SpaceX Will Be Part of Your Retirement Plan
What ceasefire?... Another hot inflation report... Indexes are changing their rules for SpaceX... The 'relentless bid' will give you SpaceX exposure whether you like it or not... The 'super signal,' revealed...
The 'ceasefire' doesn't look like a ceasefire...
On Monday, the U.S. carried out what it called "self defense" strikes on several targets in Iran – including the country's missile-launch sites. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command said that the strikes were to "protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces" and that the military was "using restraint" to stay within the guidelines of the ceasefire.
But this morning, Iran's military said that it had targeted an American base in Kuwait as retaliation for the strikes earlier in the week.
Crude-oil futures jumped about 3% on the headlines and concerns that a U.S.-Iran ceasefire reached in April could be breaking down.
Later in the morning, Axios reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had reached a memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire by 60 days and to allow for more negotiations about Iran's nuclear program.
But the report said President Donald Trump hasn't approved the deal yet.
As far as the market is concerned, the ceasefire is still in effect. Stocks remain comfortably above their wartime lows. But the headlines sure make for confusion and market volatility...
Oil traded down from morning highs today, though Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude remained around $90 and $94 per barrel. And the major U.S. indexes finished higher across the board, with the S&P 500 Index up 0.6%. We expect the volatility to continue.
This morning's inflation data also served as a reminder that challenges still lie ahead...
Earlier this month, we wrote about how the April consumer price index report showed a near-three-year high for inflation. If that wasn't enough bad news, today's personal consumption expenditures ("PCE") release confirmed the trend...
PCE rose 0.4% in April from the previous month and rose 3.8% from April 2025. That marked the highest PCE jump since May 2023. And on a core basis, stripping out energy and food prices – which has been the Federal Reserve's preferred measure – PCE rose 3.3% year over year, the biggest rise since October 2023.
The Federal Reserve expects this trend to continue... The Cleveland Fed projects that PCE will rise 4% year over year in May, and it expects an annualized rate above 5% in the second quarter.
This inflation is a headwind for markets. It means interest rates will likely stay "higher for longer" and could even move up before they go down...
Meanwhile, the rules are changing for SpaceX...
Since Elon Musk's SpaceX filed for its initial public offering ("IPO") earlier this month, buzz about it has been growing. The IPO will be one of the most "accessible" for individual investors ever. As we wrote in the April 2 Digest...
According to CNBC, SpaceX may allocate 30% of shares from its IPO to everyday retail investors, instead of the typical range of 5% to 10%. That's a red flag.
We said this is a "red flag" because SpaceX is leaning on the least informed investors. They'll buy the shares that early investors are eager to sell... And they'll buy at a nearly $2 trillion valuation to boot.
SpaceX – Musk's rocket, satellite, Internet, social media, AI, and defense company – has lost $37 billion since it was founded almost 25 years ago. It's seeking to raise $75 billion through the IPO. As we wrote last week...
SpaceX may change the world and bring people to the moon or Mars. It may even be worth investing in down the road. But ask yourself: Is this a company you want to spend new money on as it seeks public capital right now?
If you're like us, you're not planning to buy SpaceX shares in the IPO.
But odds are, you'll end up owning SpaceX anyway... if you own any index funds. And even if you don't, you'll have indirect exposure because of all the other people who do. Their behavior will move the entire stock market.
The companies behind the major U.S. stock indexes are considering changing their rules to let SpaceX join their ranks sooner than usual.
For the S&P 500, typically a company would have to have been trading for at least 12 months and be profitable over the same period. With a rumored June IPO and a net loss of nearly $5 billion in 2025, SpaceX isn't eligible for inclusion into the S&P 500 under current rules.
But that may not stop it...
S&P Dow Jones Indices has proposed a new rule for "megacap" companies, which would apply to SpaceX and likely OpenAI and Anthropic when they go public. It would waive profitability as a requirement for America's 100 largest companies to join the S&P 500. The proposal also allows for a quicker inclusion, as little as six months after going public rather than a year.
With a projected valuation of almost $2 trillion, SpaceX would be one of the seven largest companies included in the index, and it will likely still qualify as one of the 100 largest after six months.
S&P isn't the only one making moves...
The Nasdaq has already changed rules to allow SpaceX to be included in its indexes after only 15 trading days, if a company ranks among the top 40 by market cap in the Nasdaq 100 Index. That's down from the former span of three to 12 months.
And earlier this week, FTSE Russell – the company behind several other indexes – eased its own rules to allow companies to be included in an index after only five days of public trading.
Normally, these rules are in place to protect investors. The first few weeks and months after a company goes public are usually volatile.
And for a company as hyped as SpaceX, we expect a huge pop in the first few days as the retail crowd piles in. But we could also see a huge wave of selling as insiders lock in their gains from when the company was private.
Bloomberg reports that 44% of "early release" shares of SpaceX will be eligible to be "unlocked" just 90 days after the IPO, and 100% will be within six months of the IPO.
In the meantime, early inclusion for SpaceX could make for more volatility in all the broader indexes. And a $2 trillion valuation could make the company around 5% or even 10% of the S&P 500, which brings us to the IPO's other effect on the market.
Index inclusion means passive funds have to get ready to buy...
If SpaceX does get included in these indexes shortly after going public, that means the many passive funds that track them will have to load up on SpaceX shares to match their benchmarks.
That means exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") and 401(k)s would buy SpaceX stock weeks after the IPO. And that'll fuel the "relentless bid" for both the broader market and SpaceX shares.
As we've written before, the "relentless bid" refers to the constant flow of money from folks contributing to their retirement accounts. Every pay period, a small percentage of millions of Americans' paychecks flows into their retirement accounts – where a large portion goes to funds tracking U.S. equity benchmarks.
