TL;DR

• ZeroHedge believes that the opening of SPCX options may trigger a gamma squeeze, potentially pushing the stock price to $400 in extreme cases.
• It can now only be confirmed that the volatility channel has been opened, and $400 should not be considered market consensus.
• Related assets: SPCX, NVDA, MSFT, AAPL, SQQQ, SOXS.

ZeroHedge posted on social media that the opening of SPCX options may trigger a gamma squeeze and push SpaceX's stock price towards $400. It is a highly influential and aggressive financial media and trading account in the US stock market, adept at discussing macro liquidity, position structure, and extreme trading scenarios together. This time, it has directly linked the listing of SPCX options, gamma squeeze, and $400 stock price.

SPCX rose more than 25% on its first trading day, with a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. Overnight and after-hours quotes once approached $230, but this is not the official closing price and cannot directly represent the willingness of long-term capital to acquire at this price. For ordinary readers, what is more important is not how many shares were issued in the IPO but that trading chips are limited in the early listing phase, with retail buying highly concentrated, and options are about to open.

This is where the discussion of the $400 claim truly deserves attention: the number itself is exaggerated, but it points to a market structure that requires caution. ZeroHedge believes that the combination of SPCX's low float, retail buying pressure, and the listing of options may trigger an effective gamma squeeze. Based on an estimated fully diluted share count of about 13.1 billion, a $400 price corresponds to a market capitalization of approximately $5.2 trillion, putting SpaceX very close to, or even briefly surpassing, Nvidia.

Why can SPCX fluctuate like a small cap?

The uniqueness of SPCX lies not in the company's size but in the limited number of tradable shares early on.

A low float refers to the limited percentage of shares that can be freely traded in the market. Even if a company's total market capitalization is large, if only a small portion of shares enters the secondary market at the early stage of listing, short-term prices will be more sensitive to buying pressure. The pool might be large, but the amount of water that can actually be scooped out for trading is small.

This also distinguishes SPCX from Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Mature large-cap stocks have massive floats, institutional holdings, index funds, market makers, and arbitrage capital. To move the market cap of such stocks by hundreds of billions in a single day requires a very large amount of capital and broader consensus.

SPCX is in its early listing stage. SpaceX's official announcement confirmed the number of shares issued in the IPO and the over-allotment plan, but relative to the company's overall valuation, the initial public float is still relatively low. The low float combined with the Musk narrative makes the stock price behave more like a newly impacted stock in a short time than a mature blue-chip stock.

This also explains why after-hours prices are tightly monitored by the market. After-hours trading has poorer liquidity, and the buy-and-sell orders are thinner, so once funds chase the same stock, price elasticity can be magnified. The after-hours quotes once approached $230, indicating a tight supply of shares at that time, but cannot directly demonstrate that long-term capital has accepted this valuation.

ZeroHedge's $400 projection has its first layer of foundation here: if a trillion-dollar company behaves like a low-float small cap in its short-term trading status, it could exhibit price jumps that are rarely seen in normal large-cap stocks.

Options opening gives volatility leverage

The importance of options lies in their ability to convert retail directional bets into passive hedging demands by market makers.

According to Reuters, SPCX options are expected to begin trading as early as Tuesday, with Cboe projected to open them on that day. The report cites market expectations that the early trading might be heavy and volatile, with premiums being quite high.

For ordinary investors, this indicates that SPCX will not only have the option of buying the underlying stock. After the options are listed, the market will see a large number of cheaper, more leveraged, and riskier call options.

The most likely to ignite emotions are out-of-the-money call options, which have strike prices above the current price. They are relatively cheap and more like lottery tickets. If the stock price surges quickly enough, the return could be very high. If not, the options could quickly drop to zero. Retail investors usually prefer these contracts on popular stocks as they can bet on larger price increases with a smaller principal.

The core mechanism of gamma squeeze occurs here.

When a large number of investors buy call options, the party selling the options is usually the market maker. To control risk, the market maker often needs to buy a portion of the underlying stock to hedge. The more the stock price rises, the closer the options get to being profitable, and the more the market maker may need to buy of the underlying stock. Thus, a positive feedback loop forms: retail buys call options, market makers buy stocks, and once the stock price rises, market makers continue to add to their hedging, attracting more buying pressure.

