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SpaceX IPO Valuation vs S&P 500 Performance

Wall Street Journal Markets •
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Good morning, I'm filling in for Spencer Jakab. Investors aren't fazed this morning by the latest economic escalation in the Iran conflict or the growing trade war with Canada. Futures are pointing higher, oil prices are lower and long-term Treasury yields have come off the boil.

That said, worries about the dollar are growing, and bitcoin is back around the $80,000 mark. Are you a stock picker in disguise? Recall the debate about SpaceX when it went public. A lot of investors believed Elon Musk's rocket company wouldn't be a very good bet at its initial public valuation of around $1.8 trillion.

Many were likewise concerned that some index rules had changed to accommodate companies like SpaceX, which have big valuations but low "floats" of public shares. Well, skeptics were certainly right about SpaceX's valuation. Its stock has at times dropped below its $135 offering price, and is below where it opened trading.

But guess what? If, just prior to SpaceX's addition to the Morningstar U.S. Total Market index, you had switched to tracking the S&P 500--which didn't modify its rules to fast track SpaceX into the index--it would have been pretty much a wash.