Key insights
- This post discusses the potential for retail investor confusion between SPXC (SPX Technologies) and the anticipated SpaceX IPO, leading to a 'confusion trade'. The author suggests that a significant number of retail investors might mistakenly buy SPXC, a data center component manufacturer, instead of SpaceX, due to similar ticker symbols and company names. This could artificially inflate SPXC's price, although the author also notes SPXC is a legitimate company with potential for growth. The direct impact on the broader US equity market is considered minimal, hence the neutral influence score.
We all know now that $SPCE was just a massive pump-and-dump. Let's be real, what are the odds that someone would actually type SPCE into their brokerage, see that the company name is “Virgin Galactic Holdings,” and then still press buy thinking it’s SpaceX?
Even back in 2019, people only bought $ZOOM instead of $ZM because the company names were actually similar: $ZOOM was called “Zoom Technologies, Inc” while the real zoom was “Zoom Video Communications, Inc.”
With SpaceX listing as $SPCX though, there actually is a stock that can pull off this name confusion: $SPXC (SPX Technologies).
If you just had to read that twice, point proven.
Not only is the company name close enough for your average retail investor to get confused, but they’re also a legit $10B data center play that manufactures HVAC and cooling components. What’s more, the company has a share price of $230, which will look a lot more legit to an unsuspecting investor than SPCE’s $4 penny stock. And since SpaceX is IPOing at $135, all these people are going to think “wow, the stock already ran up 70%??” and FOMO in.
Now, the AI overlords tell me that SpaceX is expected to have 400-500 million shares traded on the first day. If just 1% of these people fat-finger “SPXC,” that’ll be 4 million buyers chasing a stock with average volume of 500,000. This trade won’t 10x, but worst-case scenario everyone walks away bagholding a real AI stock that’s probably going to double over the next year anyways.
Tldr; Data centers on Earth >>> Data centers in space
Positions: 4.5k in underlying (I'm broke)
(post was removed from WSB for some reason so this is going here now)