The main idea behind this hypothesis is that people are stupid and will buy SPCE (Virgin Galactic) because it’s name is similar to SpaceX. People cite retail investors/gamblers buying ZOOM (Zoom Technologies former ticker) instead of ZM (Zoom Communications, the company you’ve heard of) at IPO.
I used Robinhood for research because it’s the preferred brokerage for gamblers who invest with minimal research. I included screenshots of results when searching for “S”, “SP”, and “SPA”. Results for spac and space are the same as spa.
As long as someone can spell “space” correctly SPCE don’t even know up in the search results. You’re counting on people not knowing the correct ticker, but also not knowing how to spell a word 1st graders know. Although now that I’ve written that out maybe people really are that dumb?