SpaceX is the most overhyped IPO of the decade and it will end exactly the way every overhyped IPO ends. Facebook IPO’d at $38 and traded under that for 15 months. Uber IPO’d at $45 and is still below that adjusted seven years later for a while. WeWork tried at $47 billion and ended at zero. Robinhood IPO’d at $38, hit $85, then $7. Coinbase IPO’d at $381 and was at $40 two years later. Rivian IPO’d at a $100 billion valuation with no meaningful revenue and gave back 90%. Beyond Meat. Peloton. Lyft. DoorDash. Bird. Each one a “generational company” the day it priced.
Each one a wealth destruction event for retail within 18 months. The pattern is not a coincidence. Hype IPOs are designed to transfer wealth from the people buying the story to the people who built the story. The bankers get paid. The early employees get out. The VCs get a markup they can show their LPs. The retail investor gets the bag. SpaceX is a great company. That has nothing to do with whether it’s a great stock at IPO. Greatness was already priced in five funding rounds ago. You are not getting in early. You are buying the exit. The only IPO worth chasing is the one nobody is talking about. Those don’t exist anymore because every IPO is marketed like a movie release. So the answer is: don’t chase. Wait two years. Buy it down 70% when the lockup unwinds and the narrative breaks. Or don’t buy it at all and put the money somewhere the bankers haven’t already extracted the alpha. Hype is not an asset class. It’s a tax.
