SpaceX Ticker Speculation Is Heating Up as Tuttle Drops 'SPCX'

A stock ticker that befits SpaceX ahead of its blockbuster IPO just became available.

Matt Tuttle of Tuttle Capital Management has changed the ticker on his Nasdaq-listed SPAC fund from SPCX to SPCK, freeing up a ticker that SpaceX could claim for an upcoming public listing expected to value Elon Musk's rocket company at more than $2 trillion.

SpaceX hasn't publicly filed paperwork specifying a ticker. But SPCX looks like a clear candidate, and as of this week, it's free.

There's precedent. Mark Zuckerberg acquired the META ticker from Roundhill Investments in 2022 when Facebook rebranded, taking over a symbol that had belonged to a small metaverse ETF.

The episode helped establish an informal secondary market for stock tickers, where ETF issuers sometimes squat on symbols tied to high-profile private companies in hopes of cashing out when they go public.

"Tuttle knows what he is doing. He saw what happened with Roundhill and had the wherewithal to keep his languishing SPAC ETF alive in the off chance Elon called," said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. The fund has just $7 million in assets and was launched in 2020. "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good."

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

Read earlier coverage: Race for Hottest Tickers Creates Shadow Market on Wall Street

Research suggests that memorable, intuitive tickers enjoy advantages like lower spreads and greater liquidity -- and are more popular with retail investors. Tickers that are easy to process can increase attention and buying pressure, leading to short-term price increases.

The company could ultimately choose a different symbol -- X, SPAX or MARS among the alternatives drawing bets on prediction markets, though the latter is an existing ETF run by Roundhill. But with SPCX now available, the speculation has a fresh data point. Tuttle, who is CEO of Tuttle Capital, declined to comment, citing business confidentiality.

Over on Polymarket, users are already betting on what SpaceX's future ticker will be, with about $4.8 million in contracts traded. None of the specific options Polymarket listed have proved popular, with the contract for "Other" -- an outcome that would include SPCX -- at 58% odds on Friday.