The SpaceX IPO Meets a Huge Options Expiration | Brent Kochuba on What Comes Next

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The SpaceX IPO has led to a lot of debate about its valuation and fundamentals. But the more interesting part out of the gate might be all the flows it will generate. In the latest OPEX Effect, Jack and Brent Kochuba take a look at what is going on behind the scenes. We have included this episode in the Excess Returns feed. If you want to keep receiving new episodes, you can subscribe to the OPEX Effect on all major podcast platforms using the links in this episode description. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoy the show.

**Jack Forehand** (1:21)
What's interesting about SpaceX too is guys like me, we love fundamental data and all that. That is literally irrelevant right now.
At the beginning of trading on SpaceX, this is a flows game based on who has to do what.

**Brent Kochuba** (1:31)
There's that liquidity demand. You could gamma squeeze this thing, I think, pretty easily, which is a very interesting prospect here, I think, over the next week really, given the attention this thing is getting and these liquidity dynamics. I have not seen anybody talking about these liquidity dynamics, Jack, so I think this is a unique angle that we're talking about here. What caused the spasm last week was the evisceration of super expensive calls. It wasn't that people were like, I want puts. It was like, I got a puke out of these calls and that was what drove the craziness of really the last week. To the downside where you really want to start watching out is if we lose 7,400 now, we move into this, what I call a flat to negative gamma regime, which would be red on this map. That's where the dealer flows start to sell into market weakness and that's where things can get kind of ugly.

**Jack Forehand** (2:24)
So, Brent, it's June 12th, 2026, we're just after noon and SpaceX is live and up around 20%.

**Brent Kochuba** (2:32)
That's right. My dentist friends are texting me, asking me what SpaceX is going to do so you know what kind of event this is.
It's a big worldwide event here. I'm going to see my mother later and if she asked me about SpaceX, I might have to short it. We'll see.

**Jack Forehand** (2:45)
Yeah, my uncle was texting me about it, which he always does about these hot stocks. So yeah, this has definitely gone way beyond the world of investing and into like everybody's thinking about this thing.

**Brent Kochuba** (2:55)
Yeah, and to be honest with you, there's so much stuff going on right now and then you had SpaceX on it. Normally, I'm a guy that has some, what I think are some humorous titles. I didn't have anything else other than Elon the trillionaire because I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that. It's just a shocking series of events that have led him to a fairly wealthy individual to God-like money.

**Jack Forehand** (3:19)
It is crazy. He's had so many times in his career where he almost all fell apart on him.
To think where he is now, you got to give the guy credit. It's an incredible accomplishment to build the kind of companies he's built.

**Brent Kochuba** (3:31)
That's right. Now, we all have to think about Elon here the next couple of days as we try to figure out, I think not just what SpaceX is going to do because if you just ignore the stock, who cares? But it's going to move, and I think it is moving some of the stocks that we're all trading every day. And so we're all trying to weigh the market impact against a slew of Iran headlines, which is just further complicating things on FOMC Day. So this is a little bit of a tough environment to try to navigate versus last month. I thought it felt a little more clear to me. So we'll have to see.