‘My Roth IRA Is Down 25 Percent’: SpaceX Investors Are Watching Their Retirement Savings Crash and Burn
A Reddit investor revealed they used SpaceX options calls inside their Roth IRA just as the newly public stock began its brutal reversal, and the loss they described captures exactly what happens when retirement savings meet the froth of a…
SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) investors are watching retirement savings crater. One Reddit user put the pain bluntly: “So my Roth IRA is down 25 percent, I went and made a few options trades in Robinhood that also went the other way.”
That confession, posted to r/WallStreetBets and surfaced by Futurism on July 15, 2026, reveals the human cost of a fast-souring trade. The user disclosed they had leveraged their Roth IRA with SpaceX options calls at $160 and $145 strikes, a high-risk bet that wiped out several hundred thousand dollars of retirement savings.
How the SpaceX Stock Trade Unraveled
SpaceX went public last month, pricing its IPO at $135 and opening at $150 in June 2026. Shares rocketed to an all-time high of $225 before reversing hard. As of July 15, the stock sat near $136, down roughly 40% from the peak and almost 9% over five trading days.
The decline has continued. As of July 17, market data shows SPCX trading around $124.03, after falling 5.4% on the day and about 14% over the past week. Anyone who bought near the top is now deeply underwater.
The Skeptics Were Already There
On WallStreetBets, sympathy was sparse. “Crazy that people knew the insanely bloated valuation but still went long,” one user wrote, capturing the collective amnesia that grips hyped stocks on the way up.
Skeptics extended beyond Reddit. Reuters framed the sell-off as a “confidence test” for the IPO. Matthew Maley of Miller Tabak was direct: “It raises the narrative that the stock is up on fluff, on speculation, on froth, and not on real fundamentals.” Greg Halter of Carnegie Investment Counsel warned that early buyers hoping to “make a killing” would be disappointed.
SpaceX priced at a multitrillion-dollar valuation despite losing billions per quarter, with much of its worth resting on Elon Musk’s vision of AI data centers in space and a city on Mars rather than current profitability. When a valuation leans that heavily on the future, sentiment drives the stock.
Why a Roth IRA Loss Cuts Deeper
This episode illustrates a principle about using leverage and options inside a retirement account.
A Roth IRA is one of the most powerful tools an ordinary saver has because gains compound untaxed over decades. Contributions can be withdrawn without penalty, but turning the account into a venue for short-dated options on a newly public, pre-profit stock inverts its purpose. A loss inside a Roth is uniquely unforgiving: there is no capital loss to harvest, and selling a battered position permanently forfeits contribution room that can never be rebuilt.
The investor who watched a quarter of their retirement vanish is a warning. The hype around a company can be real, the technology revolutionary, and the stock can still hand a devastating loss, especially when a saver borrows against their own future to chase it.
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I've spent more than 15 years inside enterprise software, working alongside the finance, sales operations, and HR leaders who run the revenue engines at some of the largest tech companies in the country.
My day job is helping enterprise executives make smarter decisions about retention, compensation, and growth. These are the same operational levers that show up in every earnings report investors actually read. That perspective shapes my writing for 24/7 Wall St.
The headline numbers are easy. The interesting stuff is underneath: how companies make money, what executives are worried about, and what any of it means for the person checking their 401(k) on a Sunday afternoon. I write about personal finance and business as someone who has spent her career inside the rooms where these decisions get made.
