Retail and Wall Street are on the brink of SpaceX, but it won’t go down without a fight

good time space x The stock market is proving to be short-lived, as Elon Musk’s intergalactic IPO is now fodder for bears who argue that the US stock market is not ready to inject $2 trillion in market capitalization.

Shares of the satellite and exploration business fell 5.5% on Friday, extending the decline over a 10-day period, hitting a low of $122.12, about 9% below its IPO price of $135. The stock is currently down 44% from its intraday high of $225.64. The Nasdaq 100 index was less than 1 percent off SpaceX’s all-time high, but is now down 6 percent from that all-time high.

Retail bulls who have piled up all kinds of call contracts on SpaceX are either dead or run over. The situation isn’t all that different from Wall Street underwriters like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which opted to raise an additional $11 billion in SpaceX stock after a strong start.

“I feel like people are always missing out on these IPOs, but look at the upside. Now you can go in there and get as much SpaceX as you want,” said Don Kaufman, co-founder of TheoTrade and former director of retail brokerage TD Ameritrade. “I’m also surprised that the banks that led this haven’t sold more.”

SpaceX had traded just over 500,000 options contracts by early Friday morning, making it the 11th most traded ticker on the market, which is certainly respectable, but it surpassed that. micron, vicks, Small cap ETF (IWM) and AAPL It’s a notable drop for a giant that currently has a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion.

Of the $350 million in SpaceX option premiums traded on Friday, $290 million was tied up in puts, and seven of the top 10 contracts by volume were puts, according to Spot Gamma data.

But a closer look reveals that those who believe in Musk’s mission are not giving up without a fight. More than half of all put premiums were sold, and nine of the top 10 trades by volume were bullish trades, according to data from SpotGamma and Cboe LiveVol.

One big trade captured on tape reflected a bearish but cautious tone. The trader bought $2.6 million worth of 140-strike puts expiring today, but sold the same number of 135 strikes, lowering the cost of the trade by $1.6 million.

“I’ve been selling out-of-the-money puts all my life,” Kaufman added. “I’ll buy it all day long for $100. The valuation will still be well over a trillion, but this is just a monster and will continue to be a monster.”