The SpaceX IPO Is Just Days Away. History Says the Stock Will Do This When It Starts Trading.

SpaceX is set to price its IPO at $135 per share, implying a $1.77 trillion initial market capitalization and making it the largest IPO on record. The article argues the valuation is rich at 92x sales, about 48% above the most expensive S&P 500 stock, and cites Morningstar's $780 billion fair value estimate, or 56% downside. It also highlights historical evidence that the 10 largest U.S. IPOs have underperformed the S&P 500 by 96 percentage points since listing.

Analysis

This is less a “buy-the-story” event than a liquidity and duration shock. A mega-cap IPO at this scale will siphon speculative capital, index-like demand, and analyst attention away from the handful of public names that have been serving as quasi-proxies for frontier tech scarcity, especially PLTR and COIN, where multiples are already justified by narrative rather than current cash flow. The second-order effect is that any disappointment in post-listing price action will likely compress sentiment across the entire high-duration complex, with the market using SpaceX as a fresh benchmark for what investors will pay for “strategic” growth.

The bigger winner may be MORN and other valuation-sensitive research franchises rather than the obvious comps. When a deal arrives so richly priced relative to sales and prior mega-IPOs, it tends to reset underwriting economics and create a recurring demand for “what is fair value?” follow-on commentary; that is supportive for independent research providers and, tactically, for disciplined large-cap funds that can harvest retail enthusiasm into strength. By contrast, UBER and COIN look vulnerable to a negative read-through: both trade on platform optionality and addressable-market expansion, but a new cash-burning, mission-driven tech asset commanding an even higher revenue multiple tightens the tolerance for execution slippage.

Time horizon matters. In the first 1-5 sessions, the trade is likely momentum-positive as scarcity and float dynamics dominate; over 1-3 months, lockup/secondary supply and valuation anchoring should matter more than the brand halo. The contrarian angle is that the market may underappreciate how quickly a trillion-plus starting valuation can become a benchmark that competes with public equities for venture capital, talent, and even retail risk appetite — if the IPO trades well, it could be a rising-tide event for NVDA/GOOGL/AMZN only insofar as it reinforces the AI/space infrastructure cycle, but it also increases the probability that subsequent growth issuance comes at lower discounts, not higher ones.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Fade the post-IPO euphoria: initiate a small short in PLTR on the first 3-5 days of trading if it rips on sympathy; use a 2-4 week horizon and size for a valuation-compression trade, not a fundamental short.
• Add to VG on weakness as the cleaner beneficiary of any broad ‘own the market, not the lottery ticket’ rotation; target a 1-3 month window and prefer staggered entries around volatility spikes.
• Pair trade: long MORN / short COIN into the IPO window. The former benefits from elevated valuation scrutiny and research demand; the latter is more exposed if speculative capital gets pulled toward the new issue. Hold 1-2 months.
• Avoid chasing UBER into the deal unless there is a separate catalyst; its multiple is vulnerable to a negative comparison effect. If already long, consider trimming into strength and redeploying into cash-generative index exposure.
• If you want event optionality, buy short-dated puts on a high-duration basket proxy (PLTR/COIN) only on an IPO-day spike; the risk/reward is best when implied vol lags the narrative shock.