SpaceX Stock has a buyer that can’t say no

Owen Lamont, senior vice president at Acadian Asset Management, criticized the compressed timeline before SpaceX listed. “Bad idea. That’s too short for price discovery to occur,” he wrote in a March 2026 analysis.

FTSE Russell added SpaceX to the Russell 1000 during its June 26, 2026, reconstitution. At July 31, 2026, prices, the float expansion could lift SpaceX’s Russell 1000 weight to roughly 0.70% after the rebalance.

Analysts see SpaceX trading well above fair value

Morningstar analyst Nicolas Owens initiated SpaceX coverage with a fair value estimate of $63 before the June 12 IPO, lowering it to $62 on June 16, placing the stock among the most overvalued names in the firm’s coverage.

After the second-quarter results on August 5, 2026, Owens reaffirmed the figure and noted that shares were trading at roughly twice his valuation, Morningstar’s earnings analysis indicated.

Second-quarter revenue hit $7.8 billion, up 92% year-over-year, but SpaceX still posted a $541 million net loss, according to the SpaceX Q2 earnings release. 

It lost nearly $5 billion in 2025 on $18.7 billion in revenue, largely from a $6.35 billion operating loss in the AI segment that Starlink’s $4.4 billion in operating profit could not offset, Morningstar S-1 analysis showed.

George Noble, who previously ran the Fidelity Overseas Fund and worked under Peter Lynch, told Business Insider that SpaceX and Tesla represented “two of the best shorts in the market” and pegged fair value for both at roughly $30 per share, implying 79% downside for SpaceX at recent trading levels. 

He flagged the way passive index funds channeled retirement savings into the stock as a core structural concern.

The S&P 500 is not joining the SpaceX buying spree

One major benchmark has stayed on the sidelines. The S&P 500 rejected a fast-track inclusion proposal in June 2026, keeping its one-year seasoning period and profitability requirements in place.

Art Hogan, Chief Market Strategist at B. Riley Wealth, told CNBC that S&P’s refusal to bend its rules for SpaceX reinforced the index’s institutional credibility.

It speaks highly of the credibility of S&P Dow Jones Indices to be rules-based and make sure there’s profitability before entrance to the index. Making exceptions because companies are so large and have been private so long yet are still not profitable, didn’t make a great deal of sense

SpaceX cannot enter that index before June 2027, and ongoing losses could push the date further. 

Bloomberg Intelligence data puts direct passive tracking of the S&P 500 at roughly $7.5 trillion in assets. Another $3.4 trillion in actively managed funds use the index as their benchmark, without current SpaceX exposure.

What growing SpaceX exposure means for retirement accounts

Millions of Americans who never bought a share of SpaceX already own it through their 401(k) or IRA index funds.

The Nasdaq-100, Russell 1000, MSCI USA, and Morningstar US Total Market all hold SpaceX and are expected to increase their weightings at December’s rebalance. 

At a 0.14% weighting, Vanguard’s $2.3 trillion Total Stock Market ETF alone held over $3.2 billion in SpaceX as of late June. 

When 911 million newly unlocked insider shares enter the float calculation, those positions grow automatically, none of it flagged on a quarterly statement. 

That means retirement portfolios are mechanically adding to a stock Morningstar values at roughly half its trading price, with ongoing losses and further lockup tranches ahead.

The S&P 500 remains the one major benchmark that excludes SpaceX, and actively managed funds retain discretion over whether to hold it.

Related: Top analyst sees trouble looming for SpaceX stock

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Aug 29, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.