The Greatest IPO in US History and Why I Still Won’t Buy It

On 12 June 2026, financial history was made.

SpaceX completed the largest IPO ever conducted in the United States, raising approximately $75 billion at a valuation of around $1.77 trillion. Investor demand reportedly exceeded $250 billion, resulting in the offering being multiple times oversubscribed. Retail investors, institutions, hedge funds, pension funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, and speculators all rushed to participate in what many are calling the biggest liquidity event in modern capital market history.

For many investors, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

For me, it is not.

In fact, despite spending more than a decade studying financial markets, despite having tremendous respect for SpaceX as a technological achievement, and despite recognising Elon Musk as one of the most consequential entrepreneurs of the twenty-first century, I have absolutely no intention of participating in the IPO.

This position often surprises people. How can a long-term investor ignore arguably the most important public offering since the Internet boom?

The answer is simple. Because I am a value investor. And value investors are paid for discipline, not excitement.

Great Company Does Not Automatically Mean Great Investment

One of the most important lessons investors eventually learn is that there is a significant difference between a wonderful business and a wonderful investment. The two are related. They are not identical. A business can be extraordinary while simultaneously being a poor investment if investors pay too high a price.

This distinction sits at the heart of value investing. Many market participants become captivated by narratives. They focus on revolutionary technology, visionary founders, industry disruption, total addressable markets, and possibilities. Value investors focus on price.

Not because price is everything. But because price determines future returns.

The quality of a business matters enormously. However, the price paid for that business matters just as much. Sometimes even more.

Buffett and Munger’s Longstanding Scepticism Toward IPOs

My reluctance to participate in IPOs is not unusual among value investors. It is entirely consistent with the teachings of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

His reasoning was straightforward. When a company goes public, sophisticated investment bankers, private equity firms, venture capital firms, founders, and early investors are all involved in the transaction. Their objective is not to leave money on the table. Their objective is to maximise the selling price. In other words, IPOs are typically brought to market when conditions are favourable to sellers. Not buyers.

Charlie Munger was even more blunt. He frequently described IPOs as situations where the merchandise is being sold by the smartest salespeople in the world.

• When demand is strongest, valuations are usually highest.
• When excitement is greatest, expectations are usually most optimistic.
• When media coverage is most intense, future returns are often pulled forward into present prices.

This does not mean every IPO performs poorly. Clearly, some do not. It means the odds are often less attractive than investors believe.

Human Nature Has Not Changed Since Tulip Mania

One reason I spend so much time studying history is that human psychology changes very little. Technology evolves. Financial instruments evolve. Markets evolve. Human behaviour does not.

The emotions that drove speculation during the Dutch Tulip Mania, the railway booms of the nineteenth century, the Nifty Fifty bubble, and the dot-com bubble remain visible today.

• Fear.
• Greed.
• Envy.
• FOMO.
• Narrative attachment.
• Social proof.
• The desire to get rich quickly.
• The fear of being left behind.

Whenever a financial opportunity is described as “the opportunity of a lifetime,” I become more cautious, not less. History teaches us that crowd enthusiasm often peaks when future expected returns are declining.

The Real Opportunity May Not Be SpaceX

Ironically, I believe the most interesting opportunity created by the SpaceX IPO may not be SpaceX itself. It may be the secondary effects on the rest of the market.

Reports indicate that SpaceX may enter the Nasdaq-100 under Nasdaq’s accelerated inclusion framework approximately fifteen trading days after listing. If this occurs, passive index funds tracking the Nasdaq-100 would need to purchase substantial amounts of SpaceX shares while reducing positions in existing index constituents.

This is where things become interesting. Passive investing has become one of the dominant forces in global capital markets. Index funds do not ask whether a stock is cheap. They do not ask whether a stock is expensive. They do not analyse intrinsic value.

• They buy because the rules require them to buy.
• They sell because the rules require them to sell.

This creates mechanical flows. Mechanical flows sometimes create temporary mispricings. And temporary mispricings are exactly where value investors thrive.

Forced Selling Creates Opportunity

For me, the answer is obvious. I would rather investigate businesses that are being sold than businesses that everyone is desperately trying to buy. That is where value investing has historically generated alpha. Not through excitement. Through patience.

The Tyranny of Popularity

Markets occasionally become obsessed with certain companies. This is understandable. Humans are storytelling creatures. We naturally gravitate toward compelling narratives.

• Space exploration.
• Artificial intelligence.
• Autonomous systems.
• Satellite communications.
• Lunar infrastructure.

These are exciting themes. However, popularity is not a moat. Popularity is not cash flow, intrinsic value, or margin of safety. Many investors unconsciously assume that because a company is important, its stock must be attractive. History repeatedly demonstrates otherwise. The greatest companies do not always produce the greatest investment returns. The greatest investment returns often emerge when excellent companies become temporarily unpopular.

Why Simplicity Usually Wins

After more than a decade studying investing, I have become increasingly convinced of a paradox.

Successful investing is intellectually simple. Emotionally difficult.

Most investors understand the principles: buy quality businesses, avoid excessive leverage, think long term, maintain discipline, ignore noise, and control emotions. The challenge is implementation.

• It feels uncomfortable to ignore the most exciting IPO in history.
• It feels uncomfortable to sit on cash.
• It feels uncomfortable to wait.
• It feels uncomfortable to buy companies that others are selling.

Yet investing rewards behaviour that often feels uncomfortable. As Buffett has repeatedly demonstrated over many decades, extraordinary results frequently emerge from ordinary actions performed consistently.

My Checklist Remains Unchanged

The SpaceX IPO changes nothing about my investment process. I still ask the same questions.

Notice what is absent from this list.

These factors may influence short-term prices. They rarely determine long-term investment success.

The Biggest Advantage a Value Investor Has

Many investors assume that superior returns come from superior intelligence. Sometimes they do. More often, they come from a superior temperament.

• The willingness to do nothing.
• The willingness to wait.
• The willingness to appear wrong temporarily.
• The willingness to ignore the crowd.
• The willingness to miss fashionable opportunities.

This is particularly important during major liquidity events. When everybody is focused on the same opportunity, expected returns frequently become compressed. When nobody is paying attention, opportunities frequently emerge.

The value investor’s edge is not forecasting. The value investor’s edge is discipline.

Final Thoughts

The SpaceX IPO is unquestionably a historic event. It represents one of the most remarkable entrepreneurial success stories of the modern era. The company has transformed launch economics, created the world’s largest satellite constellation, and pushed the boundaries of aerospace innovation. The scale of investor demand reflects those achievements.

I have immense respect for the business. I have immense respect for what its engineers, scientists, and leadership team have accomplished.

Yet respect for a business and willingness to purchase its stock are separate decisions. As a value investor, I have no interest in participating in what may be the most celebrated IPO in history.

Instead, I will be watching the secondary effects. If forced rebalancing, mechanical index flows, and liquidity-driven selling create attractive prices in high-quality businesses elsewhere in the market, that is where my attention will be focused.

Because the objective is not to own the most exciting stock. The objective is to compound capital at satisfactory rates over long periods of time.

And history suggests that the most profitable opportunities often emerge not from joining the crowd rushing toward the spotlight, but from quietly purchasing quality assets that the crowd temporarily overlooks. That has been true throughout market history. I believe it remains true today.