‘Happy to be invested’: Retail investors snap up SpaceX shares on first trading day after company allots 20% for segment

Small retail investors participated enthusiastically in SpaceX’s record breaking initial public offering on Friday, 12 June, according to a Reuters report. Eager for a share of Elon Musk’s hyped rocket company, some told the publication they received fewer shares than requested but were still satisfied, it added.

After putting in offers, checked their inboxes and brokerage accounts to see how much they were able to snap up in a frenzy that pushed up SpaceX stock by as much as 19% on opening trade day.

Notably, the company allocated a record 30% of its share for individual , but the buying was competitive. Joseph Gutheinz, who retired from NASA as an investigator to practice law did not submit an IPO allocation request but bought $1,00,000 worth of SpaceX shares at $161 on 12 June. He told Reuters: “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.”

Retail buying pushed up SpaceX stock price

Retail buying was one of the factors responsible for the pop in the price of SpaceX shares, which surged 19% on their first day of , said Art Hogan, investment strategist at B. Riley Wealth in Boston.

“This allocation to retail is far and away the highest I’ve ever seen in my decades on Wall Street. It’s the latest, greatest shiny object for retail investors to get into right now,” Hogan said.

The deal became “the largest and most subscribed on our platform to date,” said a spokesman for SoFi, one of the retail brokerages involved in the selling group. The spokesman added that all individuals who met SoFi’s criteria received an allocation of the deal.

Net buying of shares accounted for about 4% of all single-stock retail turnover on Friday, totaling $453 million and running at 3.5 times the pace of runner-up Nvidia.

“Retail investors have shown up for SpaceX in a big way,” said Vanda Research, a firm that tracks the activity of self-directed individual investors and that spent much of Friday monitoring trading in the high-profile . In the first 20 minutes of trading, SpaceX shares had vaulted to second place in the ranks of most actively purchased stocks by retail investors and by mid-afternoon was in first place, dwarfing its rivals, Vanda reported.

Allocations fall short: ‘Requested 250, received nothing’

Allocations, however, for some retail investors fell short of what they sought.

“Requested 250, received nothing,” one of the rare disgruntled would-be investors reported on a Reddit chat devoted to figuring out who had received allocations. “Requested 555, got 10” and “requested 1,000, got 85,” other Reddit posters noted.

SpaceX founder, whom the IPO has made the world’s first trillionaire, pledged in 2024 that if any of his still-private companies went public in the future, he intended to make sure that retail investors, especially holders of his other public company, Tesla, would have priority in accessing the new deal. “Loyalty deserves loyalty,” he said in a post on X at the time.

Already, some fans of Musk and SpaceX are providing further signs of their commitment and conviction.

Clint Sorenson, chief investment officer of Ascentis Asset Management, told Reuters he offered all of his firm’s clients who had invested in via private investment vehicles before the IPO the opportunity to hedge their exposure to the stock now that it is publicly traded. No one took him up on the idea, he said.

“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.

(With inputs from Reuters)

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