SpaceX Vice President for Human Resources Brian Bjelde, wearing a SpaceX spacesuit, and others celebrate on the day of SpaceX's IPO in New York on June 12.Brendan McDermid/Reuters
If you were already a little worried about the lofty heights of the stock market, last week’s initial public offering from Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, may have pushed you over the edge.
It minted the world’s first trillionaire, in the form of Elon Musk, the chief executive officer who will control the company; and it raised US$75-billion, making it the largest IPO ever.
What’s more, the stock will be fast-tracked for inclusion into many major indexes, including the Nasdaq 100; and it landed near the start of what could be a deluge of tech IPOs. OpenAI and Anthropic, two leading artificial intelligence companies, are widely expected to go public soon.
Perhaps the most worrisome part is that the SpaceX IPO was popular with individual investors, who have a reputation for getting caught up in market frenzies.
Some pros are concerned that SpaceX – regardless of whether the company is ultimately successful in space exploration, satellite communications and artificial intelligence – might symbolize the market’s frothy top.
“Recent history suggests surging share issuance tends to be a sign that the end to an equity boom is a matter of months, not years, away,” Joe Maher, markets economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
Anthony Scilipoti, the founding partner of Veritas Investment Research, argued in a Globe and Mail opinion piece that the IPO will mark a market top.
“We have the largest IPO in history asking investors to accept weaker governance protections with an extreme concentration of control,” he said.
More broadly, SpaceX encapsulates everything that is unsettling about today’s investment landscape: Sky-high valuations, investor ebullience and an AI theme that is transforming diversified indexes into a giant bet on the tech sector.
The question is: What, if anything, should we do about it?
Market-timing rarely works. Too often, we end up buying high and selling low – missing rallies and suffering through downturns.
For what it’s worth, I’m largely staying put in my conservative mix of balanced portfolio exchange-traded funds, dividend stocks and government bonds, with a few GICs for some added excitement. There are certainly no 19 per cent one-day SpaceX pops for me – ever!
More importantly, what’s your take on the current state of the market? Try our three-question poll and I’ll report back on the results.
Chart of the day
This chart looks at how in June, the changes are not in everyday savings accounts, where the best offers remain promotional and temporary, but in GIC rates.
New research that caught my eye
Financial advisers can provide plenty of advice on wealth management strategies for retirees. But providing tips on how to have fun? Not so much. In this working paper, David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Prudential Financial, looks at how retirees can strike the right balance. “Focusing entirely on wealth (and ignoring well-being), could result in a client accumulating enough wealth to retire, but not enjoying retirement due to poor health or a lack of social connections – winning the wealth ‘battle’ but losing the retirement ‘war,’” he writes.