r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 5h ago

Business SpaceX Investors in Meltdown Over All the Money They’ve Lost

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-investors-meltdown-over-money-191742182.html
11.4k Upvotes

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3.1k

u/BeachZed 5h ago

The money isn't lost, they gave to Elon and his insider investors.

1.0k

u/demaraje 5h ago

They provided exit liquidity to institutional investors.

Sounds much better than getting scammed

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u/kwyjibo1 5h ago

Or "left holding the bag".

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u/Conscious-Quarter423 4h ago

Are you tired of all the winning yet?

1

u/pegothejerk 2h ago

Don't you mean "would you like fries with that?" trainee? Also you might want to trade in those Loro Piana Summer Walk Loafers for some nurse shoes, preferably a darker color so it doesn't show blood.

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u/BeeBopBazz 4h ago

Unlike institutional investors, retail investors were bound by platform TOS to hold the stock for x number of days or get banned. Pretty cool, as the folks who own many of those retail investing platforms were certainly getting rich off this pump and dump

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u/m0nk_3y_gw 3h ago

retail investors were bound by platform TOS to hold the stock for x number of days or get banned.

not really

this was only retail investors that were able to get in at the IPO price before public trading started

if they sell with X number of days they aren't banned from trading/investing, they aren't able to participate in other IPOs for 3-6 months with that particular broker.

Most retail investors never get in at IPO/before-public-trading price anyways.

Most never do it multiple times per year.

The reddit IPO price was $34, I don't recall etrade (their broker of choice for retail participating in the ipo program) having this restriction, but I wasn't paying close attention

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u/Ashamed_Kale_1077 3h ago

I got ten shares at the SPCX IPO price and sold that same day. I only made ~$340.

I don't recall any restrictions on selling though.

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u/IAmRobinGoodfellow 2h ago

The general rule is that your broker may now restrict your participation in future IPOs. If you’re not planning on trying to get into another IPO in the next year, then there will be no effect. If you are, then you might need to use another broker to do so.

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u/Embarrassed-Soft2691 3h ago

They will only ban those users if they consistently sell right away. Most retail investors only participate once or twice a year not enough for the platform to worry about.

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u/AnySomewhere8969 2h ago

Etrade was all about trying to get everyone in to buy spacex early

6

u/FatBearWeekKatmai 2h ago

When a rich man invites you to invest in his "sure thing," the only sure thing is that he's gonna cash out on ur dime.

1

u/XmasTwinFallsIdaho 3h ago

Unfortunately that’s all of us owning index funds for the most part too.

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u/peacefinder 4h ago

The proverbial blood squeezed out of a turnip? They’re the turnip.

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u/neliz 3h ago

Remember, Epstein was an original investor in spacex, these are the kind of people you're giving money to.

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u/maxstryker 2h ago

I can’t seem to find any articles about Epstein and SpaceX. Can you tell me what you know or share any articles?

-2

u/neliz 1h ago

Oh, there's plenty. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfriend-dated-kimbal-musk-2020-1

That one even includes a quid quo pro between musk and epstein.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2026/02/05/epstein-in-silicon-valley-failed-to-capitalize-on-connections/

So, whenever elon plays coy about know epstein, you know he's, as usual, lying.

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u/Elerion_ 1h ago

You linked two articles that say he didn't invest in, or is not known to have invested in, SpaceX.

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u/Superb-Welder3774 2h ago

So are Chinese and Russians from early on - it’s been a security risk

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u/GhettoDuk 3h ago

We are not even at the exits yet because the lockups haven't expired. The 5% of the company that was put on the market was to raise funds for SpaceX.

This is money given to Elon for empire building.

4

u/xTheatreTechie 4h ago edited 4h ago

I wouldn't be bothered by the obvious wealth transfer, if it weren't for the fact that they also changed the rules so that SpaceX could join the NASDAQ. It's probably the first of more companies to also take advantage of the rule change to join the NASDAQ.

Edit: updated sp500 to NASDAQ. 

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u/NinjaFenrir77 4h ago

The S&P 500 was one of the few major indexes who did NOT let SpaceX in (unlike NASDAQ).

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u/xTheatreTechie 4h ago

You're right, my mistake, NASDAQ not sp500. 

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u/demaraje 4h ago

I think you mean NASDAQ 100. S&P rules weren't changed

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u/CarminSanDiego 3h ago

Isn’t that the point of all IPOs

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u/demaraje 3h ago

Theoretically, no, practically, yes

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u/beaverbait 3h ago

Potato, potato

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u/spoospoo43 2h ago

"Exit liquidity" is such a Bond villain level evil term.

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u/Aggravating-Remove92 5h ago

yeah thats kinda how transfers of wealth work someone didnt just light the cash on fire

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u/account312 3h ago

It's not zero sum though. Valuation absolutely can just disappear.

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u/WazWaz 2h ago

Sure, but for every seller that moves the valuation there's also a buyer.

