Scottish Mortgage: Jobs Shock Spoils the Party as SpaceX IPO Countdown Begins

A blowout US jobs report has rattled the tech sector just days before Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust’s largest holding is set to list on the Nasdaq, creating an unusually tense backdrop for the fund’s most anticipated week of the year.

The trust shed 3.88 percent on Friday to close at €17.10, with the weekly loss hitting 5.39 percent. The trigger was a stronger-than-expected US employment report — 172,000 new positions added in May, well above consensus — which extinguished lingering hopes of near-term rate cuts and sent the Nasdaq Composite tumbling 4.16 percent, its sharpest single-day drop in more than a year.

Scottish Mortgage’s concentrated exposure to high-growth names such as Nvidia, Meta and Shopify makes it acutely sensitive to shifts in interest-rate expectations. Rising bond yields compress the present value of distant future earnings, hitting richly valued tech stocks hardest. The trust’s 14-day relative strength index now sits at 47.4, a neutral reading after the sell-off, while its price remains 3.19 percent above the 50-day moving average of €16.57 — suggesting the medium-term uptrend is still intact.

Yet for all the macro noise, the micro catalyst looming on 12 June may prove far more significant to the trust’s near-term fortunes. SpaceX, Scottish Mortgage’s single largest portfolio holding, is scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “SPCX” after a final price-setting on 11 June. The initial public offering is expected to be the largest in history, with valuations ranging from approximately $1.765 trillion to as high as $1.8 trillion.

The trust’s stake in SpaceX has been ratcheted up to roughly a fifth of the portfolio — estimates place it between 18 and 21 percent. A successful IPO could meaningfully boost the trust’s net asset value, and investors have already been betting on that outcome: shares were recently trading at a 6.3 percent premium to NAV, reflecting anticipation of the value unlock.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Scottish Mortgage Investment?

In the past two days, two further developments have added momentum. Google struck a multi-billion-dollar agreement with SpaceX, committing roughly $920 million per month from October 2026 for access to 110,000 Nvidia graphics processors housed in SpaceX data centres, earmarked to power the Google Gemini Enterprise platform. Separately, demand from Japanese investors proved so strong that SpaceX raised their allocation from $2 billion to $2.5 billion. The fixed price for the offering has been set at $135 per share.

Scottish Mortgage has long built its portfolio around companies it believes offer generational growth. Amazon has been a core holding since 2004, while newer additions include Cloudflare and Anthropic. The trust’s NAV has delivered a total return of 435.2 percent over the past decade — equivalent to an annualised gain of roughly 19.6 percent — but that performance comes with the flip side of acute sensitivity to monetary policy shifts.

Dividend policy remains steady: the payout was increased for the 43rd consecutive year, rising to 4.57 pence per share from 4.38 pence. With a yield of 1.44 percent, the trust retains nearly all its capital for reinvestment into its concentrated portfolio.

The immediate focus now shifts to next week’s pricing and the first day of trading in SpaceX. Beyond that, the trajectory of US rates will continue to dominate sentiment — the next Federal Reserve meeting in December is already on the radar, with bond markets weighing whether the jobs data will justify further tightening. For Scottish Mortgage, the interplay between a macro-driven sell-off and a company-specific catalyst has rarely been more pronounced.