By Miriam Gottfried

SpaceX is rolling out the red carpet for individual investors who want in on its initial public offering, and there will likely be no shortage of demand.

Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Robinhood Markets, SoFi Technologies and Morgan Stanley's E*Trade are all expected to offer shares to their customers. How many shares they get to dole out will depend on how much is snapped up first by institutional investors and the ultrarich.

That is why allocating a high percentage of shares to individual investors has historically been viewed as a sign that the smart money isn't interested. But the sheer size of SpaceX's expected offering, and Chief Executive Elon Musk's expressed desire to have significant retail ownership, might make that less of a red flag this time around.

The brokerages are also gauging customer interest now to advocate for a bigger piece when the time comes.

Investing in IPOs means taking the risk that the stock price could bounce around wildly in early trading. There is a long list of stocks that have shot up in the days following their debuts, then dropped sharply, never to return to those early highs. Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, took 16 months after its 2012 IPO to recover from an early plunge in its share price.

For investors prepared to stomach that turbulence, here is how to place an order.

Be sure you are eligible

Some brokerages are putting limits on who is eligible to participate. Schwab requires a brokerage account balance of at least $100,000. Fidelity has historically required a minimum of $100,000 or $500,000 in brokerage accounts, depending on the offering, but it is lowering the threshold to $2,000 for SpaceX's IPO, according to people familiar with the matter.

Robinhood, SoFi and E*Trade don't have explicit minimum portfolio-size requirements.

Show you are interested

All of the brokerages require customers to submit a conditional indication of interest to be eligible. These are nonbinding expressions of intent to buy a certain number of shares.

Entering more shares than you actually want to buy won't boost your chances of getting a higher allocation. Fidelity says on its website that it doesn't consider the size of the indication of interest during allocation except that it won't give customers more shares than they requested. And you might end up getting the entire allocation you request.

After the offering has priced -- typically the evening before the IPO -- investors who submitted indications of interest must confirm their interest. You can make final the number of shares you want to buy at that time. These confirmations need to be completed in a timely fashion. Schwab provides a deadline of 7 a.m. ET the morning after pricing.

Wake up a SpaceX shareholder -- or not

On the morning of IPO day, your shares will be allocated and will show up in your account. With SpaceX, as with other IPOs, there is no guarantee you will receive as many as you have requested -- or any at all.

Each brokerage has its own process for determining allocations. Some, including Robinhood and SoFi, say they will disallow or limit allocations for people who have participated in IPOs in the past and have "flipped" shares, selling them within 30 days of the offering.

SoFi's website says the brokerage takes into account such factors as having direct deposits set up on its online banking platform and the amount of assets the customer has on its investing platform.

What about future IPOs?

All of the brokerages offer ways for customers to register for alerts that will inform them of new offerings open to individual investors. This could be helpful for other big IPOs in the pipeline, including Anthropic, which filed confidentially this week.

Write to Miriam Gottfried at Miriam.Gottfried@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 04, 2026 11:45 ET (15:45 GMT)

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