Dead Market Until End-July? SpaceX Drained the Liquidity — and the AI Rebound Already Happened (2026)

The market feels dead right now. Volume is thin. Nothing trends. Your watchlist barely moves. That's not your imagination — and there's a simple explanation. Two things already happened: the AI crash and its rebound. And one giant IPO — SpaceX — took a record amount of money off the table at the exact top.

The crash already happened — during the World Cup

We flagged the AI trade cracking on 23 June, and called the shakeout-then-rebound on 17 July. Here's what the crash looked like by the time the World Cup window bottomed out:

The bounce came right after the final

The final was played on 19 July. The very next trading day, the most beaten-down AI names snapped back — and they haven't stopped:

So if you're waiting for "the big AI crash" — you likely already watched it. It ran its course inside the World Cup window, exactly the pattern we wrote about. What's left now is the quiet part.

SpaceX was the top

On 12 June, SpaceX listed on Nasdaq at $135 and raised US$75 billion — the biggest IPO in history, three times bigger than the old record. Five days later it hit $225.64. That was the peak — for the stock, and almost to the day for the whole AI trade (the chip index topped 22 June).

Today SpaceX trades below its own IPO price, down ~49% from the peak, after seven straight red days and a Starship launch abort that wiped roughly US$100 billion off its value in mid-July. The IPO itself still worked — for the company. It collected US$75 billion of investor cash at the very top of the market.

Where the money went

Add the normal summer effect — big institutional desks go on holiday, and the market trades thin and choppy — and you get exactly what you're seeing: a market with no fuel. Fatigue is real. After a crash, a rebound, a record IPO and a World Cup, there is simply less fresh money — and less fresh attention — left this month.

What to expect until 31 July

• Thin, range-bound trading.Small moves both ways, little follow-through. Don't read meaning into every red or green day on low volume.
• No new trend before month-end. The next real catalyst is the last week of July, when the biggest US tech names start reporting earnings.
• The AI lows are likely already in. The crash and the ~15% bounce both happened. Boring is not the same as bearish.
• Bursa sleeps too. When Wall Street goes quiet, Bursa volumes thin in sympathy — even the hot-IPO money (SkyeChip, Stratus) tends to sit still.

Sources & further reading

• CNBC — SpaceX raising $75 billion in record-setting IPO as Nasdaq debut awaits
• Bloomberg — SpaceX stock briefly slips below IPO price for first time
• Yahoo Finance — SpaceX short sellers build $15.5 billion paper profit as shares extend post-IPO decline
• 24/7 Wall St. — Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital climb as memory stocks rebound (20 July)
• Al Jazeera — SpaceX shares drop below debut price amid $600bn sell-off (23 June)