Tesla and SpaceX shares each ended the after-hours session on 3 November 1.75% below their regular-session closes, according to Nasdaq.com quote data. Tesla’s last after-hours trade was $391.53 at 00:59 UTC on 4 November, against a $398.50 close; SpaceX’s Class A shares last traded at $138.84, against $141.31.
The companies’ 10-Qcover pages list 3,952,757,946 Tesla shares and 13,581,063,709 SpaceX Class A and Class B shares outstanding on 15 October. By our arithmetic, the falls on those shares come to about $61 billion of stock market value: about $27.6 billion at Tesla and about $33.5 billion at SpaceX.
Business Pill · Concentration
A short explainer on concentration: when a few big pieces make most of a total. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Tesla, SpaceX or the elections.
The key insight: By our arithmetic, Tesla’s and SpaceX’s identical 1.75% after-hours falls on 3 November come to about $61 billion of market value on the share counts in their 10-Q cover pages, and SpaceX’s $2.47 fall is half of the $4.94 it gained in the regular session.
Bloomberg published the headline “Tesla, SpaceX Shares Take Early Hit as Midterm Blue Wave Unfolds” at 04:28 UTC on 4 November. In its post on X at 04:37 UTC, Bloomberg wrote: “As early results from the US midterm elections started to point toward a decisive win by Democrats, shares of prominent Republican-backer Elon Musk’s companies Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies dropped in after-hours trading”.
The description of the results and the link between the results and the share prices are Bloomberg’s. The article page returned an access check to us, so we have not read its body or any figures in it.
Tesla and SpaceX Class A share prices in the after-hours session of 3 November 2026, by minute, as a percentage of each stock’s regular-session close ($398.50 and $141.31), from Nasdaq.com quote data. Times are UTC. Chart: FourWeekMBA.
What AP Has Called
AP has called the Texas U.S. Senate race for James Talarico (Dem), with the call time in AP’s results feed at 04:03 UTC on 4 November, as read at 04:52 UTC. Results are not certified. At that reading, AP had called 25 of the 35 U.S. Senate general and special races in its feed; the rest were uncalled.
Elon Musk gave America PAC $216.0 million this cycle to 14 October, according to the FEC filings in our America PAC piece. Our super PAC results piece tracks the races where AI-focused super PACs spent, using AP calls only.
How the Price Moved
In the regular session on 3 November, SpaceX rose $4.94, or 3.62%, and Tesla fell $5.32, or 1.32%, according to Nasdaq.com. At 23:30 UTC, Nasdaq.com’s minute data showed Tesla at $397.63 and SpaceX at $142.27, both within 0.7% of their closes, by our arithmetic.
Nasdaq.com’s minute data show Tesla at $397.63 at 23:30 UTC, $396.08 at 00:00 UTC, $393.04 at 00:30 UTC and $391.53 at 00:59 UTC. SpaceX read $142.27, $141.00, $139.70 and $138.84 at the same times. The after-hours session ended at 01:00 UTC, 8 p.m. in New York.
By our arithmetic, SpaceX’s $2.47 after-hours fall is half of its $4.94 regular-session gain. Nasdaq.com displays the after-hours change against the 2 November close; the 1.75% figures here are measured against the 3 November close.
How We Counted SpaceX
SpaceX has two classes of common stock outstanding, and only Class A is listed. Its 10-Q says that “Each share of Class B is convertible at the option of the holder, at any time, into one share of Class A”, and that each Class B holder has ten votes per share.
We priced all 8,246,541,218 Class A and 5,334,522,491 Class B shares at the Class A price, the same share count behind the $1.92 trillion market capitalisation Nasdaq.com shows for SpaceX. On Class A shares alone, the $2.47 fall is about $20.4 billion, by our arithmetic.
The AI Link
SpaceX’s 10-Q for the quarter to 30 September shows $19.6 billion of third-quarter capital expenditure, and we counted 84% of it as AI spending in our capex piece. Musk has said a Tesla-SpaceX merger is a good idea, with no deal set, as we reported in our merger piece. SpaceX sold shares at $135.00 in its June public offering.
The Structural Read
As we read the numbers, with equal 1.75% falls each dollar figure follows market value at the close: about $1.92 trillion for SpaceX with Class B priced at the Class A price, against about $1.58 trillion for Tesla. On Class A shares alone, SpaceX’s figure would be smaller than Tesla’s.
As we read the session data, most of the after-hours fall in both stocks came after 23:30 UTC, in Nasdaq.com’s minute data, on volume well below the regular session’s.
SpaceX Form 10-Q, quarter to 30 September 2026
“Each share of Class B is convertible at the option of the holder, at any time, into one share of Class A”
Three Implications
FOR SHAREHOLDERS By our arithmetic, the after-hours moves are about $27.6 billion of market value at Tesla and about $33.5 billion at SpaceX; the figures move with every trade.
FOR SPACEX’S COUNT Priced on Class A shares alone, SpaceX’s fall is about $20.4 billion, by our arithmetic; the larger figure applies the Class A price to Class B shares, which convert one for one.
FOR THE ELECTION READ Bloomberg linked the moves to early results; at our 04:52 UTC reading AP had called 25 of the 35 U.S. Senate races, including Texas for James Talarico (Dem) at 04:03 UTC, and 10 were uncalled.
The framework argues: “The supercycle has a ceiling now, and the ceiling is political.”
As we read it, the framework is about political limits on the AI build-out; the link between the election and tonight’s moves in two Musk companies is Bloomberg’s, not ours. The framework is the owner’s argument and does not discuss Tesla, SpaceX or the 2026 elections.
We have not read Bloomberg’s article body, and the reason for the moves is Bloomberg’s account, not ours.
After-hours volume was thin next to the regular session: 1,838,380 Tesla shares against 26,649,067, and 4,167,121 SpaceX shares against 73,242,848, according to Nasdaq.com. We did not read prices from the overnight session that began after 01:00 UTC, and the market value figures move with every trade.
Election results here are AP calls only. Races AP had not called at 04:52 UTC are uncalled.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Anthropic’s Reality Check, The Capital Squeeze, & The New World Order
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a growthstory. This week it started being priced as a credit story.
Tesla and SpaceX each ended the after-hours session 1.75% below their 3 November closes, about $61 billion of market value by our arithmetic on the 10-Q share counts. Bloomberg linked the fall to early midterm results; AP had called the Texas U.S. Senate race for James Talarico (Dem) at 04:03 UTC.
A note on sourcing. Prices are from Nasdaq.com quote data read on 4 November 2026 between 04:50 and 04:58 UTC; shares outstanding are from Tesla’s and SpaceX’s 10-Q cover pages for the quarter to 30 September 2026. The link between the election and the share moves is Bloomberg’s account, from its headline and its post on X; we did not read the article body. Election results are AP race calls only. Market value changes and percentages are our arithmetic. We did not contact Tesla or SpaceX.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
