Ian MacIntyre is an award-winning comedian and writer who serves as editor at The Beaverton.
Earlier this year, SpaceX went public in the biggest IPO in the history of the stock market. Beyond the sky-high valuation, there were unprecedented rule changes by Nasdaq and Russell that allowed the rocket and satellite company a fast pass into their indices. Wanted or not, SpaceX has been injected into ETFs, American 401(k)s, and possibly even your Canadian RRSP or mine.
Pardon my language, but: This sucks.
There are plenty of axes I can grind against Musk (and I'll grind some later on). But the main reason this is a bonkers (derogatory) institutional move that basically only benefits Musk, an insecure wannabe edgelord who's gleefully burnt through two decades of public goodwill. For his next trick, maybe he'll burn through all the monetary capital in the world, too.
Back to SpaceX, whose share prices since the IPO have ranged from its June 16 high of US$225.64 and its Aug. 3 low of US$104.83. As of this writing, the price sits closer to the low end of that range. Sure, Tesla has historically seen explosive long term stock returns, but SpaceX is a different beast entirely. Plus, these index rule changes have now paved the way for similarly sus IPOs to happen, led by tech giants that are even less proven. Here in 2026, one of the few people really getting anything out of these rule changes is Elon 'We'll be living on Mars by 2025' Musk.
Rules? Where we're going, we don't need rules
Traditionally, when a private company went public and launched its IPO, it was required to prove its profitability across a 'seasoning period' (usually a matter of months) before it could be included on large indices like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100. Basically, companies had to show at least some viability before being foisted onto passive index investors. Passive investment is great, but it's not ordinarily where you'd find volatile tech stocks, especially since we're talking about large pension and retirement funds – and, notably, any Canadians holding a Nasdaq ETF in their TFSA, RRSP, or unregistered investment account.
Yet when it came to the SpaceX IPO, multiple indices drastically shortened the usual cooling-off period. S&P Dow Jones Indices was a significant holdout, though, declining to fast track SpaceX onto the S&P 500. Smart move, S&P.
Under Nasdaq’s new fast-entry route, large new listings can be added to the Nasdaq 100 index after only 15 trading days, and to the FTSE Russell after only five. That’s less diligence than you need to adopt a rescue dog, but hey, we’re only talking about billions of dollars here.
All of these rule changes are predicated on SpaceX exponentially growing their revenue. "But will it?" is the obvious next question. A study from Truist Wealth Management reviewed 30 major IPOs and found that "forward returns skew negative at 6- and 12-month horizons, with the majority facing substantial drawdowns in the first year.” Now, who does that remind me of?
To infinite profits, and beyond!
Enter SpaceX! A very famous company that does not actually turn a profit. Despite a US$1.77-trillion valuation for their IPO, SpaceX actually posted a US$4.9 billion loss in 2025. Based on its 2025 revenues of approximately US$18.67 billion, SpaceX had a price-to-sales ratio of about 94X as of June 2026. For comparison, the average S&P 500 company currently trades at between 3X and 4X, and even a massively-growing AI stock like Palantir currently only has a P/S ratio of 72X. And for those bad at math, 94 is a much bigger number than three, four, or even 72. That ain’t great.
But don’t worry, because SpaceX is totally gonna make more money in the future. Or maybe even make all the money! …Right?
SpaceX’s Form S-1 describes stratospheric future markets that don't exist yet, dependent on a business model that reads like bad, Grok-generated science fiction. Plans include: orbital data centres; asteroid mining; massive AI advancements built on Musk’s also-ran, “MechaHitler” Grok AI; and a Mars colony for a million people. Even if these monumental promises ever come true (they won’t), it’ll certainly take more than a few quarters for SpaceX to see profits from establishing a city the size of Ottawa on an inhospitable planet with almost no natural resources.
SpaceX’s Form S-1 describes stratospheric future markets that don't exist yet, dependent on a business model that reads like bad, Grok-generated science fiction.
Say what you will about Musk (try it, it’s fun!), but he does have an uncanny knack for attracting government contracts and investor dollars. While he may have the ear of the current US administration, Musk's past promises are coming under increased scrutiny.
Need examples? How about: the self-driving Tesla cars that were supposed be driving from LA to New York by the end of 2017; the Cybertruck, aka the vehicle of choice for men who never saw the divorce coming; The Boring Company, originally a SpaceX subsidiary that has reportedly "dug only a few miles of operational tunnel" in a decade of operations; or maybe his Optimus robots from 2024 that were actually controlled by humans. Combine all that with Musk’s increasingly divisive public profile, and to me, everything points to SpaceX's record-breaking IPO being colossally overvalued from the jump.
The future of futurism
“So what?” I hear you ask. "Even if SpaceX’s price is a little inflated, each index fund investor will only have a small sliver of exposure to it."
For starters, SpaceX already has tons of investors from early private funding rounds, and that pool grew when X (formerly Twitter) and xAI were folded into SpaceX. Those early investors have already waited years to realize their gains, and SpaceX’s fast inclusion on indices seems tailor-made to provide that sweet, sweet exit liquidity. The first of several staggered lockup periods expired in early August, freeing up more than 911 million shares for early investors to sell. Counterintuitively, this boosted the stock price – but a short-term spike, even a positive one, is still volatility, and index rules are supposed to prevent that, good or bad. Elon’s share prices have a tendency to act as irrationally as his DOGE policies, and nobody's retirement savings deserve to be affected by that.
AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic are also planning unprecedented IPOs of their own, with widespread speculation that they’ll also benefit from 'fast entry' rule changes. OpenAI is said to be considering a US$1 trillion IPO and reportedly plans to go public in 2027, despite the Wall Street Journal reporting it doesn't plan to turn a profit until 2030 at the earliest; as of May 2026, Anthropic is valued at US$965 billion and said to be aiming for roughly US$2 trillion in their upcoming IPO, despite the company reportedly anticipating losses in 2027.
Elon’s share prices have a tendency to act as irationally as his DOGE policies, and nobody's retirement savings deserve to be affected by that.
The whole point of a diversified index like the Nasdaq is that no single sector can undermine it, or at least no sector should be able to. But if the index starts rapidly concentrating on sectors like AI and bypassing vital vetting rules, then all bets are off. Passive investors shouldn’t need to meticulously follow news reports about Silicon Valley sorta-trillionaires in order to safeguard their investments. Ignoring them is kinda the whole point of index funds! They're the slow-cooker, 'set it and forget it' of investment vehicles, yielding delicious, hearty dividends down the line; they're not tools to be gamed by ethically-challenged tech plutocrats.
I am... inevitable. Or not.
As public sentiment is turning against AI data centres and against tech billionaires like Musk, a head-on collision between hype and reality seems inevitable. SpaceX is just plain Not Profitable, and its IPO has foisted that risk upon passive retail investors who just wanted a sensible way to invest their money.
The point of investing should be business: raise some capital to fund better companies that'll use the money to improve their products and services, and to pay out dividends to wise investors. Now, it's increasingly the opposite, and the point of business seems to be investment: weave an elaborate tale of future earnings, hang on until the ludicrously-overvalued IPO and cash out. Nobody even needs to break a rule to do it, which is the problem: Whether the company makes or delivers anything is irrelevant. The exchanges have now rewritten their own rules, and New York City's Comptroller has since written to FTSE Russell to ask: Was this about investor protection, or about protecting market share? The beneficiaries are a small coterie of obscenely wealthy men, several of whom have said publicly that the technology they're building could end the world.
But hey, at least Elon got to call himself a trillionaire for 12 whole days.
