Wall Street readies for SpaceX liftoff

At T-minus 20 hours or so, Wall Street is watching SpaceX’s record-shattering IPO with wary excitement.

Ahead of tonight’s pricing and tomorrow’s start of trading, there is little sign that investors have rotated out of other assets — Treasury yields are steady, though gold has taken a hit — or much desire (even from Jefferies, the only big investment bank left out of the IPO) to facilitate shorting SpaceX shares.

SpaceX futures on Hyperliquid, which lets traders make bets on it prior to listing, have fallen sharply in recent weeks but are holding at $160, suggesting SpaceX will open with a decent pop (double-levered SpaceX ETF, anyone?). The rocket maker is expected to be worth $1.7 trillion when it debuts, more than Tesla.

But the potential for a face-plant remains, especially given the large percentage of shares that will be doled out to retail investors who are, by and large, big Musk fans but also tend to be twitchy. “Greed is a powerful and fleeting force, but AI greed may be more powerful and more fleeting,” Ed Elson, host of Prof G Markets, noted recently.