SpaceX options trading demand, even before a single contract changes hands, is already moving markets. The IPO is set to price at $135 a share, and the ripple effects are visible across a cluster of listed proxies whose recent gains have more to do with investor impatience than their own fundamentals.
SpaceX Options Trading Demand and the Proxy Play Problem
‘There’s a ton of short-dated call buying in these names as a way to get long SpaceX,’ said Danny Kirsch, head of options trading at Piper Sandler, speaking by phone. ‘I have no doubt part of it is retail demand but there is definitely institutional demand for SATS.’
EchoStar (SATS) was higher by another 5% in early trading on Friday. AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) was also trading up. Both closed on Thursday at $128 and $97.56 respectively, carrying implied volatilities of 97 and 129, levels that signal investors are paying steep premiums to hold these names through what they hope will be a SpaceX-adjacent rerating.
The $135 IPO price is a sweet-spot for retail traders who are comfortable paying elevated premiums on nominally lower-priced stocks. Options on SpaceX begin trading on Tuesday, and expectations are running high. ‘SpaceX has the potential to become one of the most actively traded options names among retail investors,’ said Anthony Denier, Group President and US CEO of Webull, in an email. ‘The combination of a likely high share price, significant volatility, and immense public interest creates an ideal environment for options trading. If borrowable shares become scarce or expensive, put options may offer investors a more practical way to express a bearish view than shorting the stock directly.’
Tesla, the original Musk cult stock, sits among the most actively traded names in retail options. SpaceX, once it lists, is expected to challenge that status quickly.
What the ETF Bottleneck Reveals
Concurrent demand for space-themed exchange-traded funds is adding another layer of pressure on the proxy names. The Procure Space ETF (UFO), up 119% over the past year, and Defiance’s JEDI, up 35% over the same period, both hold ASTS. According to the Procure Space ETF (UFO) December 2024 newsletter, as of 17 December 2024, UFO held ASTS at a 3.37% weighting and SATS at 3.96%, alongside Rocket Lab (RKLB) at 14.02%, Globalstar (GSAT) at 6.14%, and Spire (SPIR) at 2.11%.
Cory Johnson, chief market strategist at San Francisco-based Epistrophy Capital Research, described the dynamic plainly. ‘People who can’t buy SpaceX or didn’t think they could get enough quick enough, have been plowing money into these ETFs and so these funds are having to buy shares of AST, EchoStar, Spire, etc,’ he said by phone. ‘It has nothing to do with the quality of these companies, demand for their products, or their cash flows.’
That supply bottleneck in the ETFs, Johnson argued, has helped keep prices for the proxy plays elevated beyond what the underlying businesses would justify on their own. When SpaceX options begin trading, some of that diverted capital is likely to find a more direct route.
What SpaceX Is Actually Filing
Beyond the proxy frenzy, SpaceX’s own regulatory disclosures are beginning to sketch a more ambitious operational picture. On 3 June 2026, SpaceX filed Amendment No. 2 to its Registration Statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Two days later, it disclosed a Cloud Service Agreement with Google LLC for access to compute capacity. Under that agreement, if SpaceX fails to deliver the committed GPU capacity by 30 September 2026, Google may, after a one-month grace period, terminate the agreement outright or accept a reduced number of GPUs at a proportionally lower monthly fee.
The SpaceX S-1 filing also sets out forward-looking plans that extend well beyond the immediate IPO: commencement of payload delivery to orbit in 2026 via Starship, potential deployment of orbital artificial intelligence compute satellites as early as 2028, and development of a product the company calls ‘Terafab’. These disclosures position SpaceX as something closer to an integrated aerospace and compute infrastructure company than a launch provider, a framing that will colour how options traders assess the stock’s long-term volatility profile.
Retail appetite has spent months being filtered through imperfect vessels. Come Tuesday, it gets a direct line. The question is whether the proxy plays, their implied volatilities already stretched into the nineties and beyond, give back ground as fast as they gained it.
