SpaceX stock rises 23% in debut trading, Musk is officially a trillionaire: online
SpaceX, a pioneer in the development of reusable space rockets, has started trading on the Nasdaq exchange. The day before, Elon Musk's company held the largest IPO in history, as a result of which it was valued at about $1.8 trillion. We follow the debut trading of SpaceX in this online article.
21.15 CET: SpaceX's share price has come down slightly from its peaks and is now around $167. Igor Klyushnev, co-founder of Freedom Holding Corp. and founder of Freedom On Air, believes that current levels are "absolutely" suitable for long-term investors. Here is his opinion, which he shared with Oninvest:
"If you think the same way as Elon Musk, with horizons of 10-20 years, you can buy safely. With high probability prices will be above this level. But on the horizon of a year we can expect volatility in SpaceX securities (quotes may go below the offering price) - there will be the end of lockup periods for the owners of securities, who invested in the company earlier. There will be those willing to sell, locking in some of the accumulated profits. The SpaceX IPO is truly a historic event. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at the Nasdaq trading opening ceremony, We have a history of making history. SpaceX has a really rich history of "making history." They absolutely turned the economics of the space industry on its head, took away the monopoly in space from the states and created the private manned spaceflight industry. In 24 years, the company went from a series of failures to launching people to the ISS"
In 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts to the ISS.
21.00 CET: SpaceX has exactly one hour to go until the end of its debut trading session. Shares are now up 23.6% at $166.9.
20.50 CET: SpaceX's listing on the Nasdaq raising a record $75 billion is indeed a "financial-historical" event. However, for investors, such a placement of funds can only be compared to "walking through a minefield".
They risk losing their money on this IPO if they don't lock in profits quickly enough (if they do, of course). And if there is a fall in the capitalization of the "new giant", it can cause a sharp "deflation of the bubble" of the stock market, wrote analyst of Arbat Capital Advisory Services Limited (UK) Alexei Golubovich and analyst of Arbat Capital Denis Chigarev. Read more on the Oninvest website.
20.35 CET: Nasdaq and Cboe Global Markets will launch options trading on SpaceX on Tuesday. These derivatives allow investors to speculate on future movements of the stock or hedge against its decline. The growth in options trading could further fuel demand for the stock itself, as traders will hedge their derivatives positions, Bloomberg writes.
20.20 NET: What the top of the Forbes list looks like now: the world's richest man, Elon Musk, is worth about the same as Google co-founder Larry Page's four.
19.51 CET: At the peak during the day, SpaceX shares reached a price of $176.52 - 30.8% above the offering price. According to Nasdaq data, trading volume amounted to around 310 million shares. In total, SpaceX sold about 556 million shares in the IPO.
"The total trading volume is likely to exceed the total offering - theoretically meaning that the average holding period for SpaceX stock by investors will be measured in hours," Barron's writes.
High trading volume is the norm for the first day. For example, after chip maker Cerebras Systems' offering in May, investors transacted about 33 million shares, while the company sold 30 million shares during its IPO. Now, Cerebras' trading volume has dropped to about 5 million shares per day.
High trading volume also usually means high volatility. Shares of Cerebras have ranged from under $197 to over $386. SpaceX investors should also prepare for volatility in the coming weeks, the publication advises.
19.24 CET: Why did Goldman Sachs bankers wear green Nike's to SpaceX's debut auction? A photo of the branded shoes was published on the bank's social media.
Apparently, this is a hint that Goldman Sachs is ready to help SpaceX in case of difficulties. If new shares fall on the first day, the bankers have a "secret weapon" to calm the situation, writes WSJ. This is the so-called green shoe option - it allows the underwriters of a new issue to buy and resell additional shares.
In the case of SpaceX, the banks sold about 15% more shares than the amount of the offering, the WSJ notes, which means that technically more shares were distributed than stated, the bankers have to buy back the excess shares to deliver them to investors. If the stock starts to fall, the bank buys back shares on the open market, which helps support the price. If the stock does not fall, the bank can purchase the additional shares it needs to deliver to investors directly from the company itself.
The term green shoe option comes from the name of the shoe manufacturer that pioneered this mechanism. When Meta Platforms (then Facebook) went public in 2012 and its stock began to fall, underwriter banks bought additional shares to support the price.
