Day Three: SPCX Options Go Live, Oil Keeps Bleeding, and the Space Basket Picks Sides

Yesterday I wrote the easy money was Monday's open and the next leg required picking the right name. Day three did not waste any time proving it.

The headline event is the chain. Cboe targeted today to list SPCX options — the fastest a brand-new IPO has gotten a listed chain in recent memory — and the unlisted vol market spent all of Monday pricing exactly that. Odaily-syndicated gamma math floated a $400 squeeze case on day-one chain mechanics. That number is a marketing number, not a forecast, but the path to it is real if dealers go short gamma into the first expiry.

Crude tried to bounce. WTI gave back 3.7% Monday to test the 200-day, then crawled back to roughly $80.10 in Asian hours as the desk waited for the actual signing language. Trump put the deal on the calendar for Sunday and said Hormuz would 'completely open' once it lands. The premium is mostly out; the headline risk is not.

And the basket kept splitting. RKLB ran another ~7% on a Cantor Fitzgerald upgrade into the June 22 Nasdaq-100 inclusion. ASTS slipped overnight even with BlueBird 8–10 encapsulated for a Wednesday Falcon 9 launch — its biggest catalyst of the year — because the bid is in RKLB, not in the cohort. LUNR and RDW followed it lower.

Cboe targeted today as the listing date for SPCX equity options. That is exceptionally fast for a fresh IPO — the standard window is closer to five sessions, and it is happening on day three because the float, the volume, and the institutional demand all cleared the threshold immediately.

Why this matters: until today, every directional bet on SPCX had to be expressed in the cash tape or through synthetic vol on a single-stock CFD desk. Listed options take that demand and route it through a market maker who hedges in the underlying. On a stock with this kind of one-way bid, that hedge flow is mechanical: market makers sell upside calls, they buy the stock to delta-hedge, they keep buying as the stock goes up. That is the gamma-squeeze loop the $400 headlines are referencing.

The actual setup that matters: implied vol on the first listed expiry is going to print rich — anything inside 80 IV would surprise me to the low side — because nobody on the sell side wants to be short gamma on a name with zero realized history. The first few sessions of the chain are a vol-seller's nightmare and a vol-buyer's permission slip to size small and define risk.

What I am watching: the put-call ratio out of the gate, the skew, and where dealers actually price the first weekly. If skew comes in steep to the upside, dealers are positioning for the chase. If skew flattens, the chain is telling you institutions are using it to hedge existing length — and that is a topping tell, not a continuation tell.

Headlines talking about SPCX to $400 on day-one options are doing what headlines do. The actual mechanics: a gamma squeeze requires (a) short-dated calls bought aggressively, (b) dealers net short those calls, (c) dealers forced to buy the underlying to stay neutral, (d) the underlying running into a low-float tape that amplifies the hedge. SPCX has the low-float and the call demand. It does not yet have the dealer positioning data — that is what we will learn in the next two sessions.

If the chain opens and dealers run aggressive vol, they collect premium and the squeeze fizzles. If they get caught short in the first session, the loop kicks in. Either way, the right trade is not chasing the headline number. It is sizing risk to the IV print on the first weekly and letting the stock tell you which regime it is in.

I am not buying calls into day one of a brand-new chain on a $1.75T market cap stock that already ran 19% on Friday and another 8% on Monday. That is paying retail price to express an institutional thesis. The cleaner expression is a defined-risk call spread once the chain has two days of price discovery, or staying in the cash tape with a stop.

Monday WTI lost 3.7% and tagged the 200-day around $80.73. Overnight it crawled back to $80.10. That is the textbook reaction at a major moving average — sellers exhaust into the level, shorts cover, the market waits for the next headline to break the tie.

The next headline is on the calendar. Trump told reporters the deal would be signed Sunday and the Strait of Hormuz would 'completely open' afterward. Iran confirmed final talks begin this week. If both happen on schedule, the 200-day breaks and the next downside reference is the $76–$78 pocket where Murban is already trading. If the signing slips even 48 hours, the same level becomes support and the bounce extends into FOMC.

