SpaceX started trading publicly on June 12, 2026, and the phones have not stopped. Clients are texting. Friends are forwarding articles. And somewhere in your inbox right now there is probably a news alert with a number so large it almost reads as fictional: a $1.75 trillion valuation, the largest IPO in stock market history. 

You want to know if you should buy in. That is a fair question, and it deserves a clear answer, not a lecture about volatility or a vague warning to “be careful.” 

So, let’s walk through it the same way we would if you were sitting across the table from us. 

What You’re Actually Buying 

A lot of people hear “SpaceX” and picture rockets and Mars and Elon Musk, and they assume the rest. But if you put money into SpaceX, you are buying a company with three distinct business lines, and only one of them is currently profitable. 

Starlink, the satellite internet service, is the engine of the business right now. It generates real revenue and is the reason the company functions at its current scale. The space operations division and the newer AI division are still in what you might call the building phase, where capital goes in and the long-term payoff is expected somewhere down the road. 

That $1.75 trillion valuation is not priced off of what SpaceX earns today. It is priced off of what the market believes SpaceX could become, and Morningstar’s analysts put the company’s fair-value estimate at around $780 billion, less than half the IPO price. That gap between current value and market expectation is worth sitting with before you decide anything. 

What History Says About Major IPOs 

On this week’s episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, we looked at the last 30 major IPOs over the past 15 years and tracked how they performed in the first year of trading. The data is not scary, but it is honest, and most people have not seen it laid out this plainly. 

In the first month, median returns across those 30 companies ran between 3% and 4%. Decent, but not remarkable. The excitement of a new public company tends to carry the price up for a few weeks as everyone who wanted in tries to get in. 

By six months, the picture changes. The median return drops to negative 9%, and only about 43 out of every 100 major IPOs are in positive territory at that point. There is a structural reason for this. When a company goes public, its employees, who have been holding equity for years with no way to sell, finally have a window to start liquidating. That window typically opens around the six-month mark. When thousands of employees and early investors start selling, the price tends to drift down, and it does not matter how much the broader public believes in the company. 

The number that deserves the most attention is the average maximum drawdown in the first year. Across those 30 companies, the average drop from peak price to the lowest point hit within that first year was between 50% and 55%. Half their value, on average, at some point in year one. 

That does not mean SpaceX will follow the same path. But it means the history of major IPOs gives us no particular reason to expect a smooth ride. 

There Is a Difference Between a Good Company and a Good Decision 

This is the part of the conversation that matters most, and it is also the easiest part to lose track of when the headlines are this loud. 

You can believe in SpaceX. You can think Starlink is going to change internet access for hundreds of millions of people. You can believe the AI division has a real future and that putting humans on Mars is not a fantasy. All of that can be true, and buying SpaceX stock at IPO price in the first weeks of trading can still not be the right move for your retirement savings. 

Questions we may ask about something like this are simple: are you making a trade, or are you investing? A trade is a short-term bet on momentum, on the idea that the price will be higher next month than it is today. An investment is a long-term conviction that this company will be worth significantly more in ten or fifteen years than it is now. Those are two different decisions that deserve two different frameworks, and they do not get treated the same way in a retirement plan. 

Something Else Worth Knowing: You May Already Own It 

Here is a detail that has gotten surprisingly little attention in all the coverage: if you hold index funds, you may end up owning SpaceX without ever making a deliberate choice to buy it. 

The Nasdaq 100 and the Russell 1000 both changed their rules to fast-track SpaceX into their indexes within days of the IPO, rather than waiting the usual period. That means any fund built to track those indexes will buy SpaceX automatically, which includes a significant portion of the 401(k) plans and IRA accounts held by millions of American investors. 

The S&P 500 did not change its rules and will not fast-track SpaceX, but that is only one of many indexes. If you own broad-market index funds, it is worth checking with your advisor to understand how much SpaceX exposure you may already be picking up passively, before you decide how much to add intentionally. 

Three Questions Worth Answering Before You Decide Anything 

We covered these on the podcast, and they apply to SpaceX now and to every IPO that will come after it, including Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which are expected to go public later this year at comparable valuations. 

The first is whether this is money you will not need for at least five years. The kind of volatility that comes with a newly public company, especially one priced entirely on future expectations, is not something that belongs near money you will need for income or expenses in the near term. If your retirement income plan depends on this portion of your savings, the math does not work. 

The second is whether you understand what you are buying, beyond the name and the headline. Long-term conviction needs a foundation. When the stock drops 30% in month four because a launch goes wrong or a regulatory issue surfaces, the investors who stay calm are the ones who understand why they own it and still believe in the thesis. The ones who sell are usually the ones who bought because everyone else was buying. 

The third is how much of your overall plan this represents. There is a meaningful difference between putting a small intentional amount in the long-term growth portion of your portfolio and putting a meaningful slice of your retirement savings into something that could cut in half within a year based on historical patterns. We generally told clients to keep cryptocurrency exposure below 2% to 3% of liquid net worth, not because it has no future but because of how unpredictable the price swings are. SpaceX is a more established business than Bitcoin ever was, but a $1.75 trillion valuation built largely on what has not happened yet carries its own version of that same uncertainty. 

You Can Always Buy It Later 

If you believe in SpaceX long-term, and you want to own it as a long-term investment, you do not have to buy it in week one. 

Most of the volatility in a major IPO happens in the first year. If the company is as strong as its supporters believe, it will still be there in twelve or eighteen months, and you may find a better entry point after some of that early turbulence settles. Waiting is not the same as missing out. It is just a different kind of strategy. 

If you want to talk through how the SpaceX IPO fits into your specific retirement picture, or if you are not sure how much of your current portfolio may already have exposure, we are happy to have that conversation. Schedule a call with our team at pomwealth.net/contact-us and we will walk through it together. 

The goal is always the same: a clear plan you understand and feel confident in, whatever the headlines are doing. 

Radon Stancil, CFP®, is the founder of Peace of Mind Wealth Management and co-host of the Secure Your Retirement podcast. Murs Tariq, CFP®, CRPC®, is a partner at Peace of Mind Wealth Management and co-host of the Secure Your Retirement podcast. Listen to the full episode that inspired this post at pomwealth.net. 

The information in this post is intended for general educational purposes only and is not individualized financial advice. Please consult your financial professional for guidance specific to your situation.