19.02 NET: First Wall Street investment firm has given SpaceX a "sell" rating, Barron's reports. Broker CFRA made the decision, and its target price of $115 is 34% below current levels.
SpaceX stock is now up nearly 29% to trade at $173.8, a near intraday record.
18.54 CET: SpaceX insiders will have to wait weeks or even months before they can sell their shares. The space company has developed a timetable for removing restrictions from the stock that Renaissance Capital CEO Bill Smith called "the most difficult" he has ever encountered.
Elon Musk will not be able to sell his shares for the next 366 days. For other insiders, the lockup period is 180 days, but some shares can be unlocked early - for example, after the publication of SpaceX's first report as a public company.
18.45 CET: Elon Musk's journey to billionaire status:
18.30 CET: " I'll hold my shares forever," Sequoia Capital partner Sean Maguire told CNBC. According to him, some of the forecasts for SpaceX do look "crazy". Still, SpaceX is now at about the same revenue level where Nvidia was three years ago, the investor believes.
18.20 CET: SpaceX has launched sales of new IPO merchandise. On sale are a choker with the inscription I ❤️ SPCX for $45, a baseball cap with a patch in the shape of the company's ticker symbol for $40 and also T-shirts for $35-45.
The most expensive item, a bell shaped like a SpaceX Raptor rocket engine, costs $125 and is available for pre-order only.
18.05 CET: "Disappointing" is how Barron's characterized the start of trading. That's because trading didn't soar by 30% as previously expected. However, the stock is now up more than 20% at almost $165.
17.50 CET: ‼️ SpaceX opened trading at $150 - 11% above the offering price. The stock rose to $163 in the first minutes of trading.
It's official - the world has its first trillionaire. At a stock price of $150 per share, Musk's fortune is about $1.05 trillion, according to Bloomberg.
17.48 CET: Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon congratulated SpaceX on its biggest IPO on social media. "I have known Elon for over 15 years and it has been incredible to watch his vision come to fruition. We are excited that SpaceX is entering a new chapter in its journey as a public company, and look forward to supporting their mission to push the frontiers of human space exploration."
Goldman Sachs was the lead bank organizing the SpaceX offering.
17.40 CET: The Nasdaq trading session is now in its third hour, but SpaceX shares are still not trading. It may take a few more hours before trading starts, Bloomberg writes.
This is fairly typical for IPOs, especially with such high investor demand. This was the case, for example, last month with the shares of artificial intelligence chip maker Cerebras.
17.30 CET: Investor enthusiasm appears to have waned a bit, with the latest data cited by Bloomberg suggesting that SpaceX shares could open trading at around $155 - that is about 15% above the IPO price.
At that price, SpaceX's market capitalization would be $2.16 trillion, making it the sixth most valuable public company in the U.S. after Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.
17.10 CET: SpaceX 's debut could set the tone for other mega-locations - most notably OpenAI and Anthropic - that could go public this year, Morningstar writes.
If SpaceX shares soar on the first day of trading and don't fall before OpenAI and Anthropic go public, institutional investors will be more willing to pay a higher price for shares of AI companies, Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida's Warrington Business School, told the publication. "SpaceX stock will probably jump on day one, but if it starts going down before Anthropic and OpenAI go public, those companies will have a harder time," he said.
17.03 CET: Retail investors should be allocated at least 20% of SpaceX shares - significantly more than usual, Bloomberg writes.
At the same time, retail traders who wanted to invest in SpaceX at the offering price are already complaining on Reddit that they got almost nothing due to overwhelming demand. "Asked for 300 shares, got one," one user wrote.
16.48 CET: Several investment firms are already covering SpaceX shares. New Street Research recommends buying with a target price of $165. Oppenheimer has given an "above market" rating with a target price of $190. According to Bloomberg, four analysts have given SpaceX recommendations equivalent to "buy" with an average target price of $189.25 - about 40% above the offering price.
16.42 CET: Tesla shares , which debuted on the stock exchange on June 29, 2010, rose 40.5% on the first day of trading. Investors who have held Tesla shares since the IPO have gained more than 35,000% including splits, Bloomberg calculated.