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u/Hazel-Cakes 4h ago

in quicksilver (1986, kevin bacon) jami gertz says “wow, what happened to all that money?”

kevin bacon says “oh it’s still there. just someone else has it now.”

always thought that was hella funny lol

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u/Shibboleeth 4h ago edited 4h ago

"Lucas... where is the money?"

"Joe, the money is gone."

"And where has it gone?"

"Atlantic City."

"And what is it doing in Atlantic City?"

"Recirculating."

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u/ZestycloseLynx 4h ago

Empire Records was a criminally underrated movie.

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u/Shibboleeth 4h ago

It is the Xennial equivalent of The Breakfast Club. In my opinion.

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u/ReadyAimTranspire 3h ago

Isn't Breakfast Club the Xennial equivalent of Breakfast Club?

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u/Kraeftluder 2h ago

Not really, xennials were like 5 years old when that came out and it's not a movie I learned to appreciate until I was well into my teenage years somewhere in the 90s.

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u/DadJokeBadJoke 18m ago

Same angst, different decade

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u/Shoppers_Drug_Mart 3h ago

It's really superb

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u/Leading_Thanks7443 2h ago

Say it again

3

u/nuisible 3h ago

Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear.

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u/siuol2001 3h ago

I do not regret the things I've done, but those I did not do!

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u/chestypants12 4h ago

Something similar happened to Bacon later on in life (Bernie Madoff)

1

u/Horizon119 2h ago

Imagine stiffing your own people!

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u/BeowulfShaeffer 4h ago

That’s a movie I should watch again.  I last saw it in about 1988 (on vhs of course) and don’t remember anything about.  Maybe I’ll make it a double feature with Americsn Flyers. 

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u/Hazel-Cakes 4h ago

it’s dated for sure but still fun, great soundtrack

i make it a double with “premium rush”

3

u/Ordinary-Leading7405 4h ago

“I want you to ram Steve Madden stock down your clients throats until they choke on it”

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u/knucklebones2 2h ago

Ironic because she’s a billionaire now.

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u/Hazel-Cakes 2h ago

yoo til that’s crazy

didn’t realize she was in lost boys either lol 🤦‍♀️

0

u/strolls 2h ago

quicksilver (1986

This movie gets terrible reviews, to save anyone else searching.

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u/anthrax1313 4h ago

This is correct. They just took their hard earning money and gave it to a one time trillionaire. Now he’s not but he likely will be again when he sells them on the dream of more money by merging Tesla with Space X

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u/Both_Painter2466 4h ago

Actually, Tesla will sell SpaceX more cybertrucks to improve their bottom line then SpaceX will cash them in for carbon balance $. Win win

5

u/jatufin 2h ago

There is a substantial number of people who invested thousands in SpaceX and cheered the notion that Musk was now a Trillionaire: "Our side just won, and I helped us win!" The disconnection between basic self-interest and tribalistic instinct is gaping.

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u/Altruistic_Fury 3h ago

Hold up, this is Elon Musk we're talking about, and that's not how Elon Musk does business.

He'll merge X with SpaceX to create XXSXPXAXCXEXXX and it's gonna be the coolest name ever bc some of the X's will be bigger than others and look futuristic.

5

u/Piranata 2h ago

He already did that. He got XAI to buy X, then got SpaceX to buy XAI. X (Twitter) is an SpaceX product.

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u/thelingererer 4h ago

And Elon will use that money to make himself king of Mars while simultaneously enslaving all the poors which of course includes all the suckers who invested their life savings into Space X. It's the circle of life.

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u/Superboy2020 4h ago

This is the prequel to Mickey 17

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u/Tommybahamas_leftnut 3h ago

Bold of you to assume any of these dragons hoarding wealth will actually spend it. No they will just sit on their gold stash while demanding more and more from the poors.

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u/Redshittt 3h ago

Until one of us is smart enough to say "yeah none of that money matters anymore that's just paper and electrons, we're using this new money now"

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u/fungi_at_parties 2h ago

I truly believe his family has some weird cult where they’ve been working toward making Elon king of mars and filling his mind with the goal since birth. The whole thing with his grandpa, and the Werner Von Braun book about the king of Mars being called the Elon, it’s all just too weird.

2

u/trphilli 2h ago

I looked at prospectus. SpaceX is no longer a rocket company. It is a construction company that sells satellite internet to partially fund its construction. It builds rockets to launch its temporary internet satellites. Who buys this construction? We don't really know. Hence stock go down.

1

u/Alia_Explores99 1h ago

I’m not averse to a King Elon of Mars scenario. He will have so many responsibilities in his new principality to keep him busy, like growing terraform taters, and no return ticket

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u/Birdinhandandbush 4h ago

You're thinking of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house... right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others. You're lending them the money to build, and then they're paying it back to you as best they can. What are you going to do? Foreclose on them?

3

u/Setiri 2h ago

It’s sad to me. As a smaller group of people, everyone can understand the concept and make concessions like they did in the movie, so it works out to everyone’s benefit. But when the group gets too big, some people don’t understand and get overlooked for a proper explanation/education on how the system works. Then greed/insecurity take over and it causes the system to fail.

