Here's What Happened After the 5 Biggest IPOs in Stock Market History

The article argues that among the five largest IPOs in history, only Visa materially outperformed the market, while Saudi Aramco has lost 9% since its debut and the others broadly underperformed. It warns that SpaceX's targeted $2 trillion IPO valuation would imply a launch valuation near Aramco's current market cap while generating less than 15% of Aramco's revenue, leaving limited upside. The piece is more of a valuation/history analysis than a direct market catalyst, though it may influence investor sentiment around large IPO pricing.

Analysis

The key market implication is not that mega-IPOs are bad; it is that size acts like a valuation tax. When the flotation is this large, the issuer is effectively pre-selling several years of growth, so post-deal returns become highly path-dependent on execution and multiple compression rather than business quality. That creates a setup where the first tradable move can be supported by scarcity and narrative, but the medium-term setup is usually weaker because incremental buyers have already been forced to pay up.

For SpaceX specifically, the second-order issue is capital intensity versus optionality. A $2T starting mark leaves little room for slower Starship monetization, launch cadence hiccups, or a delay in Starlink cash conversion; any one of those can knock several hundred billion off terminal equity value without requiring a true operating failure. The market will likely underestimate how much of the IPO is really a sentiment event tied to AI/space enthusiasm, which means the stock could trade more like a momentum proxy than a fundamentals story for the first 1-2 quarters.

The more interesting relative-value read-through is to the adjacent beneficiaries. If SpaceX becomes the headline anchor for “premium growth infrastructure,” it can temporarily lift hardware, aerospace, and connectivity names with similar scarcity narratives, but it also raises the bar for public-market comps everywhere else. That matters for NVDA and INTC because investors may draw a false equivalence between “critical technology” and “inevitable monopoly economics,” which can widen dispersion between true pricing power and capex-heavy, lower-return businesses.

Consensus is likely missing that the best trade may not be the IPO itself but the post-IPO unwind in implied scarcity premium. If the deal prices near the top end, the cleaner setup is to fade enthusiasm after lockup/first earnings rather than chase day one. History suggests the more reliable edge is in waiting for the first evidence that the business must actually deliver against an impossible opening valuation.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Do not chase the IPO at pricing if SpaceX comes public near the $2T mark; wait 1-2 quarters post-listing for a better entry once the initial scarcity premium decays.
• If options list, favor a bearish structure 3-6 months after listing: buy puts or put spreads on post-hype strength, targeting a 15-25% drawdown scenario with defined risk.
• Relative-value trade: long NVDA / short a basket of valuation-sensitive IPO-adjacent tech issuers once SpaceX sets the tape, on the view that true infrastructure monopolies will outperform narrative-only scarcity.