I passed on SpaceX and the market made me feel foolish, but only briefly

The problem was not that SpaceX could not become a dominant player in its field, but that the price already assumed it would do so.

SINGAPORE – Several months before its public listing, I thought Elon Musk’s SpaceX would be the trade for me to catch up on missed opportunities in the technology sector.

After all, there are few names in the global markets today that carry the gravitational pull of SpaceX.

The rocket company has all the hallmarks of a market phenomenon: a charismatic founder, a compelling vision of humanity’s next frontier, and a valuation that defies both gravity and conventional financial modelling.

As rumour mills spun private market valuations ever higher, and implied valuations climbed to the stratosphere, the pressure to participate grew harder to ignore.

When SpaceX went public on June 12, it quickly surged from its IPO price of US$135 to peak at US$225.64 on June 16. The market’s verdict felt unequivocal.

Early investors were minted into paper millionaires almost overnight. Watching from the sidelines, I felt annoyed and foolish, like I had once again mistaken caution for discipline and missed a possibly defining trade of this generation.

The reversal came swiftly. Within days, the stock tumbled 20 per cent amid a broader technology sell-off and concerns over fresh debt issuance, erasing more than US$600 billion (S$744 billion) from SpaceX’s market value in just three days of trade. It is now trading at around US$160.

Still, not buying SpaceX felt less like prudence and more like a failure of imagination.

SpaceX is not merely a launch provider; it is a vertically integrated space infrastructure company with multiple potential revenue streams.

Its Falcon rockets have already disrupted launch economics, driving down costs in a way that incumbents struggle to match. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite broadband business, is meanwhile positioned to generate recurring, high-margin revenue at scale.