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. It has happened four times for Tesla (TSLA), once each for Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Netflix (NFLX), and never for Apple (AAPL) or Meta (META).
But the debut was not a broad retail stampede.
SpaceX accounted for roughly 56% of all retail net buying across single stocks on Friday, according to Vanda. Total single-stock retail net buying was $209.3 million. And yet, last week still marked the weakest week for retail net buying since March 2020, the depths of the pandemic lows.
The concentration carried into Monday. Vanda said SpaceX topped the retail buying leaderboard for a second straight session, with $93.8 million in net buying as of 3:20 p.m. ET — roughly 73% of all retail net buying across single stocks at that point.
Retail investors did not buy everything. They bought SpaceX.
The stock kept climbing on Monday, rising for a second day after the company's historic public debut. SpaceX rose 7% from its $150 opening print on Friday and jumped another 19.6% on Monday, closing at $192.50.
The spillover was uneven. Vanda said Tesla drew only $2.6 million of net retail buying on Friday despite the Elon Musk connection, while Rocket Lab (RKLB), AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), and Redwire (RDW) landed among the day's top 10 most-bought stocks.
The big IPO test is over. SpaceX proved retail demand was real.
The next test is harder: whether that demand adds new fuel to the market or keeps pulling cash from the trades that already ran.