SpaceX allocated 30% to retail, driving $453M and a 19% first-day pop. Some investors got fewer shares than requested; others bought on the open market.
SpaceX shares surged 19% on their first trading day Friday after the company allocated a record 30% of the offering to individual investors, triggering $453 million in net retail buying, Vanda Research reported.
The buying made SpaceX the most actively purchased stock among self-directed investors by mid-afternoon, Vanda said. Net retail turnover in the stock accounted for 4% of all single-stock retail activity, running at 3.5 times the pace of runner-up Nvidia.
Some retail investors received fewer shares than they requested. On Reddit, one user reported asking for 250 shares and getting zero. Another requested 555 and received 10. A third asked for 1,000 and got 85. The complaints were scattered and persistent.
Others were satisfied. Joseph Gutheinz, a retired NASA investigator, skipped the IPO allocation process entirely and bought $100,000 worth of SpaceX shares at $161 on the open market. "I'm very happy with what I managed to get. It's a great investment. Win or lose, I'm happy to be invested at all," he told Reuters.
Art Hogan, investment strategist at B. Riley Wealth in Boston, called the 30% retail allocation "far and away the highest I've ever seen in my decades on Wall Street." SoFi, one of the retail brokerages in the selling group, confirmed that every client who met its criteria received an allocation, according to a spokesman.
Founder Elon Musk, whose net worth crossed $1 trillion on paper after the IPO, had pledged in 2024 that if any of his still-private companies went public, he would give priority to retail investors, especially Tesla shareholders. "Loyalty deserves loyalty," he wrote on X at the time.
Clint Sorenson, chief investment officer of Ascentis Asset Management, offered his pre-IPO SpaceX clients the chance to hedge their exposure. No one took him up on it. "Everyone wants to keep holding and celebrating right now; no one wants to even think of hedging their risk because they believe in the story so much," Sorenson said.
The concentration of retail ownership is high. Net buying of $453 million came from individual investors. Sorenson offered his pre-IPO clients the chance to hedge. No one took him up on it. On Reddit, some users reported receiving far fewer shares than requested. Hogan described SpaceX as "the latest, greatest shiny object for retail investors to get into right now."
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