The $2 Trillion Greater-Fool bet as people try to read SpaceX’s S‑1 with a straight face: illiquidity, unlimited disclosures, & other jokes in the SpaceX IPO story…
Betcha the Bloomberg writers and editors were rolling in the floor in helpless giggles as they workshopped this paragraph, as Elon Musk aims for a P/E ratio for SpaceXAITwitterTeslatobe of— -117.6. That is: MINUS ONE-HUNDRED SEVENTEEN POINT SIX
Share
Loren Grush, Bailey Lipschultz, & Sana Pashankar: SpaceX Shows $4.3 Billion Loss as Musk Targets Record IPO <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-20/musk-s-spacex-files-publicly-for-nasdaq-ipo-under-symbol-spcx>: ‘Musk’s plan for an IPO of unprecedented size is set to transform both the public and private markets if it succeeds. A blockbuster listing, and a rising share price after, would help dispel concern over whether private companies with limited financial disclosures and largely illiquid shares are reaching unjustified valuations in venture capital-led funding rounds…
Give a gift subscription
4% of SpaceXAITwitterTesla listed on the NASDAQ at an initial value of $75B would itself be highly illiquid. That would not “dispel concern” about illiquidity. And to imply that the disclosures SpaceXAITwitterTeslatobe has made are “unlimited” is a very interesting choice of word itself.
Incorporate by reference these:
substackcdn.com/image/fet…}],"post_date":"2026-05-04T17:09:47.831Z","cover
image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!Mh2l!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F87b744be-300a-41e2-b9be-5a15156c245f_2192x1236.gif","cover_image_alt":null,"canonical_url":"
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/charts-of-the-day-tesla","section_name":"Neofascism, & c.","video_upload_id":null,"id":196420318,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":33,"comment_count":15,"publication_id":47874,"publication_name":"DeLong’s Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before","publication_logo
url":"[substackcdn.com/image/fet…](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!PgPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde2453e-9c18-4560-82ca-8b77ae62ef5b_1280x1280.png","belowTheFold":false,"youtube_url":null,"show_links":null,"feed_url":null)}“>
substackcdn.com/image/fet…}],"post_date":"2026-05-17T17:50:58.020Z","cover
image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!o4OC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe605cdc5-5b72-4418-a7a8-a5cf07c9e135_1716x1150.png","cover_image_alt":null,"canonical_url":"
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/crosspost-will-lockett-starship-is","section_name":"Neofascism, & c.","video_upload_id":null,"id":198127255,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":32,"comment_count":18,"publication_id":47874,"publication_name":"DeLong’s Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before","publication_logo
url":"[substackcdn.com/image/fet…](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s!PgPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde2453e-9c18-4560-82ca-8b77ae62ef5b_1280x1280.png","belowTheFold":true,"youtube_url":null,"show_links":null,"feed_url":null)}“>
In comments on the second of these, the smart David Thomson wrote:
The question then is how do you discount when the real upside is 15-25 years in the future. Am I pulling these numbers out of my ass. Yes! But the point is to show what this might look like if you want to consider it not silly…
But the way that investing in the SpaceXAITwitterTeslatobe IPO is “not silly” is not to say that there is a 10% chance that the company is half of all corporate profits 25 years into the future: it is to say that there is a 20% chance that the market has enough Greater Fools that in a year SpaceXAITwitterTeslatobe is priced as though it has a 50% chance of being half of all corporate profits 25 years into the future. That is what is needed to get your $75B now to $200B, and to offset the risk of loss. And given that you only—“only”—need $200B of Greater Fool capital, that may not be that bad of a bet.
Subscribe now
Leave a comment
If reading this gets you Value Above Replacement, then become a free subscriber to this newsletter. And forward it! And if your VAR from this newsletter is in the three digits or more each year, please become a paid subscriber! I am trying to make you readers—and myself—smarter. Please tell me if I succeed, or how I fail…
##bloomberg-reporters-editors-have-some-wry-fun-with-their-spacex-ipo-story-laugh-of-the-hour
##laugh-of-the-hour
##neofascism
#bloomberg-reporters-editors-have-some-wry-fun-with-their-spacex-ipo-story
#this-is-nuts-whens-the-crash
#spacex-ipo
#elon-musk
#ipo-risk