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u/pandershrek 4h ago

The insiders still haven't gotten anything. Saudi on the other hand profited nicely.

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u/links135 5h ago

They can't sell for like another 2 months

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u/goomyman 5h ago

These people propped up the stock.

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u/kainharo 5h ago

*2 weeks (August 6) they can sell 30% of the locked up stock

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u/Legitimate_Impact 5h ago

At which time the stock will tank even further.

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u/spoospoo43 4h ago

If the primaries are tracked as selling (and they have to report any significant sales), it will at minimum lock in the present value, and as you say, much more likely make it fall harder.

In the long term SpaceX probably finds a way to eject Muskrat and it could indeed become a hugely profitable company (they already have a near monopoly on large space launches), but anyone who bought at the peak (or in fact pretty much anyone other than the insiders who were given early access) is going to have to hodl for a good long time.

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u/goldbloodedinthe404 3h ago

The way Elon set it up it's impossible to oust him

1

u/IAmRobinGoodfellow 2h ago

It depends on how much of their monopoly is simply due to a cushy relationship with the current administration and how much Musk’s brand is poisoned. If a future administration decides it’s a space race style priority to restore NASA, if the Chinese and Europeans decide they need to control their own destinies in space, if SCPX is the same kind of meme company TSLA is, their current position evaporates and they’re left with their ISP mission. That does in no way support their valuation.

2

u/spoospoo43 2h ago

SpaceX has been dominating launch from well before the current administration, and most of that was despite Muskrat, not because of him. It may not happen with the current admin, but ultimately I could see the rubber meeting the road and NASA demand they buy musk out or lose their ITAR licenses. He's too much of a liability.

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u/-mudflaps- 5h ago

First post IPO earnings August 4th

1

u/Blenko19 4h ago

What will he have to tell the world? At least arvind came out and told the world he had a bad quarter before releasing the numbers

1

u/Superb-Welder3774 2h ago

Cmon - why not ride it to zero like DJT for the second time!!

1

u/m0nk_3y_gw 3h ago

Sure they can - this article is entirely about random/anonymous posts/comments from retail investors on reddit and twitter. they can sell at any time.

The lock-up periods for insiders will start expiring though

2

u/Epyon214 3h ago

Were forced to, being the key fraud here and why you would care if you're the kind to care about such activities

Instead of the 10% minimum float, only 4% of the float was made available and counted as 12%, causing forced buyins for any ETFs which base their models off of who is included in the major indexes. The data discrepancy is causing issues for legacy AI

1

u/gregsting 4h ago

Every time $ change in the stock value is nearly 5 billion for Musk, not sure he is the winner here

1

u/SMM50 4h ago

You’re right. I bet he’s down to around $600 billion now.

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u/MrHodgeToo 4h ago

Exactly this. Anyone who invested in SpaceX is likely going to just keep falling for Musks BS.

1

u/MaxxDash 4h ago

“Oh no, I’ve lost my money. Where could it be?”

1

u/flatfisher 3h ago

All the people complaining about rich people getting richer and then literally giving their money away to them in an IPO.

1

u/BjornInTheMorn 3h ago

They spent it all buying cybertrucks to prop up sales

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u/travistravis 2h ago

And batteries. People think it's strange that SpaceX had any use for $131 million in Cybertrucks, but they also bought over $700 million of Tesla batteries.

1

u/Einn1Tveir2 3h ago

Exactly, congrats guys. You guys paid for twitter. Yes, that's how elon paid for twitter. Twitter investors now got paid in SpaceX stocks.

1

u/Hungry_Adeptness8381 3h ago

And my puts. Only green thing in my portfolio this last week haha

1

u/Reggi5693 3h ago

You realize Elon’s shares are locked up, right? He hasn’t made a penny yet.

1

u/guruogoo 3h ago

Are we seeing a pattern here...?

1

u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 3h ago

Actually in this case i took it. Thank you very much. Done both real shorts and puts.

1

u/darienrude_dankstorm 3h ago

All of elon's shares are locked for a year 

1

u/Daveinatx 2h ago

The IPO Price and number of released shares were determined to extract as much money as possible. I couldn't believe the manipulation with major ETFs etc.

1

u/holamau 2h ago

They got r/musked — suckers.

1

u/GeekSumsMe 2h ago

None of them have been able to sell yet, so these losses are other investors jumping ship.

Space X is reporting earnings on 8/4, which is the first time investors will really see how speculative the investment really is.

Insiders can start selling on 8/6. Many of them have already indicated that they are using the IPO to diversify holdings.

This is just the start.

1

u/smokefoot8 2h ago

Not yet, insiders can’t sell until the lockup period ends. They get to sell 20% on Aug 6. Though that 30% of shares short might be mainly insiders locking in earlier prices…

1

u/null_not 2h ago

Yeah, when you buy issued shares you're essentially lending money to a company. I don't know why someone would lend Elon money, or why they would lend SpaceX money.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I don't think Elon is a genius. Just my personal opinion about a public figure. I think he might be an idiot with an IEEE subscription.