CNBC’s Oliver Renick spent part of his July 2 segment on a tension defining SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) trading. A Daiwa Securities analyst opened Thursday labeling the stock’s valuation “catastrophic”. Options desks spent the same morning buying calls.
Shares are up roughly 9% off recent lows after a three-day bounce, closing at $157.54 on July 1 and trading around $157 as of this writing, down some 0.3%. The company joins the NASDAQ 100 on Tuesday (July 7), which makes this worth stopping on.
The bull-bear disconnect
“Options flows continue to look bullish. That’s despite an analyst from daiwa securities this morning calling the stock’s valuation quote catastrophic.”
The valuation critique is not fringe. Jim Cramer, on his May 26 show, said “it’s very difficult to justify giving SpaceX a $2 trillion valuation. But the bottom line is that people have been willing to pay up in the private markets, and I bet they’ll pay up in the public ones.” The public market has not obliged, with a current market cap around $2.07 trillion. That is far from the $350 billion employee tender at the end of 2024 and worth remembering when someone uses the word catastrophic.
Retail sentiment on Reddit tells the same split story. Monthly r/stocks and r/investing discussion has skewed bearish, with posts like “The math isn’t mathing on the SpaceX IPO” drawing thousands of upvotes. Meanwhile r/wallstreetbets runs a different playbook, headlined by “SPACEX Calls Are Now Dirt Cheap.”
What the call buying is really saying
Renick pointed to the specific strikes. “What we saw earlier in the week was some pretty big call buying in the 160 and the 170 strikes. Those right now are pretty close to the money.”
Near-the-money calls are the least speculative way to bet on movement. Traders buying way out-of-the-money strikes are lottery-ticket shoppers. Traders paying up for 160s and 170s while the stock sits near 158 want direct exposure to the next move. Prediction markets echo that. On Polymarket, the probability SPCX finishes the week above $150 sits at 0.89, with the most likely weekly close pegged at $155 (0.54 probability). Above $165 collapses to 0.105. Traders are betting on a floor.
Call buying at these strikes communicates upside conviction, capped.
Why this is a volatility story, not a guaranteed pop
Index inclusion sounds like free money, and Renick addressed the temptation head on. “The inclusion will mean for the stock price due to so-called forced buyers, but the much clearer implication is that it’s going to raise the volatility for index fund holders.”
Every fund tracking the NASDAQ 100 via Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) and its peers must buy SpaceX shares to match the index. That is the mechanical part. What it imports is a stock trading with volatility at 88 into an index whose own volatility sits near 27. For reference, S&P volatility is below 16, and even semiconductor volatility is at 60. The VIX itself closed at 16.45 on June 30, well within normal.
Renick landed the punchline. “Space right now is going to add to the growing gap between NASDAQ 100 and S&P volatility, which is a spread that’s at unprecedented highs.”
QQQ holders, many of whom have never made an active decision about SpaceX, are about to own a stock whose daily swings dwarf anything else in their portfolio. QQQ is up 15.9% year to date and 29% over the past year. Adding SpaceX changes the size of the daily move for QQQ holders.
The takeaway for a regular investor is not whether the Daiwa analyst is right or the call buyers are right. Both can be. The valuation is stretched by any private-market comparison, and the near-term flow is genuinely bullish. What changes on Tuesday is that a passive NASDAQ 100 position becomes an active volatility position, whether you asked for it or not. Look at your QQQ exposure with that in mind.
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