SpaceX IPO Caps a Week of Peace-Talk Relief and Fed Jitters

SpaceX closed its first trading day up 19.2% at $160.95, giving the rocket builder a $2.1 trillion market cap and making it the largest U.S. public listing on record. The debut capped a week where the three major indexes each gained roughly 7%, driven by signs that a U.S.–Iran peace deal is close and by positioning ahead of next week's Federal Reserve meeting – the first under chair Kevin Warsh.

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters a draft proposal was in place that both sides liked. President Trump has said since mid-March that a deal to end the war was near. That prospect puts downward pressure on oil prices and reduces worries about higher inflation and interest rates, said Jake Dollarhide, CEO of Longbow Asset Management. "There's still hope for a peace deal. Trump called off the attacks... Third parties are confirming a peace deal is happening."

Yet the Fed looms. Fed funds futures price a 55% chance of a rate hike by December, and traders will parse Warsh's first policy statement for any signal on the path. The Dow rose 353 points (0.70%) to 51,202. The S&P 500 added 37 points (0.50%) to 7,431. The Nasdaq Composite gained 79 points (0.31%) to 25,889. The small-cap Russell 2000 hit a record closing high.

SpaceX's debut did not lift all space stocks. Rocket Lab fell 10.8%, Intuitive Machines dropped 13.1%, and Planet Labs declined 8.8%. The pullback suggests traders rotated out of peers after the long-awaited listing. Rocket Lab carries an Alpha Score of 38 out of 100 (Mixed); Intuitive Machines scores 39 (Mixed). Both sit in the Industrials sector.

Mike Dickson, head of research at Horizon Investments, said he was surprised by the lack of volatility in SpaceX shares given the hype. The company posted more than $4 billion in annual losses last year. Dollarhide called SpaceX "truly overvalued at this level."

U.S. equity funds saw their first weekly outflow in three weeks, and the technology index confirmed a correction earlier in the week. Analysts said some of the recent weakness likely came from traders trimming holdings ahead of SpaceX's debut. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 19.73 billion shares, slightly below the 20.7 billion 20-day average.

Tesla, another Musk company, rose 1.8%. Adobe slid 6.8% after CFO Dan Durn's exit.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by 2.07-to-1 on the NYSE, with 372 new highs and 66 new lows. On the Nasdaq the ratio was 1.23-to-1, with 200 new highs and 112 new lows.

Next week brings the Fed decision and, later this year, highly anticipated IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic. For now, the market is pricing a delicate balance: peace-driven relief against a hawkish Fed.