SpaceX & The Speculator’s Dream

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Now, they tell me this SpaceX contraption—built by a fellow who fancies himself a modern-day Icarus—is fixin’ to have an “IPO” in 2026. A grand spectacle, they call it. A $1.5 trillion offerin’, enough to make even Croesus blush. Seems Mr. Musk aims to be the first man to accumulate a trillion dollars. A tidy sum, wouldn’t you say? One wonders if he’ll need a special vault just to hold the coins.

This gentleman, you see, he’s not content with merely buildin’ electric carriages or stickin’ batteries in barns. No sir. He wants to conquer the heavens themselves, and colonize Mars for good measure. Lofty ambitions, I grant you. Though I reckon a fella could do a heap of good fixin’ things here on Earth first. But who am I to question a man with rockets?

The question, of course, isn’t whether Mr. Musk can achieve these fantastical goals, but whether the rest of us can scrape a few pennies from the venture. A man’s gotta eat, after all, and a little profit from space travel sounds as good as any other sort of profit.

Valuations & Fool’s Gold

I took a look at the numbers, and let me tell you, it’s enough to make a seasoned accountant weep. They’re sayin’ SpaceX pulled in a good $15 billion last year, expectin’ to hit $22 or $24 billion this year. Growth, they call it. But at $1.5 trillion, that’s a price-to-sales ratio that’d make a Mississippi gambler faint. Sixty-two to sixty-eight times sales! Why, a fella could buy a small country for that kind of money.

I prefer a more reasonable approach myself – somethin’ around four times sales. But in this age of speculation, reason seems to have gone the way of the dodo. So, I started ponderin’: is there a way to get in on this before the IPO, before the price gets inflated to the point where only the very wealthy can afford a single share?

A Slice of the Pie (For Those Who Have Plenty)

Turns out, if you’re blessed with a substantial income—$200,000 a year or more—or a million dollars in net worth (and don’t mind countin’ everything but your house), you might be able to snag a share on the “secondary market.” These companies—Hiive, EquityZen, and a firm called Forge Global—they facilitate trades between employees and investors. Perfectly legitimate, they say. Charles Schwab is even lookin’ to buy Forge Global, which, if it goes through, might make it even easier to throw your money at rockets.

But be warned: these outfits often deal in shares of shares. You might think you’re buyin’ SpaceX stock, but you’re actually buyin’ shares in a company that owns shares of SpaceX. A bit like buyin’ a piece of a pie that’s already been sliced and diced. Still a piece of the pie, mind you, but a smaller one.

Ridin’ the Coattails of Cathie Wood

Another route is to invest in Cathie Wood’s Ark Venture Fund. It’s a publicly traded venture capital fund that holds shares in a whole mess of pre-IPO companies—SpaceX bein’ just one of ’em. Buy a share of the fund, and abracadabra, you own a piece of SpaceX. Along with pieces of about fifty other companies, I might add. Some folks might see that as a bonus, others as a nuisance. Depends on how much you like gamblin’ on unproven ventures.

Google’s Got a Stake, Too

Don’t fancy spreadin’ your money across fifty different companies? Well, if you want a more focused approach, you could buy shares of Alphabet—Google’s parent company. Back in 2015, Google was one of the first big investors in SpaceX, buyin’ a 7.5% stake when the company was worth a mere $10 billion. They haven’t sold it, so that stake is now worth over $112 billion. It’s a small slice of Alphabet’s $4 trillion market cap, but it’s still a sizable piece of SpaceX.

And you can get it for a paltry $330 and change a share. A bargain, wouldn’t you say? Though I reckon a fella could still lose his shirt. But then again, that’s always a risk when you’re chasin’ rockets.

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2026-01-19 22:33