finance as warfare" reveals a deeper systemic crisis. Under this lens, the astronomical Western valuation of SpaceX represents the pinnacle of neoliberal economic combat, where the creation of money and credit is weaponized to inflate speculative rentier assets entirely decoupled from physical production. Hudson juxtaposes this predatory model with China's framework of state-directed industrial socialism. In that system, the state holds banking, strategic infrastructure, and frontier technologies like AI as public utilities consciously insulated from Wall Street-style financialization. By shielding these core sectors from speculative market attacks, they serve as low-cost foundations for physical manufacturing and tangible economic sovereignty. By grafting the cash-burning xAI onto SpaceX, Musk is deploying a classic Western financial warfare strategy -- attempting to lock in future monopoly rents to justify a multi-trillion-dollar speculative bubble -- while trying to compete with an industrial socialist model that funds technological advancement through direct state credit, completely bypassing the parasitic overhead of financialized markets. Market Bubbles, White Supremacy, and Financialization The hyper-inflated valuation of SpaceX is not an isolated 'market' anomaly; it represents the culmination of a centuries-long trajectory in which state power has repeatedly structured the conditions for financial accumulation, transforming systems of exploitation into forms of insulated financial wealth. As Edward Baptist demonstrates in The Half Has Never Been Told, American capitalism did not mature out of 'market forces' but was pioneered in the antebellum slave labor camps, where the banking crises of 1837 and 1857 saw financial institutions utilize cutting-edge securitization and state-backed mechanisms to actively extend and deepen the violent exploitation of enslaved human collateral. The underlying blueprint of using state power to guarantee private extraction simply evolved when physical bodies could no longer be openly securitized. Throughout the 20th century, the United States deployed military force to physically capture foreign lands and treasures under the guise of stabilizing markets. By the 21st century, this relationship between financial accumulation and state power extended into direct geopolitical interventions aimed at controlling strategic resources, including efforts to shape political outcomes in oil-rich regions such as Venezuela. These interventions demonstrate that speculative financial systems remain anchored in coercive forms of state power that secure access to the material foundations of accumulation. The financial institutions that developed around Wall Street were historically intertwined with slave markets, slave-backed credit, and racialized systems of accumulation. This deep historical alignment between state power and predatory accumulation helps explain how Wall Street evolved from an eighteenth-century municipal slave market into a modern financial behemoth where total stock market capitalization has reached approximately 232 percent of United States GDP, more than double the historical norm as measured by the Buffett Indicator. The foundational architecture for this modern iteration was perfected during the structural failures of the 2008 financial crisis. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson and James Kwak documented how a deeply entrenched financial oligarchy achieved extraordinary influence over Washington, producing a political order in which the survival of elite financial institutions became synonymous with national economic stability. When the speculative mortgage bubble collapsed, the state intervened through massive bailouts that protected major financial institutions from the full consequences of their own speculative practices. By institutionalizing the doctrine of "too big to fail," the government transformed private financial risk into a public obligation, establishing a precedent in which speculative assets could continue to expand under the implicit guarantee of state rescue. Costas Lapavitsas extends this analysis by demonstrating that the contemporary power of finance cannot be understood simply as excessive speculation or regulatory failure. In Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All, Lapavitsas argues that financialization represents a structural transformation of capitalism in which accumulation increasingly occurs through financial channels rather than through the direct production of goods and services. Banks, investment funds, and financial institutions increasingly generate profits through asset appreciation, debt creation, fees, and the extraction of financial rents. In this system, wealth accumulation becomes progressively detached from productive investment, as financial claims expand faster than the material economy that supposedly sustains them. The extraordinary valuation of companies such as SpaceX illustrates this dynamic: investors are not merely purchasing ownership in an industrial enterprise producing rockets and satellites; they are purchasing claims on anticipated future monopolies, technological dominance, and speculative financial growth. Corporate insiders have successfully transformed the state apparatus into an enforcement mechanism for a predatory financial cartel. This institutional hijacking is well documented structural reality analyzed by scholars like Charles H. Ferguson, Samir Amin, and Nomi Prins, who collectively demonstrate how a deeply entrenched oligarchy completely weaponized the regulatory state. Over the subsequent quarter century, under administrations of both major political parties, Federal Reserve policies expanded liquidity across financial markets, contributing to substantial asset inflation even as wage growth remained stagnant. Through quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars in new reserves to stabilize credit markets and support asset prices, disproportionately benefiting owners of financial assets while leaving disparities in employment and productive investment largely unresolved. This deliberate state policy intentionally drove asset prices to the stratosphere while real-world wages stagnated. Operating with the absolute certainty of state protection, this oligarchy knows that any future market crash will be neutralized by another massive, taxpayer-funded bailout, shifting the final cost of their speculation onto the working class through brutal social austerity. This state-subsidized environment has triggered a structural shift long foretold by political economists Walden Bello, Immanuel Wallerstein and Samir Amin. Bello argues that when profit rates in actual productive manufacturing collapse, surplus capital flees the constraints of the real economy entirely. The stock market ceases