SpaceX seeing interest from short sellers, but most afraid to go against Musk

SpaceX‘s sharp pullback from its post-IPO record high is doing little to embolden short sellers reluctant to bet against CEO Elon Musk, even as the shares have shed more than a quarter of their value in just over a week.

The rocket company is down about 12% this week and roughly 28% from its June 16 peak, erasing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value after a blistering rally that followed the June 12 initial public offering.

Yet bearish bets remain in check. Only about 40 million SpaceX shares are currently sold short, representing roughly 5% to 7% of the company’s publicly tradable float of roughly 625 million shares, according to an estimate by S3 Partners.

Short selling refers to a trading strategy that allows investors to bet that the price of a stock or security will fall. 

About 60 companies in the S&P 500 currently have short interest exceeding 7% of their float, according to FactSet, suggesting bearish positioning in SpaceX remains relatively modest despite the stock’s recent slide.

More than 30 million SpaceX shares are currently available to borrow, indicating ample liquidity in the securities lending market. Borrowing costs are also low, with annualized fees below 1%, S3 said.

“SPCX has attracted active short-selling interest, but the data suggest this is far from a supply-constrained short,” Matthew Unterman, head of research at S3, told CNBC. “The current setup looks more like normal price discovery than a classic short-squeeze candidate.”

For now, many traders appear reluctant to press short positions against a company that remains one of the market’s most closely followed growth stories with a passionate retail investor base.

Even some of Wall Street’s best-known skeptics have stayed on the sidelines. Michael Burry, the investor who famously bet against the U.S. housing market before the 2008 financial crisis, said he had examined several ways to wager against SpaceX but ultimately passed.