How UK investors navigated moonshots and unscheduled landings

June offered a timely reminder that gravity applies to stock markets as well as rockets.

After months of speculation, SpaceX finally blasted itself into public ownership, sending Elon Musk into trillionaire status (not that he was short of zeroes to begin with). The shares opened like a Falcon 9, jumping from the $135 IPO price to $225 and leapfrogging Microsoft and Amazon along the way. But what goes up tends to come down, with SpaceX settling only slightly above its IPO price (more of which later).

US equities also lost altitude, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite bearing the brunt with a 3% fall, thanks to renewed hostilities in Iran, a more hawkish rate outlook and a sharp sell-off in chipmakers. Tesla and Microsoft remain in negative territory for the year, proof that even the Magnificent 7 can look distinctly average when sentiment turns.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, the FTSE 100 eked out a rather unstarry 2% gain, possibly powered entirely by sales of air-con units and England flags. Could this be the year when we finally get to add another star to our shiny shirts? By the time this is published, we’ll probably be resigned to arguing whether Messi’s winner should have been disallowed under rule 14.2 of the VAR regs.

So, which shares and funds scored with UK investors in June, and which were shown a red card?

Top 10 most bought and sold shares in June

These were the most (and least) popular shares with UK retail investors on three of the largest investment platforms last month:

Source: AJ Bell, Bestinvest and Freetrade

Britain’s favourite moonshot

SpaceX (SPCX) was always destined to be the Marmite IPO of 2026, but UK investors piled in with gusto. Early birds enjoyed a 67% pop within days, briefly catapulting SpaceX into the $3 trillion club alongside NVIDIA, Apple and Alphabet, before the share price plummeted back to the $145 mark.

There’s plenty in the bull column: SpaceX cornered 80% of global-mass-to-orbit in 2025, and Starlink has grown into a serious revenue engine, boasting over 10 million subscribers across 160 countries. And then there’s Grok – the “truth-seeking” AI model apparently designed “to enable humanity to understand the universe”. Any clearer? Me neither.

Listing prospectuses are usually drier than X but Elon Musk is not a man for understatement. One imagines the SEC approval bod reaching for the smelling salts upon hitting the line about “extending the light of consciousness to the stars”. Still, once you get past the gazillion photos and cosmic mission statements, the financials are a useful reality check.

SpaceX reported $19 billion of revenue in 2025 and a $3 billion operating loss, though it did manage positive operating cashflow. Starlink accounted for over 60% of revenue and was the only division firmly in the black, with space operations contributing just over 20% of revenue and AI making up the remainder. At current levels, investors are effectively paying around 100 times revenue which is punchy even by Silicon Valley standards.

And there’s plenty for the bears to chew over: launch schedules remain unpredictable, rocket reuse rates are critical to margins and Starlink’s capex requirements are not for the faint-hearted.

Still, Tesla is a reminder that valuations can be driven far more by future prospects than earthly fundamentals. While some UK investors locked in early profits, plenty seemed happy to strap in for the ride.

Cashing in your chips

Micron Technologies (MU) made its début as the most-bought stock after a near-700% rise over the last year, with some investors taking profits and others buying the 20% June dip.

The memory-chip supplier is cashing in on supply constraints, with the US tech mega-caps queuing up to reserve capacity for its high-performance memory chips used to train and run the likes of Claude and ChatGPT. Micron has secured 16 long-term strategic agreements with customers, including upfront payments to lock in supply and pricing floors shifting some of the risk to the end user.

Unlike some of its AI peers, Micron’s financials justify the enthusiasm. Net income surged 15-fold year-on-year in its latest quarterly results, and gross margin more than doubled to 85%, reflecting its impressive pricing power.

And a brief mention for NVIDIA (NVDA), still a perennial favourite of UK investors. It’s up around 10% this year, which isn’t too shabby, but returning to normal after such an extraordinary run is never easy. NVIDIA still boasts a commanding share of the GPU market, not to mention the challenge of escaping its proprietary CUDA ecosystem.

But frenemies Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet are pushing ahead with their own chip programmes, and the company faces the simple challenge of sustaining growth as a multi- trillion-dollar company. Analyst 12-month price targets range from -12% to +146%, with a midpoint of 40%, showing just how divided expectations have become.

It’s perhaps not surprising that some investors decided to cash out, even if plenty of others still treat NVIDIA as the default AI play.

Best of British

Elsewhere, investors loaded up on the near-8% dividend yield on offer from Legal & General (L&G) though current share price targets may sow a few seeds of doubt.

Rolls-Royce (RR) saw sells outnumber buys, despite its recovery story. Rising defence spending, a recovering civil aerospace division and potential growth in narrow-body jets all strengthen the investment case. That said, re-entering the narrow-body market requires multi billion pound investment and a willing partner to take on one of aviation’s most competitive markets.

And talking of aviation, some easyJet (EZJ) shareholders chose to pre empt the takeover fight to lock in gains. Private equity firm Apollo gazumped Castlelake a week ago, raising the prospect of a bidding war. easyJet has lagged rivals such as IAG and Ryanair since the pandemic, making its slots at premier European airports increasingly attractive to would be bidders.

Source: AJ Bell, Bestinvest and interactive investor

There’s not much left to say about Scottish Mortgage (SMT) after 18 months at the top (possibly outlasting Keir Starmer?) but its latest factsheet did reveal one interesting detail. Post-IPO, SpaceX now accounts for 26% of its portfolio, despite SMT’s typical 8% cap. With the trust tied into the customary six-month lock-in, it will be highly sensitive to SpaceX’s early public fortunes, though it has provided the headroom to resume investing in unlisted holdings.

Tech remained the dominant theme across the board, with Polar Capital Technology (PCT) and Allianz Technology Trust (ATT) attracting inflows. With performance diverging across the Magnificent 7, turning to active management to separate the AI winners from the also-rans seems a sensible move. For steadier fare, Temple Bar (TMPL), JPMorgan Global Growth & Income (JGGI) and City of London (CTY) continued to offer income friendly ballast.

But June did produce one new entrant: Fidelity Special Values (FSV). The trust takes an unapologetically contrarian, value focused approach across the UK market cap spectrum, rotating out of big tobacco, gold miners and defence stocks into more GDP sensitive names of late. This strategy has served it well, comfortably topping the AIC UK All Companies sector over 1, 5 and 10 years.

The month ahead

July’s focus shifts from Big Tech earnings to the supply chain behind them. As the world’s leading chip manufacturer, all eyes will be on TSMC’s mid-month reporting, with investors watching closely to see whether capacity is keeping pace with demand.

Closer to home, bond markets remain twitchy over the small matter of a new prime minister. There was a palpable sense of relief when Andy Burnham pledged to uphold his predecessor’s fiscal rules – until it emerged he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) list them. With detailed spending plans unlikely before the Autumn budget, we may be waiting a while on that front.

The good news is that investors don’t have to wait for the usual “difficult decisions” to roll in before making a dent in this year’s tax-free allowances. To help with this, we’ve produced guides on our pick of the best ISA platforms and best SIPP providers.

All data as at 14/07/2026 unless stated otherwise, returns based on share price total returns.