Someone Just Staked $10 Million That Musk’s SpaceX Will Reclaim a Price It Lost in June
A trader just put $10 million on the line betting Elon Musk's rocket company can reclaim a price it has not touched in months, and the options tape shows this may not be the first time someone made this exact…
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Someone with real money just placed a long-dated wager on Elon Musk’s rocket company. On Wednesday’s tape, CNBC’s options desk flagged a single trade: a $10 million sale of in-the-money 175 strike SpaceX puts expiring January 2028, a bullish position that only pays off in full if the stock climbs back to a level it has not held since June.
The mechanics are straightforward. The seller collects the premium up front and keeps it all if SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) trades above $175 at January 2028 expiration. Below that, the seller is effectively agreeing to own the stock at $175, less the premium already banked. CNBC’s Oliver Renick described the flow as “a bullish position, but also possibly a bet that volatility in space, which has fallen a lot could continue to subside.”
A Price Line SPCX Has Not Touched Since June
The stock’s short trading history explains why $175 matters. SPCX closed its June 12 debut at $160.95, peaked intraday at $225.64 on June 16, then bottomed at $104.83 intraday on August 3. It has not traded above $175 since June. Shares changed hands at $152.01 Thursday afternoon after an 8.03% single-day pop, still 12.58% below the $160.95 debut close.
Options-chain data confirms the trade sits in a sparse strike. Alpha Vantage’s snapshot shows the January 2028 $175 put marked at $54.10 with implied volatility of 0.56121 and a delta of -0.46951, with only 94 contracts of open interest before the session.
An Echo of the August Bottom
Institutional put selling has surfaced in SPCX before. Renick pointed to the same pattern at the early-August lows, and the stock has climbed 22.86% from $114.53 on August 3 to $140.71 on September 2. Whether the same account is back is unknowable from the tape. The behavior rhymes.
The Street is warming up in parallel. Oppenheimer’s Tim Horan lifted his SpaceX price target to $280 on September 2, arguing the AI business could push revenue well above consensus.
Tesla Sits on the Same Options Tape
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) sits at the center of the same options flow. Renick flagged Tesla as the number one name by options volume Wednesday, with roughly $900 million of about $1.3 billion in premium tied to calls heading into Musk’s Cybercab event. Tesla traded at $380.66 Thursday, up 6.62% on the day and up 10.85% over the past month.
The ecosystem case ties the two names together. On Tesla’s July call, Musk said the companies have “more and more overlap,” and Tesla’s Q2 result was helped by “a mark-to-market gain of $1 billion on our SpaceX holdings.” If Renick’s read is right and volatility keeps compressing, the January 2028 seller just needs a quiet grind back above the debut price to make the trade pay.
Data Sources
- CNBC: Options traders bet on Elon Musk names: used for the $10M SPCX put-sale trade details, Renick commentary, and the Tesla Cybercab options premium split.
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