Commentary: Small investors have powered SpaceX higher, but they'll shoulder much of the risk when reality bites

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In the second trading day as a public company, SpaceX’s initial public offering still was being treated as an extraordinary event in Wall Street history: The largest IPO ever, creating the first trillionaire in Elon Musk, its boss, and bringing the company’s market value to $2.28 trillion.On Monday, the stock gained 19.6% on top of its first-day gain of 19%, closing at $192.50.But the IPO is extraordinary in other ways that are becoming more clear as the pre-IPO frenzy yields to the company’s post-IPO reality.

The SpaceX IPO raises unprecedented questions about Wall Street’s role in future mega-IPOs, what this event means for the current bull market in stocks, the wisdom of concentrating so much wealth in so few hands and the rise of wealth inequality.The answers to these questions may not be pretty.The fact that Wall Street designed a deal that needed $20 billion of retail money to get it across the line tells you something about who they wanted in the building.— Financial commentator Patrick BoyleLast week, I pointed to some issues connected to the SpaceX IPO, including the utterly fantastical rationale for the company’s outsized market valuation and the prospect that billions of dollars of shares may be shoved into the retirement accounts of investors who don’t want them, thanks to the willingness of Nasdaq and other stock index sponsors to accept the shares into their indices well ahead of the customary “seasoning” delay.

But there’s more to think about.Start with the paucity of control that shareholders will get for their investments.

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