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SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

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21–30 of 48 posts

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX is literally the only company that has a reliable partially re-usable launch vehicle, and they're probably going to be the only company with a fully re-usable launch vehicle. Nobody else except maybe for some chinese companies and kind of RocketLab is even close. They basically have a monopoly... They're launching like 150 rockets a year or something like that? It's bananas. They have star link too. Honestly,…

> I know people gnash their teeth at that, but I'm pretty convinced the ass-pain associated with getting a data center constructed on the planet with all the NIMBY stuff will be will incentivize space data centers too. You can build solar panels practically anywhere with enough daylight. Space data centers will never make any sense and it's clearly bait for people who will believe anything.

I would have agreed with you a couple years ago... but not in the last year or so? People complaining about change and construction near them is a real factor. We can't even build houses during a housing crisis because of NIMBY nonsense and a wildly bloated set of rules for what and where you can build stuff.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#22
post #6

Like every other group, there is some amount of groupthink happening with Wall Street analysts. They all came to similar incorrect conclusions because they are working with similar information using similar techniques towards similar goals. This creates a level of bias, even if banks didn't have incentives to write bullish projections. Getting a diversity of opinions doesn't mean talking to 10 experts in the same fie…

SpaceX is literally the only company that has a reliable partially re-usable launch vehicle, and they're probably going to be the only company with a fully re-usable launch vehicle. Nobody else except maybe for some chinese companies and kind of RocketLab is even close. They basically have a monopoly... They're launching like 150 rockets a year or something like that? It's bananas. They have star link too. Honestly,…

All the concrete stuff you describe is plenty justification for a really high valuation. Maybe a couple hundred billion, even. To justify a couple trillion, you have to really believe in orbital data centers, which just don’t make much sense. If NIMBY is the issue, it’s literally a thousand times cheaper to bribe the government of some poor country and put your stuff there than it is to put it in fricken space.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#23
post #6

Like every other group, there is some amount of groupthink happening with Wall Street analysts. They all came to similar incorrect conclusions because they are working with similar information using similar techniques towards similar goals. This creates a level of bias, even if banks didn't have incentives to write bullish projections. Getting a diversity of opinions doesn't mean talking to 10 experts in the same fie…

SpaceX is literally the only company that has a reliable partially re-usable launch vehicle, and they're probably going to be the only company with a fully re-usable launch vehicle. Nobody else except maybe for some chinese companies and kind of RocketLab is even close. They basically have a monopoly... They're launching like 150 rockets a year or something like that? It's bananas. They have star link too. Honestly,…

The point of the article isn't whether they are a good company or not. It is whether their stock price is justified. Even if they are the best in their field, they can't just name their stock price. At the end of the day, it has to be rooted somewhere in fundamental numbers.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#24
> Deutsche Bank, for example, hailed SpaceX as “the apex of civilizational ambition, oftentimes expressed in steel and fire, bending the arc of history”.

This is pitiful. Not least because it is execrable writing. It’s 50 Shades Of Grey applied to investment advice.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX is literally the only company that has a reliable partially re-usable launch vehicle, and they're probably going to be the only company with a fully re-usable launch vehicle. Nobody else except maybe for some chinese companies and kind of RocketLab is even close. They basically have a monopoly... They're launching like 150 rockets a year or something like that? It's bananas. They have star link too. Honestly,…

All the concrete stuff you describe is plenty justification for a really high valuation. Maybe a couple hundred billion, even. To justify a couple trillion, you have to really believe in orbital data centers, which just don’t make much sense. If NIMBY is the issue, it’s literally a thousand times cheaper to bribe the government of some poor country and put your stuff there than it is to put it in fricken space .

We will see, but I don't buy it. We can't build housing in a housing crisis, or build high speed rail anywhere it seems, things aren't going to get built under the current paradigm at the same rate. We will see, but I bet this is what we see.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#26

Wall Street “analysts” are as right about the market as a coin flip. Downgrading a price target from $30 to $28 when the stock has trended from $20 to $15 in the last 12 months or raising the target from $450 to $500 when the stock price grew from $300 to $320. They’re not even remotely right on most things and are lagging indicators when they right.

Nassim Taleb has statistically proven that there is only a handful of investors ever who's returns over the market average can't be explained by random noise.

That doesn't prove there is no such thing as "talent" wrt investments, but it is proof there is almost no proof anyone has "talent".

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#27

Wall Street “analysts” are as right about the market as a coin flip. Downgrading a price target from $30 to $28 when the stock has trended from $20 to $15 in the last 12 months or raising the target from $450 to $500 when the stock price grew from $300 to $320. They’re not even remotely right on most things and are lagging indicators when they right.

If they did significantly better than random chance, they should be able to use that to become filthy rich in fairly short order, and you’d only be hearing their advice because they publish it as a hobby in between yachting. I don’t think there are any analysts like that.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea how they're handling the space data center heat problems? Energy harvesting in space is easy, while getting rid of heat is quite hard.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2026/02/spacex-has-the-best-ra...

Fair point, and thanks. Certainly true that Starlink satellites are already successfully dealing with the problem and use a lot of energy.

I think the trouble with my thinking was that I was locked into the Shuttle/STS numbers of waste heat transfer.

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#29

Wall Street “analysts” are as right about the market as a coin flip. Downgrading a price target from $30 to $28 when the stock has trended from $20 to $15 in the last 12 months or raising the target from $450 to $500 when the stock price grew from $300 to $320. They’re not even remotely right on most things and are lagging indicators when they right.

> Wall Street “analysts” are as right about the market as a coin flip

Source? (Not doubting. Just haven’t looked at this for a while.)

Re: SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

#30

Wall Street “analysts” are as right about the market as a coin flip. Downgrading a price target from $30 to $28 when the stock has trended from $20 to $15 in the last 12 months or raising the target from $450 to $500 when the stock price grew from $300 to $320. They’re not even remotely right on most things and are lagging indicators when they right.

If they did significantly better than random chance, they should be able to use that to become filthy rich in fairly short order, and you’d only be hearing their advice because they publish it as a hobby in between yachting. I don’t think there are any analysts like that.

> If they did significantly better than random chance, they should be able to use that to become filthy rich

To be fair, this is many analysts’ ambitions. Use the role to build contacts and a public track record. Then go out and raise a fund.

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