to function as a mechanism for industrial investment; instead, it morphs into a speculative casino, acting as a giant sponge designed to absorb over-accumulated, uninvestable electronic wealth. Operating under Samir Amin's framework of "generalized-monopoly capitalism," mega-corporations no longer compete in a 'free market.' Instead, they act as private cartels engineered to extract predatory "monopoly rent" from the global working peoples and the oppressed peoples of the planet. SpaceX fits this description precisely. Investors are not purchasing shares based solely on current industrial performance; they are purchasing claims on anticipated future monopolies in launch infrastructure, satellite communications, artificial intelligence, and space-based computing. While Starlink provides an existing revenue stream, the extraordinary IPO valuation depended on a process of narrative expansion in which SpaceX became positioned not merely as a rocket manufacturer but as the foundational infrastructure layer of a future technological order. By linking SpaceX's aerospace capabilities to the speculative expectations surrounding xAI and frontier artificial intelligence, Musk transformed technological possibility into financial valuation. The result is a classic expression of financialized accumulation: future monopoly rents are capitalized in the present, allowing speculative expectations to generate extraordinary concentrations of wealth before corresponding productive returns materialize. Elon Musk as a Political Actor The immediate beneficiary of this speculative valuation was Elon Musk, whose paper wealth increased by hundreds of billions of dollars as the market capitalization of SpaceX surged. However, the IPO serves as a broader wealth-extraction event for an entire transnational syndicate. Numerous tech billionaires are attached to this gravy train. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, which invested approximately $20 million in SpaceX in 2008 when the company was facing severe financial pressure, saw the paper value of its stake rise dramatically following the IPO, potentially representing one of the largest venture capital gains in history. Early investors, including Google and Fidelity, as well as prominent SpaceX insiders, benefited from extraordinary increases in the paper value of their holdings. This hyper-concentration of wealth is staggering. The United States remains home to hundreds of billionaires whose collective wealth has expanded dramatically in recent years, even as wealth inequality intensifies. The fortunes of these billionaires expanded by $1.5 trillion in the first year of the second Trump administration alone. The fourteen wealthiest individuals in the United States are now worth more than the entire American billionaire class combined in 2020. At the opposite pole, the bottom half of all American households own barely 2.5% of the nation's wealth. This extreme economic polarization is weaponized by the fact that SpaceX is tightly integrated with the Pentagon and United States militarism. As noted in contemporary journalistic accounts and geopolitical analyses, Starlink has evolved from a commercial satellite communications service into a strategically significant component of the emerging military, industrial, and artificial intelligence infrastructure. This hands sovereign-level geopolitical power to a single, unaccountable individual whose business empires are funded directly by state defense budgets and public subsidies. Control over economic resources is reinforced by control over communication infrastructure, particularly through X. Musk then leverages this combined dominance to intervene directly in politics. In the process, Elon Musk has transformed his wealth into a financing engine for conservative, hard-right, and neo-fascist forces across the West. Domestically, Musk became the public face and leading figure associated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative within the second Trump administration. DOGE advocated for reductions in public spending as the companies of Elon Musk continued to receive substantial government contracts. Beyond mere policy manipulation, Musk has weaponized his ownership of X (formerly Twitter) as a private propaganda apparatus to systematically radicalize public discourse. By altering content moderation policies, restoring previously banned accounts, and changing recommendation systems, X became a more permissive environment for extremist and white nationalist content. Musk has amplified or engaged with narratives associated with "Great Replacement" theories and demographic anxiety commonly circulated within white nationalist movements. This alignment extends to explicit structural connections with neo-Nazi and radical-right figures globally. Musk used his absolute control over X to reinstate prominent neo-Nazi and white supremacist accounts, while leveraging his massive digital reach to intervene directly in foreign elections. In Europe, Elon Musk provided unprecedented visibility to the Alternative for Germany (AfD)[11] and its leadership during the German electoral campaign, deploying his platform's attention economy to mainstream their top candidate, Alice Weidel, and validate historical revisionism. From attacking the British Prime Minister during far-right riots to funding nativist political operations designed to dismantle social democracies across Europe, Musk functions as a primary geopolitical underwriter for neo-fascist consolidation. Elon Musk's intervention in British politics provided Nigel Farage and Reform UK with an unprecedented global platform, amplifying anti-establishment and anti-immigration narratives while lending the movement a degree of transatlantic visibility and legitimacy that accelerated its emergence as a major force in British politics. Working peoples across all continents have spent the past thirty years warning of the destructive, systemic impacts of 'finance as warfare.' This resistance reached a critical domestic flashpoint during the Occupy Wall Street movement, which catalyzed global demands for aggressive governmental oversight to restrict predatory financial engineering. The Occupy movement popularized ideas about the 99 per cent and has fueled the electoral strength of democratic socialists in the USA. Yet, even the subsequent creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) failed to halt the speculative exuberance that followed -- a hyper-financialization that systematically concentrated unprecedented power within the billionaire class while hollowing out popular democratic participation. As economist Gabriel Zucman and journalist Edward Luce have warned, an absolute structural incompatibility exists between hyper-concentrated rentier wealth and the survival of a functional democracy. When a single