In the case of SPCX, this mechanism has a lot of imaginative potential. It combines a low float, a popular narrative, retail attention, an options opening window, and already appeared dramatic price volatility in its early listing. ZeroHedge believes that once the demand for out-of-the-money call options is sufficiently concentrated, the buying pressure from market makers may quickly push the stock price towards $400.

Boundaries must also be clearly defined. The $400 is an extreme upward scenario proposed by ZeroHedge, not a baseline judgment that can be independently derived from current evidence. The upcoming opening of options merely indicates that a new leverage channel has emerged. To confirm that a gamma squeeze is forming, there is a need to observe the actual transactions on the options' first day and the following days, the open interest in the out-of-the-money call options, strike price distribution, implied volatility, and net gamma exposure of market makers.

What can be said now is that the machine has the conditions to start. What cannot be said is that the machine has definitely started.

Vanda data supports crowded trading, but not a complete frenzy

Looking only at the SPCX trend, it is easy to think that retail investors have fully returned to risk assets. However, Vanda's capital flow metric provides a narrower explanation.

According to ZeroHedge citing Vanda Track data, SPCX ranked first in net retail buying for the second consecutive trading day, with a single-day net buy of about $93.8 million, accounting for about 73% of the total net retail buying of individual stocks in the US market that day. This data has not been confirmed through independent public channels and is more suitable as a reference for observing the degree of retail crowding rather than a market fact confirmed by multiple parties.

Even so, this metric still supports part of ZeroHedge's judgment: SPCX has indeed seen a rare concentration of funds. For stocks with low float, concentrated buying pressure alone is enough to significantly impact prices. If option trading further amplifies this directional bet, the volatility may continue to expand.

But this set of data also imposes constraints. During the same period, while some semiconductor stocks saw mild inflows, there was no indication of a broad-based risk appetite diffusion across the market. Short or inverse leveraged ETFs like SQQQ and SOXS are still being bought, indicating that retail investors are not diving headfirst into risk assets but rather concentrating their attention on the single narrative of SPCX.

This distinction is important.

If the risk appetite were to expand broadly, SPCX's rise could be understood as part of wider market sentiment. If it’s just a single crowded stock, the faster it rises, the more fragile the position structure. The more concentrated the capital, the stronger the short-term upward momentum, but once expectations falter, option premiums decline, and after-hours liquidity worsens, the reverse volatility could be more severe.

This is also the most easily misinterpreted aspect when comparing SPCX with Nvidia's market value. Nvidia's valuation is sustained by ongoing verification of AI chip revenues, data center demand, profitability, and long-term growth expectations. SPCX's current short-term trading is more derived from the listing phase's liquidity structure, Musk narrative, and expectations of option leverage. Both could receive high valuations, but the supporting mechanisms differ.

$400 needs options chain validation

The most important variable for SPCX going forward is not whether more people on social media shout $400, but what the options market truly looks like.

If ZeroHedge's extreme scenario is to continue to hold, there needs to be enough concentrated trading and open interest of out-of-the-money call options. Simply having options listed and active trading is not enough. The key is whether the buying pressure is concentrated on the call contracts above the current price and whether these contracts force market makers to continue buying the underlying stock for hedging.

Implied volatility must also be considered. When options are just listed, premiums may be very high. For buyers, even if the underlying stock continues to rise, if the implied volatility drops rapidly, the option's profit may be eroded. For market structure, high premiums may suppress subsequent chasing buy, and may also lead early buyers to choose to take profits.

The trading volume of the underlying stock is equally important. A low float can amplify both rises and falls. High prices in after-hours trading demonstrate liquidity tightness but do not prove that long-term capital is willing to continue purchasing. If the buying pressure for options is not as strong as imagined, or if profit-taking is concentrated shortly after the listing, SPCX may also experience reverse feedback.

Lastly comes the fundamental anchor. SpaceX's long-term story is not weak; Starlink, launch services, space infrastructure, and potential communication synergies are all reasons why the market is willing to grant high valuations. However, moving from around $3 trillion to over $5 trillion in the short term appears more like an extrapolation of trading structure, not a revaluation that has already been confirmed by financial data.

In the coming days, investors truly need to focus on the strike price distribution on the options chain, the open interest in out-of-the-money call options, changes in implied volatility, and whether the underlying stock has real trading support at high levels. Only when these data points align in the same direction will ZeroHedge's $400 scenario shift from an extreme projection to a risk that the market must price in.

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