NEW YORK, June 17, 2026, 07:05 EDT
- SpaceX traded 3.2% higher before the bell, after ending Tuesday at $201.80, a 4.8% gain. The company closed with a market cap near $2.655 trillion.
- Record options demand, possible index buying, and a $60 billion all-stock buyout of Cursor parent Anysphere have all pushed the stock higher.
- Nasdaq regular trading hadn’t started. June 17 isn’t a 2026 Nasdaq holiday, but markets will shut on Friday for Juneteenth.
SpaceX jumped 3.2% in premarket trading on Wednesday after closing at $201.80. The move followed Tuesday’s session, when the Elon Musk-led company surged past Amazon in market cap, keeping trader attention on what kind of demand the shares can keep generating.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is the latest name putting pressure on the market. The company is a mix of aerospace, AI, and index flows. Nasdaq stayed in premarket when this story was filed. The regular Nasdaq session is 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. The next scheduled 2026 Nasdaq market holiday is Juneteenth, Friday, June 19.
SpaceX shares finished Tuesday up 4.8%, putting the company’s market cap around $2.655 trillion. That’s about $10 billion more than Amazon. Shares earlier in the day jumped past Microsoft’s value, hitting $225.64 before slipping off those highs. SpaceX went public last week at a record IPO price.
Options played a big part. These contracts let traders buy or sell a stock at a fixed price before a set date. Trade Alert logged about 1.8 million SpaceX option contracts traded Tuesday, far more than Meta Platforms’ options launch in 2012. “We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Henry Schwartz, Cboe Global Markets’ vice president of derivatives market intelligence. Reuters
Call options outpaced puts by a 1.3-to-1 ratio. Calls bet on or hedge for upside, while puts handle the downside. “Early option volume indicates another SpaceX success,” said Seth Hickle, chief investment officer at Mindset Wealth Management. Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna, said investors targeted upside in “high-beta AI and space-linked winners”—stocks known for sharper moves than the rest of the market. Reuters
SpaceX said in a June 16 filing it has struck an all-stock deal to acquire Anysphere, the maker of AI coding tool Cursor, valuing Cursor at $60 billion. The companies expect to close in the third quarter, pending regulatory sign-off.
SpaceX moves deeper into AI coding tools with its Cursor deal, gaining ground in a segment where businesses have spent heavily. “Cursor does not have the scale of OpenAI or Anthropic, but it has built some very impressive coding models relative to cost. That makes this a positive move for SpaceX,” said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. Reuters
More mandatory buying could be on the way. Reuters said SpaceX is heading for a fast-track entry into the Nasdaq 100, and both FTSE Russell and MSCI are due to add the stock on June 26 and June 29. Passive funds and ETFs tracking those indexes typically need to buy new entrants.
Market sentiment was mixed early Wednesday. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures ticked up ahead of the Federal Reserve’s 2 p.m. ET rate call. Reuters reported traders see the Fed keeping rates at 3.50%-3.75%. On Tuesday, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 dropped with tech stocks under pressure, but the Dow hit a record close.
The trade isn’t all one-way. SpaceX posted $18.67 billion in revenue last year but booked a net loss of $4.94 billion after it merged with xAI, standing out against profitable mega-cap tech names. The thin public float, heavy options trading and a lofty valuation could drive bigger moves. “It certainly feels like one of those meme stocks, the way it’s trading,” said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading. Reuters
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