SpaceX Stock Dives Under $135 IPO Price, Down 40%. When Buy?Space Exploration Technologies CorpNASDAQ:SPCXTradingViewEvery blockbuster IPO has its honeymoon. Some last months. Others barely survive the first season. SpaceX SPCX is now discovering that even the world's biggest stock debut isn't immune to gravity. Shares of Elon Musk's rocket company briefly slipped below their $135 IPO price on Wednesday, touching an intraday low of $132.15 before recovering to close at $135.27. It's a far cry from the euphoric days of mid-June, when the stock rocketed to $225 and pushed the company's valuation above $3 trillion — briefly making SpaceX SPCX worth more than Amazon AMZN . Since then, roughly 40% has evaporated from the share price, wiping more than $1 trillion off the company's peak market value. Even Musk has felt the turbulence, with the value of his net worth shrinking by about $500 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 💸 Why the Rocket Lost Fuel No single headline caused the selloff. Instead, several concerns have quietly piled up. First comes valuation. Even after the recent decline, investors are still debating whether a company generating a handful of billions in revenue but remaining lossmaking deserves such a lofty price tag. Then there's supply. SpaceX insiders are currently prevented from selling because of a post-IPO lock-up — a contractual period that stops early shareholders from immediately cashing out after a listing. Once those restrictions begin to expire following the company's first quarterly earnings report in August (ref: Earnings calendar) , more shares will gradually become available, potentially increasing selling pressure. The bond market has also grown more cautious. SpaceX raised roughly $25 billion in debt just three weeks ago, yet those bonds have already underperformed many other high-grade corporate issues. 📈 Is This a Buying Opportunity? That's the question every dip buyer (and bagholder) eventually asks. History suggests that great companies don't always make great investments at every price. Sometimes the business keeps improving while the stock simply spends months catching up with reality. This one quickly shifted from “to the moon” to “just go back to entry, I don’t even want profits anymore.” Long-term investors often watch for catalysts rather than just lower prices. A catalyst is an event that could materially change how investors value a company — whether through stronger earnings, successful product launches or new contracts. For SpaceX, several potential catalysts are approaching. 🌌 Eyes on Starship The next one could arrive as soon as Thursday. SpaceX is preparing the 13th test flight of Starship, the fully reusable rocket designed to dramatically reduce the cost of reaching orbit. If successful, Starship could unlock entirely new businesses, from larger satellite deployments to Musk's ambitious vision of orbital AI data centers. The technology remains a work in progress. Previous test flights have delivered valuable engineering lessons, even when they didn't end exactly as planned. The upcoming launch will continue refining the rocket's third-generation design, bringing the company another step closer to commercial operations. 🤔 Dreams, Deadlines and Reality Musk has never been accused of thinking small. Eventually, SpaceX hopes to launch hundreds of Starships thousands of times each year. That's an extraordinary vision, although investors have also learned to treat Musk's timelines with a healthy dose of skepticism. Millions of humanoid robots by 2025 and fleets of robotaxis were once just around the corner, yet both remain works in progress. In the end, the stock's recent decline may say less about SpaceX's future than about expectations getting ahead of execution. The company still sits at the heart of the commercial space industry, but Wall Street is asking for something it always asks after the excitement fades: less storytelling, more delivery. Off to you: Is this a buying opportunity for you right now? Share your views in the comments!