According to its SEC filing ahead of the June 12 listing on Nasdaq (ticker SPCX), SpaceX set a fixed offer price of $135 per share for 555.6 million shares — about $75 billion raised at a valuation of at least $1.8 trillion. That's nearly three times the record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019 ($25.6 billion, or $29.4 billion with the greenshoe). It would be the largest IPO in history, and one of the most hyped. Unusually, Elon Musk is reportedly allocating up to 30% of the shares to retail investors — three to six times the typical 5–10%.

So the question for anyone watching is simple: buy into the hype on day one, or wait?

We didn't guess. We looked at what the biggest IPOs of the modern era actually did in their first months — and at one mechanism that quietly shapes the six-month mark for almost every IPO.

Data note: SpaceX figures are as filed ahead of listing and can still change; advisers have noted the deal could slip to 2027.

The uncomfortable base rate

Across the ten largest IPOs ever — which together raised more than $180 billion — the early record is mixed at best. According to an investing.com dataset compiled by The Motley Fool (June 2026), five of the ten were negative just three months after listing. Facebook was down 47%. Saudi Aramco, the current record holder, was down 23%. SoftBank Corp and NTT DoCoMo both fell roughly 10%. One year in, five of the ten were still underwater; Facebook and General Motors were each down more than 30%.

It's not a uniform disaster — and that matters. The two biggest early winners were financial companies listed outside a technology mania: Visa was up 92% and ICBC up 48% at three months. Sector and timing did most of the work.

Scope note: ranked by capital raised; a couple of record-holders pre-date the last 20 years. Returns are at the labelled horizon. Source: investing.com / The Motley Fool, June 2026.

The mechanism almost no one mentions: the 6-month lockup

Here's the structural reason the six-month mark matters. When a company goes public, insiders — founders, employees, early venture investors — usually agree to a lockup: they can't sell their shares for a set period. The standard lockup lasts six months. The day it expires, a large new supply of shares can suddenly reach the market.

The research is consistent. Jay Ritter of the University of Florida, the field's most-cited IPO scholar, found that IPOs underperformed comparable-market-cap companies by about 4.3% in their first six months — and that the gap widened to about 5.6% over the following six months, as lockups lifted. Event studies going back to Ofek & Richardson (2000) and Field & Hanka (2000) document significant negative abnormal returns around lockup expirations. A German study of the Neuer Markt (Nowak, 2004) found the same pattern: significant negative abnormal returns and a roughly 25% jump in trading volume around expiry — worst for high-volatility, low-free-float, venture-backed companies that had run up after listing.

In plain terms: the six-month mark is the moment the people who know the company best are first allowed to sell.

Two cases that show both sides

Facebook (2012) is the textbook warning. It priced at $38. By the six-month mark in November 2012, it traded around $21 — down roughly 45%. Its absolute low, $19.69, came in August 2012, exactly as the first lockup of 271 million shares expired and early backers cashed out. The stock didn't reclaim $38 until sixteen months after the IPO.

Rivian (2021) is the hype version. It priced at $78, opened above $100, and hit $172 within six trading days amid the EV-and-meme frenzy. Within roughly six months it was in the low-to-mid $20s — down about 70%. Nothing about the business had changed that fast; the valuation had simply detached from it, and reality re-anchored.

And the counterweight matters: not every big IPO falls. Visa up 92% and ICBC up 48% three months in were not flukes — they were sober financials listing outside a speculative cycle. The base rate is a tendency, not a law.

What this means for SpaceX specifically

A few honest distinctions:

SpaceX is a traditional IPO with a lockup, not a direct listing. (Coinbase, by contrast, went public via direct listing in April 2021 with no lockup — insiders could sell from day one. Different mechanism, different risks.) For SpaceX, a standard six-month lockup would put the key supply event around December 2026 — the date worth watching.

The reported ~30% retail allocation is unusual. More retail ownership tends to mean more sentiment-driven volatility — exactly the conditions under which the post-hype drift has historically been sharpest.

SpaceX is also genuinely unlike most IPOs: multiple segments (launch, Starlink, AI), a near-monopoly in commercial launch, and a founder premium. The base rate is built on other companies; it shapes the odds, it doesn't determine SpaceX's path.

The honest verdict

The data doesn't say "SpaceX will fall." It says something narrower and more useful: across the biggest IPOs, the first six to twelve months have frequently been the weakest stretch, the six-month lockup is a recurring pressure point, and buying at peak hype has historically been a worse entry than waiting for the dust — and the lockup — to clear. But there are real exceptions, and every company is its own case.

"Buy the hype or wait?" is not a question the past answers with certainty. It answers with a base rate: patience has more often been rewarded than punished. Base rates aren't destiny — but ignoring them is how hype gets expensive.

Study the structure before you act on the story.

This is not investment advice. We're not financial advisors — this is factual context for your own decision.

---

Sources: SpaceX SEC filing and coverage via CNBC, Reuters, The Motley Fool (June 2026); investing.com / The Motley Fool "biggest IPOs" dataset (June 2026); Jay Ritter, University of Florida (IPO underperformance); Ofek & Richardson (2000), Field & Hanka (2000), Nowak (2004) on lockup expirations; NBC News, TechCrunch (Facebook); GOBankingRates, FOREX.com (Rivian); CNBC, Benzinga (Coinbase). Market figures are time-stamped and historical; past performance does not predict future results.