Day 520 – Spacex – Can I See Clearly?

Friday, June 12, 2026

I had been learning a lot about IPOs and Spacex recently.

I tend to stay away from IPOs because more often than not they go down after coming on the market.

I was planning on buying a goodly chunk of Spacex and then I started doing some research.

Part of that research was understanding how I could even buy into an IPO via Fidelity.

In the old days, you had to have a broker or a person at the bank (a major bank), who could put in for you.

Typically, I never got any of the IPO shares, unless it was garbage.

But I learned Fidelity had an IPO Calendar web page where they told you what stocks they were offering.

It turned out to be a two step process: Step 1) Indicate interest in a company.

Step 2) The night before the stock comes out Fidelity will ask via that webpage if you want to “confirm” your choice. 

I learned if you didn’t confirm it was the same as not having done anything.

I tried two test cases: Quantinuum and Sunshine Silver (say that quickly!!!)

I didn’t realize about the confirm bit until the morning the shares were supposed to start trading. It was after 8A.M. and it turned out on one of them I had to confirm before eight so I wasn’t even in the game.

The other, Quantinuum I confirmed and when the shares opened on the market at 9:30 I didn’t get any.

I bought both companies on the open market a bit below their IPO price and they have done spectacularly nothing.

With Spacex I had said I wanted to participate in several different accounts. I sold some stuff so I’d have money to buy. Turned out the next day the stock market went down so my selling looked like a bloody genius move.

Last night the “confirm” option came. By then I had done some (sober?) reflection and I cut way back on my orders. I signaled I wanted ten shares in each of two accounts, about $2600 total commitment. I only got ten shares in one account. They said it was over subscribed – so be it.

In my research I discovered that the offering stock price was about one hundred times earnings. That means it would take one hundred years for you to make your investment back based on current earnings. Yikes.

But…but…the case is that Spacex will do lots of great things in the near future.

However, if you look at Elon’s track record on doing great things it ain’t so great. 

Paul Krugman, award winning economist, calls Elon “A Human Ponzi Scheme.” Why? His company to bore holes – hasn’t. His buying of Twitter resulted in his personal decimation of the company and it is now worth 50% of what it was when he bought it. Make that 40%. His Tesla stuff. He was ahead of the curve on the EV part. The self driving? Not so much. Only a few cars in one city and the technology he’s employing ain’t working. And he, like Donald Trump, is given to pronouncements that don’t come true. In Elon’s case it seems he says things like we’ll go to Mars and he throws out a date or a number of years hence as if he’s thought about it for maybe ten seconds. Many of those pronouncements were made seven or ten years ago and this is the year they are supposed to happen. Donald Trump uses the phrases: “In two weeks” or “In ten days” when he has no idea. This is typically followed by “you’ll be surprised what we found.” or some version of that. The exception is the Trump War with Iran which is going to be settled every week.

One hour until the market opens – it should be interesting. If “the smart money” is right SpaceX should fall to around $63 a share from its open at $135.00.

But will it be like Gamestop? Will it be propped up by idiot retail investors?

Or has Elon ponzied all of them into the fold already?