SpaceX's stock dropped Friday after the company aborted a Starship test flight Thursday. The rocket didn't blow up. It didn't fail. It just sat there. One second before launch, somebody hit the brakes.
The stock is now down six days in a row. Six consecutive trading sessions of people selling shares in a company that builds rockets because one rocket didn't launch on schedule. The same retail investors who bought Tesla at $400 because Elon tweeted a meme are now panic-selling SpaceX because a test flight got delayed. These are the minds managing their own retirement accounts.
Aborting a test flight one second before ignition is actually the system working correctly. The computers detected something wrong and stopped the launch. That's the entire point of having abort protocols. But the market decided this was bad news. The market looked at "safety system functions as designed" and said no thanks, I'm out.
Someone somewhere is explaining to their spouse why they lost money on a private space company because the rocket was too safe. That conversation is happening right now. Picture that guy. He's wearing a Dogecoin t-shirt and he's very upset about risk management.
The stock has now fallen six days straight. Not because of revenue. Not because of competition. Because a rocket that was always going to either launch or not launch did not launch. Breaking news: test flights sometimes get rescheduled. Call the SEC.
Day traders are stress-eating Cheetos over launch abort protocols while SpaceX engineers are literally fixing whatever triggered the abort so the rocket doesn't explode. But sure, sell your shares because the timeline moved by forty-eight hours. That's definitely the smart play for a company valued on its ability to not kill astronauts.
Photo by Forest Katsch on Unsplash
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