South Korean retail investors couldn't buy SpaceX during its IPO - the first time a company sells stock to the public. Their broker came back with zero shares for every client who asked.
So they waited for the stock to start trading and bought nearly $800 million of it on day one, turning a shutout into a record.
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A Single-Day Buying Spree
Korean retail investors picked up $796 million of SpaceX shares on Friday, the stock's first trading day, which is bigger than the three-month net buying of any other US stock.
That single session pushed SpaceX past every other US name to become the most-bought stock among more than 14 million small investors in Korea - a group known for big trades and bold bets on US tech.
Why all the demand? SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, runs the Starlink internet network and has been one of the most awaited public debuts in years.
Korean retail investors have been trying to buy in through private deals and pre-IPO funds for years, but most never got the chance until last week.
How They Got Locked Out
Japan and Australia gave their retail investors early access to the SpaceX IPO, while Korea did not.
Mirae Asset Securities, one of the banks helping run the IPO, was supposed to deliver shares to select Korean clients - but came back with none after the share list closed.
That left some of the country's biggest brokerage accounts with no SpaceX shares on day one, while clients in Tokyo and Sydney got in at the IPO price.
The price gap between the IPO and the first trading day means Korean buyers paid much more for every share.
Korea's Financial Supervisory Service, the main markets regulator, has since widened its probe of Mirae to figure out what went wrong.
Bigger Than Amazon
SpaceX shares are up 49% since the listing, pushing the company's market value to $2.65 trillion - roughly $8 billion ahead of Amazon.
That puts the rocket maker behind only a handful of US companies by market cap, less than a week after its public debut.
Korean investors have backed Elon Musk for years, together holding $25.9 billion of Tesla stock as of mid-June.
A SpaceX-focused ETF, a fund that trades like a stock and tracks the rocket maker, has also pulled in $301 million from Korean retail over the past month.
What to Watch
Micron and a Nasdaq 100 ETF were the second and third most popular US stocks among Korean retail buyers over the last three months, with $748 million and $696 million in net buying.
SpaceX cleared both of those totals in a single day.
Getting locked out didn't slow them down. It just delayed the trade by a few days.
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