Our colleague Dan Ferris has written about this in these pages and in The Ferris Report newsletter. So has Stansberry Venture Value editor Bryan Beach...
And as Bryan explained on this week's episode of the Stansberry Investor Hour podcast with Dan, passive investing and the relentless bid have "permanently changed the way the market is valued."
With the severe concentration in indexes in the largest stocks in the market, a lot of folks' retirement funds are being allocated to the biggest stocks in the U.S., like the Magnificent Seven. Bryan uses Apple (AAPL) as an example...
There's something like 90 million investors investing in 401(k)s. On average, they're probably putting $10 or $12 per pay period into Apple. Just Apple.
If we assume an average pay period of two weeks, that's $900 million in demand for Apple shares hitting the market twice a month. That's more than enough to prop up shares even if the company's news or financials aren't quite showing as bullish a picture.
And now, this 'bid' will be backed by forced IPO buyers...
As Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas shared on social platform X last week, funds that track the S&P 500 could be required to buy 19% of all publicly available SpaceX shares once it has been public for six months.
And funds that track Russell and Nasdaq indexes (with those companies allowing SpaceX into their indexes within weeks of an IPO) would have to buy about 5.5% of available SpaceX shares right out of the gate, Balchunas wrote.
Our friend Howard Lindzon, an early-stage investor who presented at our annual Stansberry Research conference in the past, put these numbers in perspective the other day in his free newsletter...
The $2 trillion in SpaceX stock stuffed into your index will unlock for all the private investors in 90 days, not the typical 180 days. Furthermore, another $2 trillion or more is coming to the market soon after with the Open AI and Anthropic IPOs. If the $4 trillion combined does hit the market that is the equivalent of approximately seven percent of the S&P hitting the market.
Altogether, passive funds will acquire 25% of SpaceX's public shares, according to Balchunas. And according to Goldman Sachs, passive funds are already preparing to trim some of their largest positions... to raise cash for their SpaceX purchases.
In short, the "relentless bid" will prop up SpaceX through continued demand for shares, even if its valuation is detached from the company's fundamentals. And this will likely be a tailwind that pushes the broader indexes even higher.
Anyone with exposure to an index fund – which is just about everybody, even if indirectly – won't be able to escape the reality. But you can know what's coming, avoid the pitfalls, and look for other opportunities in individual stocks and sectors.
Last but not least...
As we mentioned yesterday, our friends Marc Chaikin and Jonathan Rose from our corporate affiliates Chaikin Analytics and InvestorPlace are coming together for a new free presentation. It debuts tonight... with details of their new "super-signal."
Marc and Jonathan are two guys who years ago walked away from careers serving the Wall Street elite to hand the investing tools they developed to regular folks. Marc famously developed his Power Gauge system, a mix of fundamental and technical analysis culled from his 50-year Wall Street career.
Jonathan, meanwhile, spent 14 years on trading floors watching the smart money win, usually at the expense of ordinary investors. In 2015, he walked away to flip the script...
(We previously mentioned gains of 780% and 833% Jonathan booked for his subscribers within the last year. In another example, in 2021, he identified the "meme stock" GameStop trade long before most people noticed and it went mainstream. This trade made his subscribers 202% in just a couple of days.)
Now, Marc and Jonathan have combined their two completely different methods of tracking "smart money" moves in the market into one signal. It hasn't been shared anywhere before, and it's fit for the market's volatile times.
The market has entered a different regime, they say...
Stocks are no longer moving in slow, predictable trends. They are getting cut in half, doubling, reversing, and exploding on news that most folks only understand after the move is already over.
In that kind of market, the old question – "is this a good company?" – is not enough. The better question is: "Where is the smart money already moving?"
And the "super-signal" that Marc and Jonathan have conceived is designed to give you that answer... and give you 10 chances to double your money in their model portfolio over the next 12 months.
They'll go on camera in less than two hours to reveal the details about their method. The presentation goes live at 8 p.m. Eastern time tonight. If you haven't signed up already, you can register here now to make sure you don't miss a minute.
New 52-week highs (as of 5/27/26): Canadian National Railway (CNI), iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex China Fund (EMXC), iShares Convertible Bond Fund (ICVT), Monster Beverage (MNST), Nucor (NUE), Ormat Technologies (ORA), Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy Fund (PBW), Roku (ROKU), State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Value Fund (SPYV), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), and Union Pacific (UNP).
In today's mail, feedback on yesterday's Digest about a "head exploding" realization about AI, layoffs attributed to the technology, and more... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"From a consumer's standpoint I will never pay for AI. If it's free, I'll use it. If not, I will use my good ole brain to figure things out. Keep my brain healthy as I age." – Subscriber Ted B.
"[Here is] AI's view of itself, when AI was queried as to its limitations!... Artificial intelligence operates primarily through pattern matching and statistical inference rather than genuine comprehension. Its current capabilities are bound by critical limitations, including the generation of fabricated information, reliance on historical data, absence of moral judgment, and algorithmic bias." – Subscriber G.C.
Corey McLaughlin comment: Indeed, we dropped your description into Google Gemini, and the AI response told us: "You have perfectly summarized the core mechanics and widely acknowledged limitations of current artificial intelligence," which speaks to the "self"-reinforcing loop of it all.
"The problem with all the layoffs will be the elimination of all the consumers which the economy relies heavily upon. If you look at the bigger picture, the use of AI and automation is already in effect harmful to humans. Most long respected white-collar jobs are now replaceable. From an ethical and moral perspective, it's not a technology that many citizens want. Take a road trip to all the graduation ceremonies happening around the country and you'll hear what our children are saying in large numbers. We really need to take a step back and think about what we have created..." – Subscriber Rodger G.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin and Nick Koziol
Baltimore, Maryland
May 28, 2026