TradingKey - SpaceX Weight in Nasdaq Doubled to 2.82%; Will the Stock Rally Further or Face a Sell-on-the-News Event?
On September 18 ET, SpaceX (SPCX) opened higher and moved up during regular trading hours, rising above $155 at one point before sliding continuously, briefly dropping below its first-day IPO opening price of $150 intraday, and ultimately closing down $1.36 at $152.71. As the Nasdaq 100 Index rebalancing approaches, does SpaceX's surge and pullback indicate that the positive catalyst has materialized, setting the stage for a sharp decline?
According to Bloomberg, SpaceX's weight in the Nasdaq 100 Index has been calculated based on last Friday's closing price and will more than double from the original 1.28% to 2.82%. The adjustment will take effect next Monday (September 21), an index reweighting that could trigger mandatory buying from passive funds and index-tracking ETFs managing tens of billions of dollars.
Ahead of the official effective date of the index weighting adjustment or bullish news, SpaceX's short-term stock pullback after a surge does not signify deteriorating fundamentals or an impending crash, but rather a classic flushing out of leveraged positions. Specifically, SpaceX's short-term price pullback triggered stop-losses and a chain reaction of liquidations among high-leverage long positions, amplifying the intraday decline. This represents a self-correcting process in market structure rather than a fundamental collapse.
From the perspective of fundamentals and market structure, medium-to-long-term support for SPCX remains solid, with no underlying rationale for a sustained crash at present. SpaceX's core commercial moats remain unchanged, reflected primarily in the explosive growth of global Starlink users, support from defense contracts, and cost reductions from Starship orbital reusability. As the undisputed leader in commercial spaceflight and military low-Earth orbit communications, institutional capital shows a strong appetite to buy on dips.
From a technical perspective, $150 serves as a region of heavy trading volume during previous long-short battles for SpaceX, offering strong technical and psychological support. As long as the stock price can stabilize on declining volume and establish a bottom near this level, the overall bullish trend will remain intact. In the short term, after absorbing profit-taking and high-leverage contracts, SpaceX is expected to build momentum to challenge $170 by late September, which represents the bounce peak following its post-listing slump.
SpaceX stock chart, Source: TradingView
If the broader market faces a simultaneous macroeconomic pullback or a surge in U.S. Treasury yields, SPCX may move downward to seek strong dynamic moving average support below, but the downside room for a plunge remains limited, with $130 acting as the extreme lower bound.
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