First things first…

Last Friday in our weekly video Nick Hubble and I made a prediction as to where the SpaceX IPO would head on launch day (yep, intentional pun).

Nick said higher. I said lower.

Nick was right.

Well done to him.

Now, let’s see where it goes next.

Because on Friday, a crowd packed the pavement outside the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, the kind of scrum you’d normally see for a film premiere.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president, rang the opening bell to cheers, and the most anticipated debut in market history got down to business.

By the close, Elon Musk was the world’s first trillionaire, on paper at least, and SpaceX was worth more than US$2 trillion.

We’ve said for months this listing was shaping up to be the biggest IPO ever, and that the day itself would be a circus.

And a circus it was.

But whether the price makes any sense is what everyone spent the weekend arguing about — myself included.

How the day played out

SpaceX priced on Thursday night at US$135 a share.

It sold 555.6 million shares and raised US$75 billion, the largest IPO ever by a distance and roughly triple the size of the next biggest.

That pricing alone valued the company at US$1.75 trillion, well above the roughly US$1.5 trillion valuation private investors were paying only weeks earlier.

The stock opened Friday at US$150 under the ticker SPCX, an 11% jump before the session had even begun.

By midday it was up 30%. It touched a high of US$176.52, eased back, and closed at US$160.95, up 19.2%, giving the company a market value of roughly US$2.1 trillion.

None of that pop was an accident.

SpaceX floated only about 4% of itself, and the order book was twice oversubscribed. Retail investors were handed roughly 30% of the deal, around US$22.5 billion worth, against a usual retail allocation of 5% to 10%.

Citadel Securities said it saw the heaviest retail auction order activity it has ever recorded, and Robinhood reported record traffic.

Several platforms buckled under the traffic such was the hype and commotion.

Some crypto markets offering tokenised versions of the stock simply crashed.

It was mania.

And for me, that only reinforces the view that SpaceX will trade below its IPO valuation soon enough — and become a far better long-term buy when it does.

What the weekend made of it

Over the weekend, as the IPO dust began to settle, there was a noticeable shift in tone.

The bulls pointed to the index funds.

While the S&P decided not to change its rules to allow SpaceX early inclusion, MSCI had other ideas.

Under MSCI’s early inclusion rules, SpaceX has now joined the MSCI World and All Country World indices as a top-10 member. Every tracker fund now has to own it to match the benchmark.

The bears — yours truly included — spent the weekend looking at the numbers.

Jim Chanos, the short-seller who called Enron, said the valuation made no sense against US$18 billion of revenue and billions in losses.

SpaceX lost US$4.94 billion in 2025 on US$18.67 billion of revenue, then another US$4.28 billion in the first quarter of this year, much of it from the xAI business it swallowed.

History isn’t kind to debut darlings either.

Meta, Circle, and Figma all soared on listing and gave much of it back within months.

SpaceX also has a 180-day lock-up, meaning existing shareholders can’t sell yet.

When they can, the selling pressure could be immense.

Forced index buying can keep a stock elevated well beyond what the fundamentals justify.

When that buying slows, selling pressure arrives, and earnings become the focus, things get a lot harder.

Just look at semiconductor stocks. They’re delivering record growth quarter after quarter, yet even outstanding results can trigger sell-offs.

What do you think happens when SpaceX’s losses widen, sellers start hitting the market, and the hype wears off as retail investors sit underwater?

People inevitably buy high and sell low.

All I’m saying is that I expect SpaceX to trade a lot cheaper over the next six months.

And then I think it becomes a reasonable five-to-10-year punt.

If they can crack the cost of getting payloads into space, unlocking everything from interplanetary manufacturing to AI compute in orbit, the potential value of the company could well run into the tens of trillions.

But I’d rather buy the stock at or below a US$1 trillion valuation than where it sits today.

And I think it gets there before the proverbial rocket higher.

Needless to say, it was a historic day for markets, for Elon, for SpaceX, and for investors.

But beware the hype.

And if you feel like you’ve missed the IPO of the decade, don’t worry.

There are another half-dozen blockbuster listings likely to follow this year.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Anduril…

Just to name a few.

We’re not even halfway through 2026, and it’s already been historic.

You could say 2026 is a Turning Point.

And that’s exactly why Nick and myself will be taking to YouTube to host a live talk about the investment opportunities that lie ahead. The single question we aim to answer? If you had £10,000, where should you invest?

Add a reminder to your calendar for Thursday, 9 July at 3 pm GMT. You’ll be hearing much more about this over the next few weeks!

It’s an exciting time to be alive. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Until next time,

Sam Volkering
Investment Director, Southbank Investment Research

PS One thing I keep coming back to after the SpaceX IPO frenzy…

The people making the biggest money from a boom are rarely the ones buying the headline asset after everyone is talking about it.

That’s true in technology. It was true during the gold rush. And it may prove true in energy too.

Right now, most investors have no idea Britain may be sitting on what some estimates suggest could be a £45 trillion oil discovery beneath its territorial seabed.

If drilling moves forward, the biggest winners may not be the names grabbing headlines today, but the companies positioned around the opportunity before the crowd catches on.

That’s exactly why I recently put together a free report on one company I believe could be a major beneficiary.

You can get the details here.