unaccountable individual wields more economic, algorithmic, and geopolitical leverage than sovereign states, the democratic process collapses into a mere illusion. Consequently, the traditional legislative remedies proposed by mainstream political figures, such as marginal wealth taxes, are entirely inadequate; as Charles H. Ferguson's work demonstrates, the regulatory and legislative apparatus of the state has already been thoroughly captured by the oligarchy it claims to police. The SpaceX IPO represents a critical moment in the evolution of Western capitalism, revealing the extent to which state-backed finance, technological monopolies, and billionaire political power have become intertwined. Rather than representing a departure from earlier forms of accumulation, this development extends longstanding relationships between militarization, financialization, and concentrated private power. To prevent the total subversion of democratic society, working peoples and popular movements are organizing a fundamental restructuring that goes far beyond the limits of defensive taxation. Organized majorities are actively reclaiming agency by demanding a coordinated, systemic effort to strip the billionaire class of its structural leverage. This democratic counter-offensive aims to dismantle oligarchic power by taking critical global infrastructures, specifically satellite telecommunications, aerospace engineering, and artificial intelligence, completely out of the hands of predatory financial rentiers and placing them permanently within the public domain under transparent, popular control. Horace Campbell is a peace and social Justice activist. He is also Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University and Chairperson of the Global Pan African Movement, North American Chapter. He is the author of Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney, Africa World Press, 1987.
SpaceX Was Just Flooded With Buy Reports Across Wall Street. Do Analysts Know Something Retail Investors Don't?
This week, a wave of equity research reports from sell-side analysts was released on Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.38%). The big takeaway is that Wall Street is overwhelmingly bullish on SpaceX stock. With so many banks publishing their first formal reports on SpaceX and coming to the same optimistic outlook, it begs the question: Does Wall Street know something retail investors don't? Why were so many reports for SpaceX stock published on the same day? When a company completes its initial public offering (IPO) and its shares begin trading, a quiet period begins. This window typically lasts between 25 and 40 days after the newly public company begins trading. During the quiet period, the investment banks that underwrote the IPO are prohibited from issuing forward-looking statements, promotional material, or equity research analysis. The rule exists to prevent the same institutions that helped price and sell the IPO stock in question from immediately hyping the deal or leaking material information that could influence market sentiment. Analysts working for the lead underwriters must remain silent because any positive research they publish too close to the offering could be viewed as an extension of the marketing effort rather than independent analysis. Once the quiet period ends, these banks are free to initiate coverage. In the case of SpaceX, this is exactly what just happened: A cluster of reports appeared on the same day because the calendar restriction had been lifted. What does Wall Street think of SpaceX stock? The table below summarizes the ratings and stock price targets analysts recently issued for SpaceX. Data Source: Yahoo! Finance Among the firms in the table, all gave Buy or Buy-equivalent ratings on SpaceX stock, except one. Unsurprisingly, longtime Tesla supporter and former Wedbush analyst Dan Ives is bullish on SpaceX. The price targets primarily range between $190 and $300, with notable outliers at Raymond James and MoffettNathanson. SpaceX's bullish thesis converges on three interlocking growth drivers. First, Starlink is shifting from primarily consumer broadband toward enterprise and telecommunications customers. This could unlock higher-margin contracts with government agencies, airlines, maritime operators, and large corporations that require reliable global connectivity. Second, SpaceX is positioned to support the acceleration of AI infrastructure buildouts by delivering additional capacity to hyperscalers. So far, SpaceX has signed $82 billion in infrastructure deals with Anthropic, Google Cloud, and Reflection AI. Third, operational improvements in rocket reusability and launch cadence in the Starship program stand to dramatically lower costs to orbit. These efficiencies can help expand SpaceX's addressable market for both satellite deployment and crewed missions. Taken together, these variables paint a picture of a company transitioning from a high-burn, capital-intensive launch and satellite operator into a diversified technology enabler with multidecade tailwinds. Understanding the limits of analyst price targets Wall Street analysts tend to have meaningful access to the C-Suite at large companies. By contrast, retail investors usually have a tough time getting past the Investor Relations department. With this in mind, many Wall Street analysts have access to information that most investors do not. However, they are strictly prohibited from issuing reports based solely on that information. This is all to say that even if Wall Street does know certain things that most investors do not, the price targets above are still just opinions -- not guarantees. These price targets rest heavily on modeling assumptions about revenue growth, profit margins, and discount rates that can shift quickly. Blindly chasing the most optimistic targets or treating the consensus opinion as a certainty ignores the fact that the stock market tends to price in best-case scenarios before they actually materialize. Investors who rely solely on these reports risk overlooking valuation discipline, balance-sheet risk, and the possibility that even accurate long-term narratives can produce stomach-churning short-term drawdowns. While the end of the quiet period gives investors a clearer picture of professional sentiment around SpaceX stock, these views are just one data point among many.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 8:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 8:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 7:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 8:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 5:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 8:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 7:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 7:07 PM.
