SPCX Perp Adds 26% as Forced Index Buying Hits a 3% Float

The Biggest IPO in History, Three Days In

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share and began trading on the Nasdaq under SPCX on June 12, raising roughly $75 billion — the largest listing on record, ahead of Alibaba and Saudi Aramco. Day one opened at $150 and closed at $160.95, up about 19%. It didn't stop there: the stock traded near $178 in Monday's second session, pushing the two-day gain to roughly 32% over the $135 price and the market cap past $2 trillion — making SpaceX one of the six largest US public companies essentially overnight. The Hyperliquid SPCX perp now sits at $211.90, up 26.43% on the day.

The Float Is the Whole Story

The number that explains everything is the float. SpaceX sold only about 3-4% of the company, and founder and insider shares are locked up for 366 days. Into that thin float comes mechanical demand: SPCX won fast-track inclusion in FTSE Russell and MSCI, with effective dates of June 26 and June 29, and estimates put forced index buying at $13-17 billion over about three weeks, with passive funds projected to hold near 30% of the free float inside 15 trading days. The one index that said no was the S&P 500, which ruled SpaceX out on profitability and seasoning grounds, keeping it out until 2027 at the earliest. Buyers who are required to own it, a float that can barely supply it, and no S&P bid waiting to absorb it later — that is a squeeze by construction.

Why the Perp Trades Rich to Cash

This is where the Hyperliquid market gets interesting. The perp at $211.90 is running roughly 19% above the ~$178 cash stock. Normally a basis that wide invites arbitrage — short the perp, buy the cash, pocket the spread as they converge. Here that trade barely exists: with only 3-4% of shares floating, the cash equity is extremely hard to borrow, so there's no clean way to short the stock against a long perp. The perp ends up absorbing both the leveraged long demand and the short interest the cash market can't, and the premium has no obvious mechanism to collapse. A wave of leveraged SpaceX ETFs from GraniteShares, Defiance, Direxion and others is layering even more one-directional pressure onto the same thin supply.

What Could Close the Gap

The basis isn't permanent, and the calendar is where to look. The index effective dates — June 26 for FTSE Russell and June 29 for MSCI — mark the point after which the largest block of forced buying is done and the marginal passive bid thins out. The underwriters' overallotment (greenshoe) adds supply at $135 if exercised. And the 366-day lockup eventually expires in 2027, releasing insider stock into a float that is currently the binding constraint. Until one of those loosens the supply side, the perp's premium to cash reads less like a mispricing waiting to be arbitraged and more like a feature of how this stock was brought public.