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Back in June, when SpaceX (SPCX) was trading north of $200, and everybody wanted in, I sold puts at the $75 strike.
That wasn’t a prediction that the stock would reach that level. But it’s a price I’d be happy to pay to own it, and getting paid to wait for a price you want is the closest thing to a free lunch this business offers.
The stock closed at $108.27 on Wednesday. That’s an all-time low, but still nowhere near my number.
I bring this up now because everybody spent this week bracing for the lockup expiration, and yesterday it came and went. The stock went up 6%.
I told Monument Traders Alliance members in Vancouver the expiration would already be baked in. But it wasn’t a secret. The date sat in the prospectus, and every trading desk on the planet had it circled.
There’s something else nobody mentioned. Yesterday’s tranche (slice of shares to be unlocked) had a conditional extra 10% attached that required the stock to close at or above $175.50 on five of the prior ten sessions. It didn’t trigger.
So less supply came free than the headline number suggested, and the stock rose anyway.
Yesterday was the first tranche of shares to be unlocked.
The next one releases August 20, then again on September 9, September 24, October 9, and October 24, with another after Q3 earnings. By the time the full 180-day lockup expires on December 8, roughly 40% of the company will become tradable in stages.
After that, a separate group of holders starts unlocking in early 2027, running from after Q4 earnings in February through the middle of that year. Musk’s roughly 6.4 billion shares are locked until June 2027, with no early release provision.
Supply arrives on a schedule that runs from now through the middle of next year, and I have no idea which one of those dates finally bites.
Neither does anybody else, which is why I stopped trying to pick a bottom on this thing.
This week alone tells you the story… A double-digit gain the day before earnings, a 14% collapse after earnings, then a 6% recovery yesterday.
The stock ran to $225 after going public at $135 and now sits roughly 50% below that high. Heavy spending and a rich starting valuation did that, not the lockup.
SPCX is for real. But like the rockets it makes, the shares aren’t guaranteed to have the right trajectory every day.
If you’re a long-term investor, this is where accumulation makes sense. Buy a piece here and average down every month for the next six to 12 months, so you don’t miss lower levels, and you’re not locked out because you hesitated.
If you’d rather get paid while you wait, pick the price you want to own it at and sell puts there. Mine was $75, yours might be different.
Naming the number in advance beats guessing what happens during these lockup periods.
Even a volatile stock like SPCX becomes an easy investment once you pick your price.
Of course, you can also play the volatility around it, which, at my age, isn’t my game. However, my colleague Nate Bear has set out to do just that.
He’s opening his live trading room FREE next week from August 10 through 14, the week after the first unlock.
During that period, he’ll be eyeing opportunities that can deliver 5-10X returns in as little as a day.
He hasn’t opened those doors in a year and a half.