Beaten-down stock lets you buy SpaceX below market price
SpaceX (SPCX) is the most crowded new trade on Wall Street. It was priced at $135 in June, spiked above $225, then settled near $150. The banks that took SpaceX public were barred from publishing research on it until July 7. The moment that ban lifted, six of them initiated coverage, all with buy ratings. Then, Deutsche Bank's analyst team said something the others did not: You can buy the same rocket company for roughly 20% less than what the market is charging. Deutsche Bank calls EchoStar a discounted play on SpaceX stock The discounted company is EchoStar (SATS), the satellite and wireless firm behind DISH TV, Sling, and Boost Mobile. Analyst Bryan Kraft resumed coverage on July 7 with a buyrating and a $143 target, according to CNBC. More SpaceX Coverage: The gap opened after the IPO. In the month since SpaceX listed, EchoStar fell 23%, while SpaceX climbed 19%. As a result of this, EchoStar buyers now pay less for those SpaceX shares than SpaceX buyers do. As Kraft put it, SATS investors are "buying SPCX at a 20% discount." The note landed the same morning SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100, which drew billions in passive buying. Sven Piper / Getty Images How EchoStar ended up holding $11 billion of SpaceX stock EchoStar did not buy into SpaceX. It sold something SpaceX wanted. SATS agreed to hand over its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses, according to EchoStar's investor relations page. Payment arrived partly as roughly $11 billion of SpaceX Class A shares, valued then at $212 apiece, Investopedia reported. Two terms worth knowing * Spectrum licenses are government rights to transmit over specific radio frequencies. Starlink needs them to reach ordinary phones. * Class A shares are the ordinary, lower-voting stock. Musk holds supervoting Class B stock, so EchoStar gets economics without control. The discount math on EchoStar stock, step by step The stake's net asset value works out to $121.46 per EchoStar share, Intellectia reported. EchoStar also closed at $96.28 on July 8. That is about 79 cents on the dollar. Apply the same to SpaceX at $148.26, and an EchoStar buyer picks up the rocket company for nearly $118 a share. Deutsche Bank goes further, arguing the rest of EchoStar comes free. Two things complicate that. The $212 mark comes before the 5-for-1 split SpaceX ran in May, so it equals about $42 in today's shares. That means the stake has gained value rather than lost it, Yahoo Finance reported. Nothing is free, either, while a $24.6 billion debt sits on the books. These discounts usually exist for a reason, and EchoStar has more than one. Why EchoStar stock trades at a discount in the first place The discount is not a market error; it is a price tag on real damage. Three things went wrong in six weeks: * The DISH DBS pay-TV subsidiary filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection on June 30. * Hamid Akhavanresigned on July 6 from his roles at EchoStar after board discussions about a change in strategic direction, Light Reading reported. Founder and CEO Charlie Ergen absorbed his duties at Hughes. * The SpaceX IPO itself hurt the stock, because investors who bought EchoStar for indirect exposure could buy the real thing. The company also warned in its first-quarter 10-Q that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern until the spectrum sales close. Lockups, taxes, and the catch nobody mentions A discount you cannot access is not a discount. SpaceX replaced the usual single 180-day lockup with a tiered schedule that frees shares in 7% increments between days 70 and 135, Morningstar explained. Early backers can also sell up to 20% of their holdings two trading days after the first post-IPO earnings report, Investing.com noted. Renaissance Capital called it among the most complicated ever written, Fortune reported. EchoStar has not said where its stake sits in that schedule, which is the biggest question here. What EchoStar investors should watch next Three things decide whether the thesis survives contact with reality. * EchoStar is expected to report second-quarter results on July 30. Any disclosure on lockup terms, or on whether management will hold or sell the stake, resolves most of the ambiguity. * SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company shortly after, which triggers the first 20% unlock tranche for early backers. * Ergen's strategy. He took back operational control of Hughes for a reason, and has never been a passive holder. EchoStar is no substitute for owning SpaceX directly. It is a leveraged, restructuring satellite company holding a large stake in a rocket maker, and the discount pays you for that. Investors comfortable with that balance sheet get cheaper access to a stock Wall Street just blessed six times over. Everyone else should note that even Deutsche Bank's $143 target sits only 18% above the SpaceX value it says is already on the books. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 8:07 PM.
