Heavy Trading in Both Long and Short 2x SpaceX ETFs Signals Deep Market Divide 

When both the bull and the bear side of the leveraged SpaceX ETFs trade at record-breaking volumes simultaneously, the market is telling us that SpaceX is one of the most fiercely contested trades in recent market history.

A Record That Rewrites the Record Books

The launch of 2x SpaceX ETFs in the week of June 15, 2026, was unusual even by recent ETF standards. New ETF categories have produced big trading numbers before. Spot Bitcoin  ETFs drew enormous attention when they launched in January 2024.  Single-stock leveraged ETFs linked to companies such as Nvidia also became popular trading  tools. More recently, AI-themed ETFs have regularly attracted strong  demand. But the early trading in SpaceX-linked leveraged ETFs stood out. 

June 15, 2026, was the launch day for the category and approximately $1 billion traded across a dozen leveraged SpaceX products. A day later, total volume across all 2x SpaceX leveraged ETFs rose to approximately $4.15 billion, making it one of the busiest  trading sessions ever seen for a newly launched ETF category. 

The largest share of that activity was concentrated in two funds: the Leverage Shares 2X Long SpaceX Daily ETF (SPCH) and the Leverage Shares 2X Short SpaceX Daily ETF (SSPC). 

Together, SPCH and SSPC traded more than $2.3 billion on June 16, representing over 55% of total category volume,  despite competing against ten other SpaceX-linked leveraged products.  SPCH led the long side with around $1.38 billion in volume, while SSPC  recorded nearly $1 billion on the short side.¹

The activity was not concentrated only in bullish exposure. Traders were  also using the short product at scale, suggesting the SpaceX trade was  highly contested from the start. 

Five Reasons SpaceX ETF Volume Exploded

The record breaking volume was the product of five forces converging at once. 

SpaceX (SPCX) closed its IPO day on June 12 at $160.95, up 19.2% from its $135 offering price. It then climbed further, reaching an intraday high of  $225.64 on June 16 after the company announced a $60 billion acquisition of AI coding platform Cursor, before settling around $200. That kind of single-session volatility creates a feedback loop: big  moves attract traders, traders generate volume, volume attracts more  traders. 

Only approximately 3-5% of SpaceX's shares are available for public trading. That mechanical  constraint means even modest buying or selling pressure moves the stock  dramatically, making SPCX one of the most volatile large-cap stocks in market  history. Traders who understand this are using 2x products to amplify  their positioning around it. 

Under revised Nasdaq methodology effective May 2026, SpaceX can enter the Nasdaq-100 tracked by QQQ,  with approximately $495.70 billion in AUM after just 15 trading days  from its IPO. That puts the expected inclusion date around July 6, 2026.² Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that Nasdaq-100 and Russell 1000 funds alone will need to absorb around 24% of SpaceX's public float upon inclusion. Passive funds buy whatever the index methodology requires at market price on rebalance day. Traders positioning ahead of that forced buying wave are a meaningful source of SPCH volume. 

Listed options on SPCH, SSPC, and SPCX itself began trading on June 16, the same session that produced the record volumes.¹ Market makers in options must delta-hedge their positions by buying and selling the underlying instrument, in this case SPCH and SSPC, creating mechanical volume on top of directional trading activity. 

The bull case: forced index buying, a transformative multi-vertical business across  rockets, satellites, and now AI infrastructure, and post-IPO momentum.³

The bear case: a 94x price-to-sales multiple, a $4.94 billion annual net loss, and a  lockup schedule that will eventually release billions of shares into the market.³

Both camps are trading their convictions at scale and that bilateral conviction is precisely what makes volume surge.   

What SpaceX ETF Volume Reveals

When both a 2x long and a 2x short product trade at near equal and record-breaking volumes, the market is communicating several things simultaneously. 

Price discovery is fragile. A stock where informed bulls and informed bears are trading at roughly equal volumes and intensity is a stock where the "correct" price is genuinely unknown. SpaceX's combination of revolutionary business potential and  stretched valuation has created a situation where two intelligent,  contradictory theses coexist and neither has yet been falsified. 

Volatility is expected to remain extreme. Traders don't reach for 2x leveraged instruments on quiet stocks. The bilateral  volume in SPCH and SSPC is a collective forecast that SpaceX will keep  moving violently in both directions and that nimble traders can trade those moves with amplified exposure.⁴

Liquidity reinforces itself. Volume in leveraged ETFs carries a huge weight. Higher volume typically means tighter bid-ask spreads, lower market  impact on entry and exit, and more reliable price discovery throughout  the session. SPCH and SSPC sit at the top of the volume rankings and that position compounds on itself. Volume draws in market makers, market makers compete on spreads, tighter spreads pull in more volume. We have seen this cycle play out across asset classes, from gold to sector funds to Bitcoin ETFs. First mover volume advantage is one of the few edges in this space that still holds.  

The product structure is working as intended. The fact that a 2x short ETF is trading at near-parity with its long  counterpart is also a validation of the ETF wrapper itself. Previously,  traders wanting short exposure to a volatile, thinly floated stock like SpaceX would have faced significant borrowing costs, availability constraints, and margin call risk. SSPC eliminates all three: no margin account required, no broker locating shares to borrow, and investors cannot lose more than their initial investment regardless of how violently the stock moves. 

When Bulls and Bears Are Equally Convicted

When a stock has a small float, no clear consensus on value, and serious  attention from both retail and institutional traders, it tends to  generate real two-sided activity. Not the kind driven by momentum or  hype, but by genuine disagreement. People are on both sides of this  trade, and the volume reflects that. 

In markets, contested stocks are often the most actively traded, the most  volatile, and the most capable of producing extreme returns in either  direction. For traders who understand how daily-reset leveraged ETFs work and who accept that these are not buy-and-hold instruments, SPCH and SSPC provide two-sided access to what may be the most intensely watched stock in the current market, in a transparent, regulated, liquid structure. 

Footnotes:

¹Leverage Shares by Themes: Leverage Shares by Themes' 2x SpaceX ETFs, SPCH and SSPC, Lead Market Debut With More Than $500 Million in First-Day Trading Volume. Globe Newswire / Yahoo Finance, June 16, 2026 

²Etf.com: SpaceX IPO: Every ETF That Will Hold SPCX — and When, as of June 4, 2026. 

³TECHSTOK2: SPCH ETF Pops on SpaceX Surge, 2X Leveraged Trade Heats Up After IPO, as of June 16, 2026. 

⁴Leverage Shares: 2x SpaceX (SPCX) Short Daily ETF — SSPC Product Page, as of June 2026.