Shares in SpaceX bounced back on Monday, 9 November, closing 5.8% higher at $142.07 as fresh buying from Cathie Wood's ARK Invest helped the rocket and artificial intelligence company recover part of the heavy losses it suffered after last week's midterm elections.

The stock had climbed more than 6% at its session high, according to market reports, before settling at $142.07, up $7.80 on the previous close of $134.27. The rebound came after SpaceX had lost roughly 20% over the prior month, sliding below its June initial public offering price of $135 and to its lowest level since August.

ARK bought heavily into the slide

ARK Invest purchased approximately 348,400 SpaceX shares on Thursday and a further 393,774 shares in the days before that, positioning the firm as a prominent buyer while the stock was falling, Market Flux reported. Wood said in an interview on Friday that ARK had continued to increase its holdings in Tesla and SpaceX during the pullback and that both companies remained its highest-conviction core positions.

One analyst maintained a Buy rating on the stock and argued it could return as much as 500% from current levels, although the broader debate over the company's near-term outlook remained unsettled, Market Flux reported.

Midterm result triggered the sell-off

The sell-off that preceded Monday's bounce was triggered by Democrats sweeping the midterm elections and winning control of both the House and the Senate. The political shift raised fears that the pace of artificial intelligence data centre construction in the United States would slow, a development that would directly affect SpaceX and its infrastructure ambitions.

SpaceX shares fell alongside Tesla during the two-day post-election rout, which wiped more than $420 billion in combined market value from the two companies. Tesla also rebounded on Monday, gaining 5.5% to close at $378.05.

Before Monday's recovery, SpaceX had dropped for three of the previous four weeks, losing 17.5%, and had fallen 41% from its all-time high of $225.64, according to Barron's. Market technician Frank Cappelleri told Barron's that the shares needed to hold the $130 level, or the all-time low of $104.83 could come back into play.

Wider tech rebound lifts AI stocks

Monday's rebound extended across the wider technology sector. Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Palantir, Broadcom, Lam Research, ASML, Coherent and Cloudflare all traded higher, while Bloom Energy, Caterpillar, Taiwan Semiconductor and GE Vernova also surged. CoreWeave was a notable exception, sliding after reports that Microsoft was reassessing its relationships with so-called neocloud providers.

Investors will now watch whether the recovery holds. SpaceX faces another test in early December, when roughly 800 million shares come off the post-IPO lockup, Barron's reported. Until then, the question is whether the buying by ARK and other investors marks a turning point, or only a pause in a volatile stretch for the stock.