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SpaceX Vice President for Human Resources Brian Bjelde, wearing a SpaceX spacesuit, and others celebrate on the day of SpaceX's IPO in New York on June 12. Brendan McDermid/Reuters
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If you were already a little worried about the lofty heights of the stock market, last week’s initial public offering from Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, may have pushed you over the edge.
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It minted the world’s first trillionaire, in the form of Elon Musk, the chief executive officer who will control the company; and it raised US$75-billion, making it the largest IPO ever.
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What’s more, the stock will be fast-tracked for inclusion into many major indexes, including the Nasdaq 100; and it landed near the start of what could be a deluge of tech IPOs. OpenAI and Anthropic, two leading artificial intelligence companies, are widely expected to go public soon.
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Some pros are concerned that SpaceX – regardless of whether the company is ultimately successful in space exploration, satellite communications and artificial intelligence – might symbolize the market’s frothy top.
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“Recent history suggests surging share issuance tends to be a sign that the end to an equity boom is a matter of months, not years, away,” Joe Maher, markets economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
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“We have the largest IPO in history asking investors to accept weaker governance protections with an extreme concentration of control,” he said.
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More broadly, SpaceX encapsulates everything that is unsettling about today’s investment landscape: Sky-high valuations, investor ebullience and an AI theme that is transforming diversified indexes into a giant bet on the tech sector.
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The question is: What, if anything, should we do about it?
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Market-timing rarely works. Too often, we end up buying high and selling low – missing rallies and suffering through downturns.
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For what it’s worth, I’m largely staying put in my conservative mix of balanced portfolio exchange-traded funds, dividend stocks and government bonds, with a few GICs for some added excitement. There are certainly no 19 per cent one-day SpaceX pops for me – ever!
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More importantly, what’s your take on the current state of the market? Try our three-question poll and I’ll report back on the results.
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BlackRock Asset Return Map, for June For all the fuss about the U.S. stock market this year, its returns still lag a number of other assets, including Japanese stock, emerging market stocks and commodities, according to BlackRock’s latest asset return map. | | |
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This chart looks at how in June, the changes are not in everyday savings accounts, where the best offers remain promotional and temporary, but in GIC rates.
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