SpaceX Stock Falls 35% From Peak Even After Nasdaq-100 Inclusion
SpaceX (SPCX) shares have fallen as much as 35% from their post-IPO peak of $225.64. The drop came just days after the company joined the Nasdaq-100, as heavy selling offset forced index buying. The stock closed at $148 on July 8, below its $150 debut price for a second straight session. That erased nearly all the gains SpaceX made since its record June 12 listing. A Sell-The-News Pattern for SPCX SpaceX's Nasdaq-100 inclusion required index-tracking funds to buy shares, even though the company keeps a small public float. That mechanical demand did not stop investors from selling into the news. This is a familiar pattern, as Palantir saw the same thing happen after it joined the Nasdaq-100 in late 2024. Its shares dropped about 25% over the following weeks. A Trillion-Dollar Valuation Under Pressure The pullback still leaves SpaceX with a market capitalization near $1.9 trillion. The company posted about $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, up about 33% year over year. That puts its valuation at roughly 100 times sales. Starlink drove much of that growth. SpaceX's satellite internet unit generated more than $11 billion in 2025, about 61% of total revenue. It remains the main support for the company's trillion-dollar valuation. SpaceX still lost money last year. The company reported a $4.9 billion net loss in 2025 and $4.3 billion more in the first quarter of 2026. Heavy spending on its xAI artificial intelligence unit and on Starship development continues to weigh on cash flow. Wall Street has largely stayed bullish since the Nasdaq-100 inclusion. Morgan Stanley, Bernstein, RBC, and UBS all initiated coverage with buy-equivalent ratings. MoffettNathanson took a neutral stance, and CFRA recommended that investors sell. Starlink's profit growth may determine how much further the stock can fall. Investors will likely watch whether that business can outpace SpaceX's mounting AI and rocket-development costs.
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Orbiting Capital: Lawmakers Buy SpaceX Ahead of Index Inclusion
The ink on the largest public offering in history barely had time to dry before Washington capital began to flow. When SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) raised $75 billion in a June 12 market debut, the event redefined mega-cap listings. Priced at $135 per share, SpaceX immediately captured a $2 trillion valuation, fundamentally altering the landscape of the commercial space sector. Just days later, lawmakers assigned to the exact committees tasked with overseeing federal defense budgets and financial security initiated positions. The rapid accumulation of shares by politically connected insiders highlights a complex intersection between structural market mechanics, unprecedented valuations, and congressional oversight of prime defense contractors. With a mandatory liquidity injection imminent via a newly established Nasdaq-100 index rule, these early trades serve as a leading indicator for a highly volatile supply-demand imbalance. → 3 High-Yield Dividend Stocks With Real Capital Gains Potential in 2026 Capital Accumulation: Lawmakers Secure SpaceX Equity Federal disclosure filings confirm that lawmakers wasted little time securing equity in the newly public aerospace sector giant. On June 15, a dependent child of Representative Dan Meuser acquired a stake valued between $15,001 and $50,000. Three days later, Representative Gil Cisneros disclosed a purchase of up to $15,000. Prior to the public listing, Representative Lisa McClain maintained exposure through a $250,000 family investment in xAI, which was absorbed into the broader SpaceX corporate umbrella. → Flash Crash or Cash? The AI Hardware Reset Investors Can't Ignore While these transaction amounts are inconsequential relative to a multi-trillion-dollar market capitalization, the strategic placement of the buyers is highly relevant for institutional observers. Representative Cisneros serves on the House Armed Services Committee, a legislative body with direct jurisdiction over the Department of War. The Pentagon remains a primary customer for SpaceX, consistently awarding SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts for satellite deployment and secure communications infrastructure. Simultaneously, Representative Meuser serves on the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission and the broader equities market.
