SpaceX just pulled off the largest US IPO in history, raising $75 billion at $135 per share. But the celebration looks very different depending on which side of the institutional divide you’re sitting on.
Retail investors who managed to snag shares in the June 11 offering are now locked into mandatory holding periods of 15 to 30 days, depending on their brokerage. Hedge funds and institutional investors? They can sell whenever they want, with no comparable penalties. Same IPO, same shares, very different rulebooks.
The two-tier playbook
Fidelity mandates a 15-day hold on SpaceX IPO shares. Robinhood, SoFi, and E*TRADE all impose a 30-day hold. SoFi goes a step further with escalating fees for violations. Charles Schwab stands alone among major brokerages in not having a formal anti-flipping policy.
The penalty for breaking these rules isn’t just a fee. Retail investors who sell too quickly risk being excluded from future IPO allocations. That’s not a trivial threat when the pipeline includes names like OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the most anticipated offerings in recent memory.
