Retail traders say they're excited to buy SpaceX stock—just not with a $2 trillion price tag
Retail traders say they're excited to buy SpaceX stock—just not with a $2 trillion price tag
Jennifer SorSun, May 31, 2026 at 9:20 AM UTC
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Retail investors who spoke with Business Insider said they were wary of SpaceX's high valuation.Bloomberg/Getty Images -
Everyday investors say they have one concern about SpaceX's IPO.
Three traders told Business Insider they don't see how SpaceX's 13-figure valuation can be justified.
The company is expected to make its historic debut in the stock market in June.
SpaceX will make a historic stock-market debut in the coming weeks, but some retail traders say there's one thing stopping them from buying on day one.
Everyday investors speaking with Business Insider said that the colossal valuation is hard for them to get behind. Elon Musk's rocket company will likely be the largest IPO in history, with an expected valuation of $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion and $75 billion raised when it offers shares to investors.
For some retail traders watching from the sidelines ahead of the IPO, those numbers are tough to swallow. A big concern is that SpaceX stock will ride the hype of its IPO to stratospheric levels, before potentially plummeting as early investors and insiders cash out and other shareholders sour on the narrative that's boosting the valuation of a company that's not profitable.
Neil Rozenbaum, a 32-year-old retail investor with stakes in other tech giants, including Elon Musk's Tesla, said he believes SpaceX is an "amazing company," but overhyped heading into its IPO.
Rozenbaum speculated SpaceX's IPO could look like a lot of other IPOs that soared out of the gate and then tumbled. He pointed in to Cerebras Systems, a chipmaker that kicked off this year's AI-linked IPO boom earlier this month. The stock soared 68% on its first day of trading, but has dropped more than 20% since.
"You start comparing how much revenue a company generates, how much profit, and then you start seeing the big difference and something doesn't make sense," he told Business Insider in an interview. "Would I want to own SpaceX eventually? Yes, but probably not on day one."
"To me, an ideal scenario, if I could buy it at $500 billion, I would be very happy, but I don't know if that's going to happen," he added, referring to the valuation.
Rozenbaum said he's looking at better opportunities in the market in the meantime, such as beaten-down software stocks that haven't joined in the latest rally.
Bilaal Dhalech, a 30-year-old investor based in Toronto, also said he was wary about the valuation. He's "very bullish" on the company long-term, but said he would also be sitting on the sidelines for its coming IPO.
Dhalech pointed to the company's nearly $5 billion loss on $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025.
Other tech giants, such as Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft, are generating "significantly larger" cash flow and show better profitability relative to valuations, he said.
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"I'd rather wait for volatility to settle and potentially look for a better entry after a pullback," he said.
Other investors are skeptical of the business more broadly. Marko Greguric, a 27-year-old trader, said he believes SpaceX's prospectus to go public — which detailed, among other projects, the company's ambitions to mine asteroids and build a small community on Mars — read like a "crazy sci-fi book."
"I think the prospectus is just too crazy," he said, adding that he had no plans to invest unless it produced tangible profits.
He added that he was considering dumping his shares of Tesla, out of fear that SpaceX's decline could also drag down Musk's car company.
He also worried that the IPO would be an opportunity for current investors to leave retail holding the bag.
"The main purpose of the IPO is for the smart money, the early investors, to dump their bags on the retail," Greguric said, adding that he believed the firm was "absolutely" overvalued at $2 trillion.
Reservations about SpaceX's lofty valuation have also swirled on prominent investing forums, like Reddit's r/WallStreetBets.
"I'm genuinely trying to understand the bull case, not argue. At a potential $1.5T+ valuation, what is the actual revenue and profit path that gets SpaceX there?" one user wrote last week as SpaceX filed to go public.
"We don't care if the business generates profit," another user replied. "We only care if WE generate profit."
"It is hilarious how even the bulls realize the business case is just smoke and mirrors," another user wrote. "The bull case is Elon musk can convince people to dump a ton of money into this ipo and you need to get out before the first rug pull."
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Source: “AOL Money”
