Is SPCX About to Rocket, or Is the August 20 Unlock About to Land on It?

TL;DR

• Not yet, and the week that followed proved the point. SPCX drifted from $143.34 down to $134.00 in the four sessions before the August 20 tranche cleared, then closed $136.97 the next day, up 2.22%, roughly 5% below the pre-unlock high. The weakness came first, the same shape this piece called for, not a crash on the day itself.
• The move: from an all-time closing low of $108.27 on August 5 to $134.33 intraday on August 10 when this piece was filed, a 24% rally in three sessions, triggered by the feared August 6 unlock producing buying instead of selling.
• The calendar has not gone anywhere: the day-70 tranche of roughly 319 million shares lands around August 20, the date CNBC reads off the prospectus, with 7% tranches following every two to four weeks into December.
• The stock has cleared its $135 IPO price. Round numbers plus scheduled supply is a poor place to initiate, and the market has pushed past the round number anyway.

Correction and update, August 13. The August 12 update on this piece put $138.74 on Tuesday August 11. That was Monday August 10's close. The verified sequence is $138.74 on Monday August 10 (+4.23%), the first close above the IPO price since July 15, then $133.29 on Tuesday August 11 (−3.93%), then $146.15 on Wednesday August 12 (+9.65%). So the stock did not hold above $135 and grind higher; it closed above, fell back below, and closed above again. The verdict below is unchanged and the chop is the argument for it.

Updated August 19, on the eve of the tranche. SPCX closed $143.34 on Monday August 18, down 1.98%, per stockanalysis.com and investing.com, with the day-70 tranche of roughly 319 million shares due around August 20. That close still sits 8 dollars above the $135 IPO round-trip and 32% above the August 5 low, so the setup this piece describes, a squeezed stock meeting scheduled supply at a level long-term holders are happy to sell, arrives intact. The verdict is unchanged: the entry I want is weakness before a later tranche, not strength into this one.

UPDATE (August 21, 2026): the second tranche landed the same way the first one did, and the pullback showed up first. The roughly 319 million day-70 shares became eligible Thursday, August 20, and SPCX closed that day at $134.00, down from Monday's $143.34, a decline of about 6.5% into the unlock, per Google Finance and stockanalysis.com. That is the pre-tranche weakness this piece said it wanted to buy into. Friday, August 21, the day the shares actually traded, SPCX closed $136.97, up 2.22% from Thursday's $134.00, roughly 5% below the week's Monday high and just under the $135 IPO price it had round-tripped in the prior update. Two tranches now absorbed without a flood: the first (911.5m shares, August 6) produced a rally, the second (319m shares) produced a week-long drift down into the date followed by a small bounce on the day itself, not a crash. The next test is the roughly 1.3 billion-share tranche due around SpaceX's third-quarter earnings in early November, then the 180-day lockup expiry in December and Musk's 42% in mid-2027. The pattern two tranches in favours the original call: the cheaper entries have come in the days before a tranche, not on the day the shares actually clear.

Where it stood August 13. SPCX traded around $140.75 late Thursday morning, August 13, down about 3.7% intraday. The August 12 jump came on a Morgan Stanley reiteration and a routine Starlink launch rather than new financial information, and the day-70 tranche is now days away. The full arithmetic, including the share count SpaceX owes for Cursor and why the rally shrinks it, is in the Cursor dilution breakdown.

Is SpaceX a Buy Before the August 20 Unlock?

No, and the reason is sequencing rather than pessimism. The bull just won an important argument: 911.5 million shares became eligible on August 6 and the stock rose 6.1%, because the fear had been fully pre-sold and the actual selling never showed. That is genuine information, and it killed the simple "unlock = crash" bear case.

But one absorbed tranche is a datapoint, not a pattern. The rally it sparked has now run 24% in three sessions and parked the stock at the $135 IPO round-trip, a level every underwater IPO buyer has been waiting for. Meanwhile the next tranche, about 319 million shares, arrives around August 20, and the sellers most likely to use it, eighteen-year venture funds with a near-zero cost basis, are just as happy at $134 as at $110. Happier.

So the setup into the 20th is a stock up 24% into known supply, at a psychological level, held mostly by people who now feel clever. That is the profile of a spot where the market gives back a squeeze, whatever the long-term story.

What Would Make Me a Buyer

The staircase itself becomes the signal. Two tranches absorbed without a breakdown, and the "scheduled supply" discount starts dying on its own schedule; by then the market will also have a Q2-vs-Q3 read on the losses that made the first earnings report such a hurdle. The entry I'd take is weakness in the two or three days before a later tranche, which is where the positioning pressure concentrates, rather than strength after a squeeze. And the structural facts that make patience cheap: Musk's 42% stays locked until mid-2027, and the strategic holders are not selling at any of these dates. The stock is not going to run away while supply lands every fortnight.

Track the dates on the IPO lock-up calendar; the staircase runs to December 8.

The One-Line Read

SPCX earned its 24% relief rally by absorbing the biggest tranche without a flood, but buying at the $135 round-trip eleven days before 319 million more shares unlock is paying squeeze prices for supply-schedule risk, so the call is wait: the staircase has four more steps, and one of them will offer a better price than this one.