How I am positioned: I am not adding to crude shorts at the 200-day. I am letting the level decide. The risk-reward of pressing a 5% down move into a binary headline event is bad, and 'the deal is signed' is already 80% in the curve.

Cantor Fitzgerald turned bullish on RKLB this morning. The stock ran roughly 7%. That comes on top of yesterday's KeyBanc Overweight and the confirmed June 22 Nasdaq-100 inclusion date. Three consecutive sessions of institutional bid into a name that already has the cleanest fundamentals in the cohort.

The Nasdaq-100 inclusion is mechanical demand. QQQ and every Nasdaq-100 tracker have to buy. That buy program runs into and through June 22, with the bulk of it in the rebalance days right before. Inclusion-front-runners are already in. The question for the next week is whether discretionary money keeps paying up after the mechanical bid fills.

I am holding the RKLB I added Friday. I am not adding into a three-day vertical. The clean add is the first pullback to the breakout level after the inclusion print, not into the inclusion print itself.

ASTS slipped overnight despite the BlueBird 8–10 satellites being encapsulated and scheduled for a Wednesday Falcon 9 launch. That launch is the biggest single catalyst on the ASTS calendar this year — it nearly doubles network throughput and pushes the year-end constellation toward 45 satellites. The stock not bidding into that catalyst is a tell. Capital that wants space exposure is in RKLB and SPCX, not ASTS.

LUNR and RDW followed it lower on the same overhang Monday's analyst note flagged: a fully-public SpaceX with a $1.75T cap is not a neutral launch provider. Every name in the basket that depends on SpaceX for cost of access to orbit is going to live under that question until management gives a credible answer. Most cannot.

I am not pressing shorts here. The Wednesday Falcon 9 launch is binary for ASTS — a clean launch and on-orbit deployment can squeeze the shorts hard. I want to see how the tape trades the launch confirmation before I have a directional view. LUNR and RDW are smaller-float momentum names; you trade them, you do not invest in them, and the trade right now is sideways-to-down.

Three real events between now and Friday: SPCX options open today, FOMC decision Wednesday with the dot plot, triple witching Friday with the Iran signing teed up for Sunday. Each one alone moves the tape. Stacked, they decide the quarter.

Vol is going to expand. Triple witching plus a fresh mega-cap chain plus an FOMC plus a binary geopolitical signing is the most loaded four-session window of the year. The right posture is smaller size, defined risk, and a willingness to sit out a session if the signal is not clean.

If FOMC sounds patient and the dot plot leaves two cuts on the table, the soft-landing tape extends and the SPCX/space bid keeps running. If the dots pull a cut, the chase trade breaks fast — and SPCX, levered to retail momentum, gives back the most.

SPCX: no chase, no day-one chain buys. I am letting the options market price two sessions, then looking at defined-risk spreads if skew tells me dealers are positioned the way I think.

Crude: flat at the 200-day. No new shorts, no new longs. Wait for the Sunday signing or the slip.

RKLB: hold, do not add into the vertical. Reload on the first pullback after Nasdaq-100 inclusion.

ASTS: flat into Wednesday's Falcon 9 launch. The launch decides whether the basket bifurcation widens or compresses.

LUNR, RDW: no exposure. The basket is not the trade; the right name in the basket is the trade.

Macro core: relative-strength longs in healthcare, quality cyclicals, and AI infrastructure unchanged. Cash up modestly into Wednesday.

Day three did exactly what day three of a hot IPO into a loaded macro week does: it added a derivatives layer to a tape that already had too many moving parts.

The setup from the weekend is still working. The question is no longer 'is the trade right' — the question is 'are you sized for the next four sessions.' Tighter stops, smaller size, no heroics into FOMC.

I will be on the tape into the close and back tomorrow with the FOMC read.