NEW YORK, June 20, 2026, 09:09 EDT
- SpaceX leveraged exchange-traded funds saw over $10 billion in trading volume in their first week on the public market, a week shortened by the holiday, CNBC cited Strategas Securities and Bloomberg data as saying.
- ARK Innovation ETF from Cathie Wood had a $4.6 billion inflow, a record, and then a $6.2 billion outflow as SpaceX hit its IPO, Bloomberg reported.
- SpaceX closed Thursday at $185, down from its peak earlier but holding above the $135 IPO level. ARK, after growing its SpaceX stake, rotated back into Tesla.
SpaceX’s debut week trading as a public company is seeing Wall Street put Elon Musk trades to the test. Over $10 billion has already moved through leveraged funds tied to the rocket-and-satellite firm. Flows in big ETFs hit Cathie Wood’s flagship fund hard.
The rush is key because the SpaceX IPO isn’t just another capital-markets event. Now it’s running into the ETF world—these funds trade like stocks and can put investors into popular trades fast. That can drive demand even higher. It can also crank up losses.
SpaceX shares dropped 3.6% to end Thursday at $185, Barron’s said. The stock hit $225.64 after pricing at $135, but the rally pulled in buyers of short-term products before shares slipped for two sessions in a row.
CNBC said that competitors rolled out 11 leveraged ETFs linked to SpaceX just days after trading began. These leveraged ETFs aim to double a stock’s daily move up or down, but since they reset every day, long-term returns can end up far from the stock’s actual performance.
The Leverage Shares 2X Long SPCX Daily ETF led first-week trading with $4 billion in volume, data from Strategas Securities and Bloomberg showed, as cited by CNBC. The Leverage Shares 2X Short SPCX Daily ETF came next at $2.56 billion, then GraniteShares 2x Short SpaceX Daily ETF with $765 million. The busiest session was Tuesday, when leveraged SpaceX ETFs saw $4.2 billion trade.
Leveraged funds weren’t the only ones under pressure. Bloomberg said the $6.9 billion ARK Innovation ETF saw a record $4.6 billion come in late last week, then a $6.2 billion pullout the next session. Bloomberg said this trading pointed to some big players using the fund for indirect SpaceX IPO exposure.
That’s an IPO-arb move. Money comes in ahead of a fund’s expected IPO share allocation, then leaves after the stock list. Long-term holders face a different question. Did those fast flows shift the fund’s exposure or performance in ways those investors didn’t want?
ARK picked up 54,815 Tesla shares, splitting the buy between its ARK Innovation ETF and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF, according to Barron’s. The buy is valued at about $21.9 million at Tesla’s $400.49 close. Tesla still sits as the top weight in ARK Innovation at 9.7%. As of June 12, ARK also held about 3.29 million shares of SpaceX.
ARK’s argument stretches out. Brett Winton, chief futurist at ARK, said in a June 15 note that SpaceXAI might bring in close to $550 billion in annual revenue and $400 billion in pre-tax earnings from connectivity by 2035. He warned that the forecasts have limits and shouldn’t be relied on. Winton said orbital AI servers and lower costs might make SpaceXAI different from “earth-centric competitors.” Ark Invest
SpaceX’s stock comes with a tight public float and an expensive price tag. Reuters said Thursday that some analysts and portfolio managers had told investors there could be early swings. Kat Liu, an analyst with IPOX Schuster, said that “some degree of profit-taking is not surprising” right after the stock’s first jump. Reuters
Space stocks tracked the move. Rocket Lab and Planet Labs each slid roughly 3% on Thursday, Reuters said. AST SpaceMobile lost about 7%. The stocks moved as SpaceX’s market debut began to drive moves for the broader listed space sector.
The worry is the ETF trade could outpace the company’s real performance. Both the SEC and FINRA have issued warnings: leveraged and inverse ETFs seek daily targets and can lead to quick losses if investors hang on too long, which is a big risk in choppy markets. The risk goes up with single-stock ETFs, since they don’t offer any diversification.
Funding is up next. SpaceX bankers plan to talk to investors as soon as next week about a bond sale of at least $20 billion, Reuters reported. The news comes after SpaceX announced a $60 billion all-stock deal to buy Anysphere, which makes the AI coding tool Cursor. The equity side has already financed much of Musk’s next move. Debt buyers may move slower.
