* Firms that processed record volumes saw no technical

glitches

* Schwab saw over 1 million orders for SpaceX during first

hours of trading

* Nasdaq and market makers have been stress-testing trading

systems for weeks leading up to SpaceX IPO

By Anirban Sen, Nivedita Balu and Saeed Azhar

NEW YORK, June 12 (Reuters) - A collective sigh of relief

swept across Wall Street after trading for SpaceX's landmark

Nasdaq launch went smoothly, setting a new template for the

trading firms and exchanges that are bracing for the giant IPOs

of OpenAI and Anthropic later this year.

SpaceX's record-breaking debut on Friday dwarfed the previous

largest flotation on U.S. exchanges by nearly three times. The

sheer size of the launch had worried market participants who had

lingering bad memories from the disastrous stock market debut of

Facebook in 2012.

However, trading systems at the banks underwriting the IPO,

exchanges, market makers, clearinghouses, and other market

infrastructure firms held up to the challenge of processing

millions of client orders.

"People go back to the Facebook ... days and 'was this going to

turn into one of those companies,' but I honestly think the

banks in the U.S. did a fantastic job, the SpaceX crew did a

fantastic job telling the story when they did their rounds. And

as you can see it went extremely smoothly," said Jeff Parks, CEO

of Canadian investment firm Stack Capital Group ( STCGF ). Nearly a third

of Stack's portfolio is SpaceX, in which the company began

investing in 2021.

He was referring to the turbulence that surrounded Facebook's

ill-fated IPO, when technical problems turned a landmark listing

into one of Wall Street's most notorious trading fiascos. It

left investors and brokers in limbo for hours and ultimately

cost market makers hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to Citadel Securities, the largest U.S. retail

market maker, SpaceX's debut generated the highest retail order

activity for an IPO auction ever. A Citadel Securities

spokesperson said the firm handled the majority of the retail

orders for SpaceX.

Morgan Stanley ( MS ), the so-called "stabilization agent" for the

glitzy market debut, had the key role in managing SpaceX's

market opening. The bank had to ensure an orderly rollout even

as it grappled with unprecedented investor demand. A

stabilization agent typically buys up shares in the open market

to shore up stocks that witness steep declines on opening day.

One of the lead underwriters advising SpaceX, who requested

anonymity as the matter is confidential, said the IPO was a

monumental event for the exchanges and the banks and crucial to

get right.

Trading platform Charles Schwab ( SCHW ) said it has seen well over a

million orders in SpaceX in the first few hours of trading,

which is a significant figure in comparison to past IPOs,

according to a spokesperson for the company.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Wall Street traders, brokers

and exchanges had been stress-testing their trading systems for

several weeks leading up to the blockbuster IPO.

SpaceX shares "are not going up in huge blocks, but they're

bleeding higher, and a lot of that is due to a little bit more

of a boring and softer opening print than a lot of folks

expected," said Mike Dickson, head of research & quantitative

strategies at Horizon Investments. "I'm a little surprised

there's not more volatility, given a lot of the oversubscription

headlines."

SMOOTH ROLLOUT

Past trading debuts for large IPOs have often faced delays

because exchanges must match enormous volumes of buy and sell

orders before determining an opening price. For SpaceX, the

stock started trading shortly before noon on Friday. That was

relatively early compared to the recent IPOs of Cerebras Systems ( CBRS )

and Quantinuum, which opened later in the afternoon on their

respective debut days.

Barring some issues with early trading on Robinhood on

Friday, Wall Street largely skirted the technical glitches that

hampered Facebook's rollout in 2012 - much to the relief of

Nasdaq, the market makers, and investors.

"We all worked really well together. We did a lot of

preparation with our banking partners," said Nasdaq CEO Adena

Friedman in an interview with CNBC on Friday. "We made sure that

we were talking to all of the firms throughout the process of

preparing for this, and it came off really flawlessly."