SpaceX's quick IPO round trip... The average investor has lost money... The banks got theirs... A tool to fight through market hype... Investing is like planting a tree... Be in the right spot at the right time... Doc's new stock tool...
Wall Street made its money on SpaceX...
Earnings season is upon us once again...
Things began earlier this week with the big banks. They reported blowout earnings, with a lot of strength in investment banking related to the SpaceX (SPCX) initial public offering ("IPO").
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) had a record quarterly profit of roughly $21 billion. Goldman Sachs (GS) – a major backer of the SpaceX IPO – saw its equity underwriting revenue surge 130%. Its stock-trading revenue alone was about $7.4 billion.
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo all beat consensus earnings estimates, too.
It wasn't Elon Musk's rocket/satellite/AI company alone that drove these results. Merger and acquisition activity has picked up after a few sluggish years, and trading desks are taking advantage of heightened market volatility.
But it's clear that Wall Street made money on the SpaceX IPO (so did Musk and anyone else holding shares of SpaceX before last month).
The company was valued at nearly $2 trillion at its IPO, and it raised a record-setting $75 billion in cash. That's more than four times the amount raised by the next-largest American IPO in history – Visa (V) in 2008.
But the average investor who bought shares after the stock went public has lost money.
A quick round trip...
The chart below shows the price action of SpaceX since its IPO. You can see the typical IPO pop in June. But just about a month later, the stock is now trading below its IPO price.
However, this isn't why we say the "average investor" has lost money on SpaceX. It's because the average investor is underwater if they bought post-IPO.
A useful indicator of reality in this case is the volume-weighted average price ("VWAP").
VWAP measures the price that investors actually paid for an asset, weighting each trade by volume.
So, for example, if 1 million shares of a stock traded at $140, and 10 million shares traded at $180, a simple average would be $160. But the VWAP would be closer to $180 because more shares traded at that price.
SpaceX's VWAP was around $160 as of yesterday's close. Meantime, the stock traded at $135, right at breakeven from the original IPO price listing in the SpaceX prospectus.
Shares started trading on June 12 for around $150. Given the supply-and-demand dynamic, SpaceX's share price peaked 50% higher at $225 on its third day of trading, which also happened to be its highest volume trading day, apart from its first day of trading on June 12.
It's been downhill ever since, for the most part. While it has only been a month – and IPOs typically fall after an initial pop – we suspect the trend isn't finished yet, as more insider shares are "unlocked" for sale.
This is why we urged folks not to buy the SpaceX IPO... and why we've warned about its inclusion in passive funds and the retirement accounts of Americans, whether anyone wants the stock or not. That's not even mentioning the leveraged single-stock funds tied to SpaceX that are now live.
Wall Street may have made its money on the deal. But there are other ways to make yours.
This is what we mean by 'priced for perfection'...
Frankly, SpaceX is an easy cautionary tale about getting caught up in trading hype. Musk's company might one day be responsible for a moon base or for my (Corey McLaughlin's) great-grandchildren going to Mars (though how about reliable self-driving cars on Earth first).
I don't deny Musk's business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit. We need people like him. We need risk takers who create new technologies and all kinds of things most of us don't think about. It's why we get to enjoy many of the comforts we do today, like air conditioning on a 100-plus-degree Baltimore afternoon.
But buying shares of Musk's business at overvalued prices is another matter.
SpaceX lost $5 billion net last year. And even after the typical IPO pop-and-drop we frequently see in the markets for high-profile debuts like this, the stock is still trading at 92 times trailing revenues, as Stansberry's Investment Advisory lead editor Whitney Tilson wrote in his free daily letter today.
That's nearly 10 times overvalued. And Whitney isn't the only one in our office who's skeptical. Here's what Stansberry Research senior partner and MarketWise CEO Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig wrote in the latest issue of his Retirement Trader advisory last Friday...
Look... I've traded through every mania of the past four decades. And hype stories like this are nothing new.
I'm a fundamental investor at heart. I care about valuations and cash flow.
In my eyes, SpaceX is priced to perfection. Unless the company dominates global telecommunications, establishes orbital cloud computing, and colonizes Mars, it's overpriced. And even if it meets those goals, all that achievement is already priced into the stock. So to be worth more than it is today, it would have to do even more than that.
SpaceX could pull off amazing feats, but it can't possibly live up to the expectations embedded in its valuation.
The stock is simply too expensive compared with proven businesses that generate tons of cash, like, say, Microsoft (MSFT).