SpaceX Stock Falls 35% From Peak Even After Nasdaq-100 Inclusion
SpaceX (SPCX) shares have fallen as much as 35% from their post-IPO peak of $225.64. The drop came just days after the company joined the Nasdaq-100, as heavy selling offset forced index buying. The stock closed at $148 on July 8, below its $150 debut price for a second straight session. That erased nearly all the gains SpaceX made since its record June 12 listing. A Sell-The-News Pattern for SPCX SpaceX's Nasdaq-100 inclusion required index-tracking funds to buy shares, even though the company keeps a small public float. That mechanical demand did not stop investors from selling into the news. This is a familiar pattern, as Palantir saw the same thing happen after it joined the Nasdaq-100 in late 2024. Its shares dropped about 25% over the following weeks. A Trillion-Dollar Valuation Under Pressure The pullback still leaves SpaceX with a market capitalization near $1.9 trillion. The company posted about $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, up about 33% year over year. That puts its valuation at roughly 100 times sales. Starlink drove much of that growth. SpaceX's satellite internet unit generated more than $11 billion in 2025, about 61% of total revenue. It remains the main support for the company's trillion-dollar valuation. SpaceX still lost money last year. The company reported a $4.9 billion net loss in 2025 and $4.3 billion more in the first quarter of 2026. Heavy spending on its xAI artificial intelligence unit and on Starship development continues to weigh on cash flow. Wall Street has largely stayed bullish since the Nasdaq-100 inclusion. Morgan Stanley, Bernstein, RBC, and UBS all initiated coverage with buy-equivalent ratings. MoffettNathanson took a neutral stance, and CFRA recommended that investors sell. Starlink's profit growth may determine how much further the stock can fall. Investors will likely watch whether that business can outpace SpaceX's mounting AI and rocket-development costs. Read the Original story SpaceX Stock Falls 35% From Peak Even After Nasdaq-100 Inclusion by Darryn Pollock at beincrypto.com
SpaceX applies to launch 100,000 Gen3 Starlink satellites
SpaceX has filed an application with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for authority to launch and operate up to 100,000 third-generation Starlink satellites, the biggest such broadband constellation proposed so far. The application proposes a new Gen3 system that would sit alongside the existing Gen1 and Gen2 Starlink constellations. The Gen3 system is said to start launches in the second half of this year. Independent tracking by astronomer Jonathan McDowell put the current Starlink constellation at 10,413 satellites in orbit and 10,397 working as of June 1 2026. SpaceX proposes two closely stacked orbital shells in very-low Earth orbit, or VLEO, at nominal altitudes of 323 to 327.5 kilometres and 473 to 477.5 kilometres, for Gen3. These are lower orbits than the original 550 km for the Gen1 Starlinks, and the 525, 530 and 535 km shells for Gen2. Source: SpaceX Starship needed to fire heavy Gen3 Starlinks into orbit The Gen3 satellites have a mass range of 2000-2500 kg each, matching the full-size Gen2 V2 satellite that has sat on the books for Starship launch since 2022 but has not yet flown in numbers. It is well above the roughly 800 kg of the Gen2 Mini currently flying on Falcon 9. That extra bulk means Gen3 satellites can only be launched aboard the 124 metre SpaceX Starship, the company's reusable heavy-lift rocket that it is still developing, rather than its workhorse Falcon 9. Starship is designed to carry about 60 Gen3-class satellites per flight, compared with 27 Starlinks on a typical Falcon 9 mission. At that payload rate, over 1600 Starship launches would be required if the full constellation of Gen3 satellites is approved. Gen3 will use Ku, Ka, V and E-band spectrum already granted for Gen2, and adds a push into largely untapped W- and D-band frequencies between 92 and 275 gigahertz (GHz) for backhaul capacity. SpaceX argues that AI workloads need far more uplink capacity than today's networks provide, to move high-definition spatial and auditory data in real time. Curiously, the FCC application for Gen3 makes no mention of the Direct To Cell service that Starlink has launched commercially, or its future mobile phone service. Mega satellite Starmind constellation While a 100,000 Gen3 satellites may seem like a massive constellation, it pales in comparison to SpaceX's Starmind, designed to be data centres in Earth orbit. SpaceX filed an application in January for a Starmind constellation with up to a million satellites, in Earth orbit altitudes of 500 to 2000 km. In the narrative for the FCC application, SpaceX said the million satellites operating as orbital data centres "is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilisation". This refers to a three-level scale proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, with level II being a civilisation that can harness the entire energy output of its home star. As of writing, it is not clear how far advanced SpaceX's plans for Starmind are.
