{"id":595599,"date":"2026-08-17T03:02:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T03:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/595599\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T03:02:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T03:02:19","slug":"spacexs-wild-ride-shows-how-quickly-markets-can-change-their-minds-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/595599\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s wild ride shows how quickly markets can change their minds \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cAfter the hype, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/spacex\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/spacex\">SpaceX<\/a> investors return to the numbers\u201d was the headline of this column a week ago. That return, it turns out, was brief. After diving post-earnings, SpaceX shares promptly surged almost 40 per cent. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It\u2019s the market\u2019s prerogative to change its mind, and in this case it said: actually, never mind the numbers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">What\u2019s changed? Why was SpaceX valued at $1.4 trillion on August 1st, and almost $2 trillion a week later? What fundamental changes drove this repricing?<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Traders of the stock might be tempted to reply: oh, please. The more prosaic explanation is that SpaceX had been heavily sold, shares were oversold and much-feared insider selling failed to materialise. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A lock-up period preventing early investors and employees from selling had just expired, opening the door to a wave of potential selling. It didn\u2019t happen, \u201cinvestors\u201d breathed a sigh of relief and shares took off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Technicals and sentiment tend to get downplayed in media explanations of market movements. It\u2019s nice to think prices move because investors have carefully reassessed the fundamental value of a company. Sometimes they do, but markets are also markets: supply and demand, fear and greed, positioning and momentum matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Nobel economist Robert Shiller recognised this in a famous 1981 paper, arguing that stock prices moved far more than changes in underlying fundamentals could explain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">SpaceX is providing a particularly spectacular modern example. A $135 per share IPO, a quick two-day surge to $225, a subsequent halving that brought it below $105, and a 40 per cent rally in a matter of days \u2013 all without anything like a commensurate change in the underlying business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">And this isn\u2019t some speculative small-cap stock. SpaceX is now a roughly $2 trillion company. One might have thought that, at $2 trillion, the numbers would matter. Alas, not just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAfter the hype, SpaceX investors return to the numbers\u201d was the headline of this column a week ago.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,605,61,60,2306],"class_list":["post-595599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-elon-musk","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}