But it's not just SpaceX that has been wildly overshooting fundamentals lately. I'm talking about AI stocks, like memory chipmakers – such as Micron Technology (MU) – and data-storage companies. Many have seen triple-digit gains this year.
As Doc also wrote, many investors are convinced AI stocks can't go down, but he's been in the markets long enough to know nothing goes up forever. The very best time to buy these stocks was before... like four years ago, when the AI boom began in earnest.
A strategy for the 'great rotation'...
Doc's not calling a market top today. But he expects tech stocks like SpaceX to underperform in the weeks and months ahead as investors rotate into other sectors. As Doc says in a new special report...
The market moves in cycles. Stocks come into favor and outpace the market, then fall back a bit as others catch up. It happens. Round and round again.
And by understanding these moves, you can avoid mistakes... and cash in on alternative, better-timed investments.
Doc and his team have developed a new tool designed around the "great rotation" dynamic. This system identifies the very best sectors and stocks to buy now.
Ironically, it's based around the same technology that SpaceX uses to navigate its satellites. It would have told you to buy Nvidia (NVDA) back at the start of the AI-fueled bull market in late 2022, a signal that could have been used to net a 1,600%-plus gain.
Doc went live with a new presentation yesterday morning that explained all the details.
Retirement Trader and Stansberry Alliance members, please know you already have complete access. You can find everything here.
Decades ago, Doc helped build trading algorithms for Goldman Sachs' billion-dollar corporate clients.
Then he left Wall Street, frustrated by the conflicts of interest. He went to medical school, then left that field, too, before bringing his experience and wisdom to Stansberry Research subscribers.
Now, with this tool, developed for everyday investors, Doc says you can get an inside line on which stocks and sectors will be the hottest (and coldest) over the next month, three months, and up to a year. He says...
You can see what's in favor... what's out of favor... and what's next to outpace the rest of the market with a simple glance.
You can find the stocks that are bottoming... and those that are topping out after a big run... all with a peek at a chart.
It's a way to look at stocks that you've probably never seen before. And for many folks, it doesn't make any sense... at first.
But it can become one of the most intuitive technical indicators you use.
Here's a sneak peek at how to put this tool to work...
It recently flashed a bearish signal on the tech sector, while just about all other sectors are starting to gain momentum. As Doc says...
Investors are taking profits on high-flying tech stocks... and moving into defensive sectors. This makes sense.
We mentioned a few of the reasons for this earlier, like certain stocks tied to the AI boom sitting on triple-digit-percentage returns this year... and what SpaceX's IPO tells us about market sentiment – it's too hot.
I'm reminded of some landscaping advice intended to help folks grow trees: Put the right plant in the right spot. In short, you put a tree that needs sun in the sun. You put one that needs shade or moist soil in the shade or in ground that's typically wetter.
In the investing game, you want to buy the right things at the right time as often as possible and allow your returns to compound. It's like planting a tree in the right spot. Water it when needed and watch it grow.
This new tool from Doc will help you do just that. It tells you when to buy or sell 5,000-plus different stocks and exchange-traded funds based on rotational patterns. You can simply type in the tickers of some stocks that are of interest to you to see what Doc's system says about them.
In his presentation, Doc explains how you can take one extra step to potentially supercharge your portfolio. If you missed his presentation yesterday, you can watch a replay here, and we suggest you do.
You'll get to see him demo this new system, and just for tuning in, you'll get a free recommendation found with this breakthrough stock-predicting tool.
Again, Stansberry Alliance members and Doc's existing Retirement Trader subscribers can find all the details and have complete access via the publication's homepage here.
New 52-week highs (as of 7/15/26): Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), Chemed (CHE), Match Group (MTCH), Pembina Pipeline (PBA), and Invesco High Yield Equity Dividend Achievers Fund (PEY).
In today's mailbag, thoughts about data centers' power and water consumption... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"Data centers certainly use a lot of power and also water. They also create jobs and increased property tax revenue where they locate. They need to be regulated to either provide most of their power by means of small nuclear systems being developed by Rolls-Royce and other companies or some other form of compensation for the usage. As for the water... it could be returned to reservoirs for reprocessing and reuse at some cost to them.
"If anyone in government has enough sense to figure this out, data centers would be welcome everywhere. Unfortunately, I don't think there are too many people in government with enough sense to figure out..." – Subscriber Tim L.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
July 16, 2026
