Day 522- Spacex Reflections or Why I Never …

Sunday, June 14, 2026

Why I never tell people what stocks to buy. (Well, hardly never*)

*Sorry G&S**

**Gilbert and Sullivan

The problem is Now.

Now as in the Present.

If you are talking past, present, and future you are not talking about the actual moment. In that context the present is viewing the very recent past. I learned this when I was supposed to “come in on time” in a song. If you stop  to think “Is that now?” You’ve missed the moment; the moment you were supposed to come in and sing. Coming in on time is a leap of faith and can only be realized in retrospect.

What does this have to do with Spacex? Well, good question. Or someone might ask, “Should I buy Spacex?” Well, it opened at the IPO price of $135 and stood there for a while. It closed at $173. So the time to have bought it was when it was 135, not 173. Well, that was easy. Of course it was. Because that is not NOW, that was THEN. The price is 173, do you want it? And that, boys and girls is all you need to know about buying stocks.

Forget whatever you think about Elon Musk. The stock is 173. That’s the now. Yes, you could have bought it at 135 but that’s not where it’s at. It at 173. I know you are asking yourself, “Does that make sense? Should I buy it?” The wise stock advisor says to you, “Well, that depends….” The smart investor screams at you, “Shit! NO!” (Just to be clear.)

Okay. Wait. Hold on. Why do I say that? Well, to put it in the words of Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman, “Do you really think Spacex is worth more than Microsoft?”

Hum, well, when you put it like that…

Yeah. That’s called reality. Well, is it? Is Spacex worth more than Microsoft?

Well, if you look at the total value of Microsoft based on stock price and the total value of Spacex … Forget that. Think about this. What has each company done? To refer back to Krugman, SpaceX has been “a moderately successful rocket launch company”. Okay. and that is pretty spectacular, but a trillion dollars spectacular? No. Maybe, in the future? Yeah. That’s the bet.

Well, when it comes to betting on the future … with Elon … how’s that worked out?

Once again, it depends. He’s a good functional engineer. He can figure out how to make something work, how to streamline it. He did that with PayPal and he sold it for millions. He bought into Tesla and was on the brink of going under and bought into solar shingles and a company that could bore holes in the Earth. None of that really worked out but he folded it all into Tesla bought Twitter and halved its value and folded that and his clunky AI into SpaceX. He’s made predictions about going to Mars the way Trump makes predictions about ending the war he started or about anything he doesn’t know anything about (“two weeks”, “ten days”). Except, Elon uses years or decades. It gives him a bit more wiggle room.

There are three ways to buy stocks that work:

!. Buy stuff when it’s cheap (Warren Buffett),

2. Buy stuff that has great leadership (Motley Fool),

3. Buy the Dow or some Index (Vanguard).

The trick is to buy say ten and hope three work out, because no one, and I mean no one, can figure out what the future will bring. But you can hedge your bets by paying attention, buy a bunch of stuff and hope you hit a few. 

What Musk has done is convinced a lot of the fund index managers to bend their rules and include SpaceX. This guarantees that someone is buying it. Usually, Index funds would wait a year before including it. So even if you hate Elon he’s wormed his way into your 401K. Brilliant!

Egads.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Same with money. When the two combine it merely accelerates the process.

I read “Lost to the West,” the story of the history of Constantinople. Constantinople, now Istanbul, is where Asia and Europe meet. It is literally where East meets West. It s history is the story of the rich and powerful rising up and taking over. Every time they did they decreased taxes on themselves and therefore the bulk fell to the middle class. Every time that happened the middle class left. They literally “took to the hills.” The city fell apart. The tide shifted and the middle class took control and things improved. Until the next time.

Historians, when viewing democracies, give them 250 years. Often referred to as times of chaos. Before order is restored is the term used. That means before someone comes in and beats everyone into submission. Or another way to look at it is, it takes 250 years to figure out how to jerry rig the system to your advantage so others can’t fight back.

Well? What will happen? 

No one knows. You should have bought at 135. Do you sell ate 173, before everyone figures out it’s a con?

Or do you wait? Maybe it will go to 193? Or 200?

Constantinople fell when a new technology came along that shredded their defenses. They had big walls. One of their own came up with a new thing. A big long tube that fired a huge stone ball. It was so big and heavy and got so hot it could only fire six or eight times a day. They laughed at him; They turned him down. He sold the idea to the Ottomans, who used ti to pound the indestructible walls.

It’s impossible until it’s not.

No one comes back from being 29 points down at the half. Except the Knicks whose man figured out the now with 1.2 seconds left and leapt at just the right moment to grab the ball and put it through the rim. In the Now.