The record for the highest first day of trading since 2000 belongs to designer software developer Figma - its shares have soared 250% since its IPO in 2025.
16.38 CET: SpaceX shares will determine whether the world will see its first trillionaire today. The day before, Musk fell just a little short of that status - based on an offering price of $135, his fortune was $971 billion (Bloomberg estimate ).
If Tesla's stock price remains stable on Friday and SpaceX shares rise at least 4%, Musk's fortune will exceed $1 trillion.
16.35 CET: It looks like SpaceX shares will take off immediately after the start of trading, writes Barron's. According to Nasdaq, trading could open at $175 - nearly 30% above the IPO price.
16.30 CET: Shares in other space companies are falling ahead of the SpaceX trading launch. The Procure Space ETF, a fund tracking space companies, is down 4%.
Quotes of Rocket Lab, Redwire Corporation, EchoStar and Satellogic are down 6-8%. AST SpaceMobile collapsed by almost 11%. Virgin Galactic collapsed by 23%.
16.20 CET: Could SpaceX 's mega-debut cause stock market crashes?
A similar thing happened after Facebook's IPO in 2012: some investors who tried to change bids before the start of trading were not confirmed due to a technical glitch. The ensuing confusion contributed to the fall of Facebook shares on the first day of trading. Quotes of the social network did not rise above the IPO price for more than a year.
Nasdaq has held test trading openings to make sure its platform is ready, the WSJ writes. Nevertheless, some experts expect increased activity on Friday - particularly in stocks that retail investors may sell to invest in SpaceX. The impact of the offering on the market may also show up in the following weeks, when SpaceX shares will be purchased by large index funds, the publication notes.
16.11 CET: Tesla shares are down 0.5% in anticipation of the SpaceX trading launch. Some popular AI-related stocks are also getting cheaper, such as Apple (-1.1%) and Marvell Technology (-0.7%). Investors are probably selling them to allocate money to buy SpaceX, WSJ suggests.
16.00 CET: Elon Musk remotely participated in the Nasdaq trading opening ceremony from Starbase in Texas. Here's his speech:
"It's hard to believe that a small company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now not just going public, but having the largest IPO in history. If someone had told me this was going to happen, I would have thought, 'Dude, you must have gotten high on something really stoned.' I thought the whole thing was going to end in a crash. I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of success. I told people this - it's probably going to fail, but it's still worth a shot. Because unless there's a new company that takes on space, we'll never truly become a space civilization. Other aerospace companies have built good rockets and all that, but they haven't tackled the technology needed to make life multi-planetary, to make Star Trek a reality, to realize the exciting sci-fi future we've been reading about. And that's what SpaceX is all about - taking the "sci-fi" out of science fiction and creating an exciting, inspiring future for everyone. We want to be able to take anyone who wants to go to the moon, anyone who wants to go to Ma or anywhere in the solar system or maybe beyond at some point - we want to be able to get you there. Not just a few astronauts - I mean literally you, whoever you are, whoever is watching this. SpaceX wants to be able to get you to the moon, get you to Mars and eventually beyond. And I'm confident that with the amazing team that we have at SpaceX, we're going to achieve that. I always think about it - there are always problems on Earth, there are always things that we want to improve, that we want to solve, and we have to solve them. But there also have to be things that get you excited about the future, that get you excited after you wake up in the morning because you can't wait to see what's next. And that's the future that SpaceX wants to bring you."
After trading began, the Nasdaq turned on the Elton John song Rocketman.
15.40 CET: The Nasdaq Composite index started June 12 trading slightly down despite news of progress in Iran-US talks on ending the war. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices are trading slightly up.
15.30 CET: What time will SpaceX shares start trading? The main session on the Nasdaq exchange starts at 9:30 a.m. ET, but don't expect trading in SpaceX shares to begin at the same time, Barron's writes.
It may take brokers several hours to process all buy and sell orders after the IPO. The start of trading will depend on the flow of bids and how close buyers and sellers are to each other.
In 2012, shares of Meta Platforms, then known as Facebook, didn't begin trading until about two hours after the main session began. You can target around noon Eastern time, but keep in mind that anything is possible in this offering, Barron's states.
Updated
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
