SpaceX’s (SPCX) market debut turned into a record retail buying event, with individual investors buying more of the stock on day one than they did in Coinbase (COIN), Uber (UBER), Arm (ARM), or Airbnb (ABNB), according to data from Vanda Research tracking major IPOs since 2018.
Retail investors bought a net $117.6 million of SpaceX on Friday, topping Coinbase’s $92 million in its April 2021 debut
That confirmed what Vanda’s pre-IPO retail-flow data had already hinted: Retail traders were not just watching SpaceX. They were making room for it. The chart measures net retail buying on an IPO’s first trading day.
In plain English, it tracks how much individual investors bought after subtracting what they sold. SpaceX’s first day stood out even beyond the IPO market. “SpaceX has officially entered the big leagues for retail investors,” Vanda wrote. The firm said that outside of Nvidia (NVDA), retail investors have rarely bought more than $100 million of any “Magnificent Seven” stock on a single day this year.