SPACEXAI Grok 4.5 is as Good as Anthropic Opus BUT One-quarter of the COST
Actual usage of SpaceXAI Grok 4.5. First person reports that there are programmers successfully replacing Opus and Sonnet in all of his systems today with Grok 4.5. Grok 4.5 worked great. Spending can drop 50-80%. $200-500 instead of $1000. Grok 4.5 is faster than Opus 4.8. Maybe 2 to 3 times faster. OpenAI GPT 5.6 is coming tomorrow and will be faster but more expensive than Grok 4.5. Grok 4.5 can own the low end of developer usage (pretty, efficient value and good enough). This could send Cursor-SpaceXAI enterprise revenue up from $4 Billion ARR to $8-15 billion ARR in 1-2 months
Japanese company books 1,100 pounds of cargo space on SpaceX Starship mission to the moon
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. ispace is expanding its already extensive moon plans to include SpaceX's Starship megarocket. The Tokyo-based company announced today (July 8) that it has booked 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo capacity on Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, for a moon mission that could launch as soon as 2030. The deal is worth $50 million, according to Tokyo Brief. "We are very pleased to be able to offer the new Lunar Access Integration service utilizing Starship's payload space through our collaboration with SpaceX," ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in a statement today. "High-capacity, relatively low-cost lunar transport, such as that provided by Starship, is essential to realizing the sustainable lunar economy that ispace aims to create." As that quote suggests, ispace may become a regular Starship customer over the years, using the giant vehicle to carry its new "Mobile Cargo System" to the lunar surface. The MCS is a pallet-like flat rover capable of transporting up to 1,100 pounds (500 kg) across the lunar terrain. The newly announced Mobile Cargo System moon mission aboard Starship will launch no earlier than 2030, according to ispace. The timeline will depend largely on SpaceX's ability to progress Starship into an operational vehicle. (Starship has flown 12 test flights to date, all of them suborbital.) ispace has flown with SpaceX before; Falcon 9 rockets launched the Japanese company's robotic HAKUTO-R moon rover in both 2022 and 2025. Both times, HAKUTO-R reached lunar orbit successfully but crashed during its landing attempt. Starship is SpaceX's super-heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is designed for full reusability and capable of launching up to 150 tons (136 metric tons) to low Earth orbit. The rocket has been in development for a while; SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk first announced the vehicle during the International Astronomical Congress in Mexico in 2016. Expectations for its operational readiness have been an ever-moving goal post. In 2021, for example, SpaceX was targeting sometime "before 2024" for the spacecraft's first mission to the moon, but development delays have continually pushed that date back. 2024 was also the year NASA originally targeted for the first crewed lunar landing mission of the agency's Artemis program, though that's no longer the plan. NASA contracted Starship as the lunar lander for that touchdown, which is now slated to take place during Artemis IV in late 2028. Agency officials have cited Starship as part of the reason that Artemis' schedules have slipped.
Cathie Wood's ARK sells BioNTech and buys SpaceX stock By Investing.com
Cathie Wood's ARK ETF published their daily trades for Wednesday, July 8th, 2026, revealing significant activity in several key stocks. The most notable transaction involved the sale of 78,211 shares of BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX) through its ARKG ETF, amounting to a substantial $7,374,515. This sale is part of a broader trend, as ARK had also sold 44,330 shares of BioNTech the previous day. On the buying side, ARK made a significant purchase of 181,847 shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SPCX) across multiple ETFs, including ARKK, ARKQ, ARKW, and ARKX, totaling $27,180,671. This marks a continued interest in SpaceX, following a purchase of 44,196 shares just a day earlier. Another noteworthy transaction was the sale of 29,974 shares of Roku Inc (NASDAQ:ROKU) through the ARKW ETF, valued at $4,232,628. This follows a pattern of consistent selling of Roku shares over recent days. Additionally, ARK sold 8,010 shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD) across its ARKK and ARKX ETFs, for a total of $4,134,041. This continues a trend from the previous day when 8,667 shares were sold. Among the smaller trades, ARK sold 11,990 shares of Twist Bioscience Corp (NASDAQ:TWST) through its ARKK ETF, worth $1,091,449, and bought 14,637 shares of Eli Lilly and Co (NYSE:LLY) through its ARKG ETF for $18,084,891. In the biotech sector, ARK continued to adjust its holdings with the sale of 35,859 shares of CareDx Inc (NASDAQ:CDNA) for $1,015,168 and the purchase of 61,750 shares of Generate Biomedicines Inc (GENB) for $1,001,584. Overall, Cathie Wood's ARK ETFs showed a strategic mix of buying and selling, with a continued focus on high-growth sectors such as biotechnology and space exploration. Investors will be closely watching these moves for insights into ARK's investment strategy. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.
SpaceX Stock Is Down 35% From Its High Just 1 Day After Joining the Nasdaq-100. Is the Dip a Buy?
