The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century • Hacker News Board

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#81

Post by onel » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 10:59 AM UTC

l23k4 wrote: post #74

onel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how pension funds work though. Pension funds are extremely conservative. They invest on horizons spanning decades. They can't just make decisions from one month to the next. The very short time frame of an index accepting Tesla is the problem. It's like telling a train "quick, make a right here"

And how do you suppose these rules were originally introduced? Do you believe that the reasoning was particularly solid then, and is it directly applicable in the current situation?

Yes. These rules were introduced, because that's the purpose of pension funds. To invest in very long-term ideas and assets. That's their whole purpose. I'm not sure if we're debating here about the purpose of pension funds, or their strategy of investing in index funds. The first one doesn't change, the second one, maybe.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#82

Post by l23k4 » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 11:04 AM UTC

orwin wrote: post #79

l23k4 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel that what this article is telling me is that passive funds are becoming active funds by way of manipulating the index itself. It's wrong. They're undoing a previous manipulation and making the index more accurately reflect the market.

Explain to me how adding weights to the float is undoing a previous manipulation and not manipulating the numbers.

That's the Nasdaq-100 lol who cares? Are you buying it? It is literally just an arbitrary bucket of stocks.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#83

Post by rich_sasha » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 11:41 AM UTC

itskokeh wrote: post #44

Falcon 9 proved SpaceX can deliver on hard engineering promises. Why isn't that track record factored into the business case here? Is the argument that SpaceX the business fails, or just that the IPO price is disconnected from reality? How much of the index fund manipulation concern applies to any mega-cap IPO, vs. something unique to SpaceX?

> Falcon 9 proved SpaceX can deliver on hard engineering promises. Why isn't that track record factored into the business case here?

Toyota, NASA, many people have done it many times. They have also failed many times. Failure happens, even after successes.

Starship has come a long way but it can still fail on so many ways. They may simply not progress. The rockets may prove too expensive to reuse, or not reliable. The market might not be there.

But the valuation is as if they have already achieved it and will definitely make a fortune out of it.

> How much of the index fund manipulation concern applies to any mega-cap IPO, vs. something unique to SpaceX?

Fair question. Index inclusion typically happens when stocks have reached some equilibrium, in particular they have been trading for a while and have a fair price. Also they need a substantial amount of shares trading in public, not held by insiders.

SpaceX will be neither. The concern is that the IPO price is hugely inflated (which is possible to rig but only short term) inflating its market cap and thus it's weight in the index. Then all these index funds will be forced to fight over the small amount of shares inflating the price further.

This happens in micro scale when normal stocks enter indices, but nowhere near to this extent, and it's typically for a established, well priced securities.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#84

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 11:53 AM UTC

prolly97 wrote: post #55

dozerly wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they were overvalued in those days as well. Just because the on-paper value went up doesn’t make their statements false, it just means we’ve continued the charade.

When I followed TeslaQ, the valuation was around 60b. Today Tesla has 39b in accumulated retained earning (pr latest 10k, not q). If the thesis was that Tesla would be unable to create a system that would churn out cars that could be sold at scale with an economic surplus, then we have to reject it.

And Elon has also acknowledged that they came within a hair of going bankrupt during that model 3 production ramp up. Tesla was either going to go bankrupt or become quite valuable, and their proper valuation would have been based on the unknowable odds of the two scenarios. Maybe it wa a 1% chance of going bankrupt, maybe it was 99%.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#85

Post by amai » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 12:03 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #51

henry2023 wrote: post #17

It's hard to know if SpaceX will flop in a week or in a decade but what I'm pretty confident on is a lot of retail capital allocated in Tesla will be redistributed to SpaceX. So my trade on IPO day will be long $X SpaceX, short $X Tesla. Wait 1 month. Wish me luck.

Musk's plan is to merge Tesla and SpaceX into one company.

New name: Stark Industries?

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#86

Post by ryandvm » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #6

The point-to-point travel with starship is the one that urks me the most. It is completely unrealistic and will never happen. They have Zürich, Switzerland as a destination. There is no place in all of Zürich to facility such a thing, you will blow out every window in the city at each launch. Absolutely ridiculous that anyone would take this serious. Also don't get me started on data centers in space idea... When the…

I dunno, data centers in space seems even more outlandish than P2P space travel. The math on the orbital data center idea indicates that these things would need hundreds of thousands of square meters of radiative cooling. Absolutely bonkers that anyone is falling for this shit.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#87

Post by atmavatar » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 1:30 PM UTC

l23k4 wrote: post #27

system2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the entire stock market is a world of thievery. Are you saying do not invest in any stocks and let your money rot in a savings account due to inflation?

What thievery happens in the stock market?

HFT is nothing short of skimming off the top at scale.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#88

Post by ryandvm » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

overfeed wrote: post #28

whateveracct wrote: post #3

it'll be a small from our pockets individually. but it'll add up to what elon needs. this is the new playbook.

> this is the new playbook. Same as the old playbook, just scaled up. Tesla got billions from state subsidies and selling carbon credits.

Same recipe as the Mars colonization. There is absolutely zero chance of a self-sustaining colony on Mars in the next 50 years, but boy will he get rich if we try...

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#89

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #6

The point-to-point travel with starship is the one that urks me the most. It is completely unrealistic and will never happen. They have Zürich, Switzerland as a destination. There is no place in all of Zürich to facility such a thing, you will blow out every window in the city at each launch. Absolutely ridiculous that anyone would take this serious. Also don't get me started on data centers in space idea... When the…

Space manufacturing is in there too. The international space station is 27 years old. One reason to spend tens of billions of dollars on ISS was the idea that it would be used to run experiments that would make space manufacturing practical. Space manufacturing is a perennial project on ISS. Still no space factories or space products, much less profits.

But there's Starlink. What's a telecom provider worth per customer? Value starlink double or triple that, maybe. And that's about it.

Re: The SpaceX IPO will be the theft of the century

#90

Post by Zigurd » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #88

overfeed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is the new playbook. Same as the old playbook, just scaled up. Tesla got billions from state subsidies and selling carbon credits.

Same recipe as the Mars colonization. There is absolutely zero chance of a self-sustaining colony on Mars in the next 50 years, but boy will he get rich if we try...

That whole foolishness will stop when we or the Chinese try to dig a hole in the moon to shield a moon station from radiation. Space is not for humans. Even super fit humans can't tolerate space for more than a few months.