Getting added to the Nasdaq-100 is usually a good day for a stock. Funds that track the benchmark have to own it. And for SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), that meant billions of dollars of forced buying into a company whose public float is only a few percent of its shares. On paper, that is a lot of demand chasing very little stock. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now, when you join Stock Advisor. See the stocks " Yet a day after joining the index on July 7, SpaceX trades about 35% below its high of $225.64, changing hands for less than $147 as of this writing. That is below where the stock started when the company went public in June, in the largest U.S. initial public offering on record. It slipped about 6% in the session right after inclusion, giving back nearly all of its post-IPO gains. So is the drawdown a chance to buy one of the most talked-about companies in the world at a discount? Or is the slide telling investors something? Image source: Getty Images. A classic sell-the-news move In short, this looks like a classic sell-the-news event. Sure, some buying was required because of the index inclusion. But that doesn't prevent investors from selling. And, ultimately, Wall Street seems convinced that shares aren't quite worth the premium they were commanding leading up to the event -- and especially not worth the all-time high they hit shortly after the IPO. This sell-the-news dynamic following an index inclusion has happened before. Palantir peaked right around its own Nasdaq-100 addition in late 2024, then fell about 25% over the following weeks. In addition, joining an index can broaden a stock's ownership over time, but it does nothing to change what the underlying business is worth. And that, of course, is the harder question here. At the time of this writing, SpaceX carries a market capitalization of about $1.9 trillion, making a shortlist of companies that have ever commanded a value this high. And SpaceX has reached this valuation while still losing money. In 2025, the company generated about $18.7 billion in revenue, up about 33%, so investors are paying around 100 times sales. What the $1.9 trillion price demands Sure, there's a real business beneath the company's $1.9 trillion market value. Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, crossed 10 million active customers earlier this year and brought in more than $11 billion in revenue in 2025, about 61% of the company's total. This is the part of the story I find most impressive: a large, fast-growing subscription business, and the main reason SpaceX can command a price in the trillions at all. But growth alone isn't the whole story. SpaceX is deeply unprofitable, reporting a net loss of $4.9 billion in 2025 and $4.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026. A big piece of that traces to xAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up SpaceX absorbed earlier this year. Its AI segment generated $3.2 billion in 2025 revenue but burns far more, and management has floated even bolder plans, including putting AI data centers in orbit. Add the cost of scaling Starship, and free cash flow is deeply negative. So the price is asking a lot. It assumes Starlink keeps compounding, that Starship's launch cadence ramps on schedule, and that the money flooding into xAI eventually earns a return rather than quietly consuming Starlink's profits. Any one of those slipping could leave the stock exposed. At about 100 times sales, there is little room for the ordinary stumbles that come with building rockets and AI models at once. To be fair, this is a singular company. Its assets are hard to copy: a reusable rocket fleet, a satellite network already circling the planet, and a founder who has repeatedly pulled off what looked impossible. For investors who believe SpaceX will own space-based connectivity and compute for decades, a 33% pullback may look like an opening. I'm not there yet. The drawdown makes the stock cheaper than it was a week ago, but cheaper and cheap are not the same thing. With the company still losing billions, I think its near-$2 trillion market capitalization leaves no cushion at all. I would rather watch SpaceX show that Starlink's profits can outrun its spending before paying up -- even after a sharp one-day drop. Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now? Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Space Exploration Technologies wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $410,833!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,208,693!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 917% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 209% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of July 8, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
SpaceXAI's newest AI model Grok 4.5 dramatically undercuts Anthropic and OpenAI on price
SpaceXAI's newest AI model Grok 4.5 dramatically undercuts Anthropic and OpenAI on price Elon Musk's SpaceXAI Corp. has released a new model called Grok 4.5, in what is its first major launch since it went public a few weeks earlier. In a blog post earlier today, the company said Grok 4.5 is designed to be a workhorse that's able to tackle all of the usual tasks that the artificial intelligence industry has been automating for some time already. That includes things like coding, writing emails and presentations, performing office and clerical work, doing research and other kinds of knowledge-based work. None of this sets Grok 4.5 apart, but SpaceXAI said that the difference is that it can do these tasks just as well as its peers at around half the cost, because it has "twice greater token efficiency" than its peers from other frontier model labs. If true, that could be a compelling advantage in a world where the cost of tokens has suddenly become a major issue for heavy AI users. SpaceXAI announced Grok 4.5's release alongside a host of benchmark results that highlight how competitive it is with the leading models of some of its major competitors, and it falls just short of their performance. In a post on the social media platform X, which is owned by SpaceXAI, founder Musk compared Grok 4.5 to Anthropic PBC's Opus, which is a large language model designed to handle intensive reasoning tasks. In a follow up, Musk added that the company's internal assessments show that Grok 4.5 is "roughly comparable" with Opus 4.7 in terms of its performance, but much faster at generating its results. "The combination of capability, faster speed and lower cost is what makes it competitive," he added. Grok 4.5's real calling card, however, appears to be its overall efficiency. The company said it costs around $2 per one million input tokens and $6 per one million output tokens, which makes it far cheaper than its rival's most capable models. In contrast, Opus 4.7 and 4.8 run at $5 per one million input tokens and $25 for one million outputs. Meanwhile, Fable 5, which is Anthropic's best model, costs $10 for inputs and $50 for outputs, based on one million tokens. OpenAI Group PBC, meanwhile, has a tiered pricing structure for different models. Its newest model, GPT-5.6 Sol, is priced at $5 for one million inputs and $30 for one million outputs, while Luna, its low cost version, costs $1 for one million inputs and $6 for one million outputs. This week is proving to be a big one in terms of new AI model launches. Earlier today, OpenAI announced the launch of GPT-5.6 Sol, its most powerful model so far, after being held up by the White House administration due to security concerns. According to OpenAI, GPT-5.6 Sol is its "strongest model yet," but those security concerns mean that it's currently only available to a limited number of customers. OpenAI also announced the launch of GPT-Live today, which is a family of AI models optimized to process spoken instructions.
