Off the top of my head, there is a very well established business involving buying expensive things and leasing them to the companies that intend to operate them so they can sell services: aircraft leasing.
AER is the biggest player and they have a P/E ratio of, drumroll please, 6. And I expect that GPUs, despite currently looking like an appreciating asset, will actually depreciate faster than aircraft in the long run.
Sidenote: 3 is actually high. 94 is absolutely ridiculous.
Do you mean low? AAPL has a ps of 10.
I would also like to point out, that on a forward P/E basis, AAPL is quite overvalued compared to historical norms, but basically every tech company is right now.
A few segments of the economy are known to have low revenue/investment ratios, and companies there get P/S up to 7 or so.
Then, very few companies have people betting on their growth so much that their P/S get as high as 15.
And then you have literally about half a dozen exceptions on the ones S&P tracks that get higher than that.
And anyway, the rule change is truly the only reasonable way they can react to the current situation.
It will absolutely be untenable to keep Anthropic , OpenAI and SpaceX off the S&P 500 with them also being the highest valued companies on the market.
Without the proposal, you'd have outrage out the other side that it wasn't included (especially if it shoots off like, well, a rocket).
We live in an age proving that valuation is just a manipulation.
This whole story is just like the BaM situation: the people with more money feel emboldened to pull every dastardly trick they can to tilt the table towards their pockets, away from the honest participants. SpaceX and the AI IPOs are just the latest and most grand scheme. I’m guessing you were surprised by the collapse of lehman brothers back in the day.
It’s and interesting point. I’ve done a bit of searching and am also empty handed.
I don't know how I could? The indices have already provided their reasoning for these rule changes, but that's just summarily rejected by the conspiracy-minded.
To laymen this appears to be a grand conspiracy. Rules are being changed to accommodate big companies, that's usually bad.
To people in the financial industry, it's fait accompli. The indices exist to reflect the market, these IPOs are going to be big enough that the 90s-era rules will/would result in untenable divergence.
This deal has been pushed hard to be included prematurely in the indexes to the point that Nasdaq changed the rules.
The accusation is that these changes were made so that index funds will buy this stock automatically far earlier than they would have previously. Given the… uh… astronomical asking price, it looks like SPCEX is meant for Elon stans and institutional index investors to be the bag holders.
Pushed by whom? Can you link some reporting on this topic?
> Given the… uh… astronomical asking price, it looks like SPCEX is meant for Elon stans and institutional index investors to be the bag holders.
"asking price" lmao, buyers decide the prices they'll buy at.
Edit: I wonder, why is pointing out that this apparently massive conspiracy hasn't been covered by a single credible news outlet worthy of so many downvotes?
Not if they're index funds. They buy at the price it is, until they've satisfied their holdings represent the appropriate share of the market. Which, pre-IPO and early-days-after-IPO, is likely to not be accurate to the long-term price.
I’m not going to cite sources for a major financial news story that is being extensively covered in the financial and general press.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/ind...
Perhaps you can provide a single counterpoint? I can't find the columns you refer to.
The SP500 did not waive the rules, and that made above the fold news this week, because it is a major blow to the big IPOs happening this month since they are valued so high. It will be harder for them to move stock if the massive index funds aren’t buying automatically. The big IPOs this month are asking for prices that demand hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of liquidity. Index funds are automatic liquidity, but only if you are on the index.
They didn’t ask them to change long standing rules for shits and giggles.
Who are "They"? Did you maybe forget the ((())) or are we just supposed to guess? I don't know if you intended it that way, but using the vague nudge-nudge wink-wink "they" like this sure comes across as an antisemitic dog whistle.
> That is one of the columns. The headline makes my point succinctly
Regardless of how you choose to interpret the headline, the actual column seems to say the very opposite of what you claim.
It’s clear you aren’t interested in a good faith conversation. Thanks for the discourse either way.
Also, you're getting the most basic details wrong. Nasdaq didn't change their listing requirements. SpaceX has been eligible for listing under their rules for years.
>index providers will have to decide: Are they in the business of giving passive investors exposure to all the stocks that the market thinks are good, or to all the stocks that the index committee thinks are good?
>There’s only one plausible answer.
Can you explain why your theory is better than the one widely believed by people who actually work in the financial industry?
My theory is better because it isn’t ignorant of the billionaire dynamics in play.
I'm not criticizing bloomberg, i'm criticizing you for posting paywalled links to support your position in an open discussion.
Given I'm bailing on this convo now because hackers news is a shite application getting in the way of people trying to talk, let me respond to our sibling thread with the closet thing my opinion has to evidence: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=smH. IMO we remain at an all time high of financial flimflammery as a portion of our GDP and there have been a number of recessions triggered by the financial sectors malfeasance during my lifetime because of it.
Yet, somehow, no journo in the worlds leakiest industry has been able to break this massive-if-true story.
It's not clear if Musk (SpaceX/X.ai) is really pursuing AI any more - I expect he hasn't necessarily given up on it, and he hasn't said he has, but it seems he's rented out almost all of his GPUs to Anthropic and Google, so that's not going to be much of a revenue generator, at least for time being.
It was in the news not too long ago that Musk was looking to use Samsung to fabricate "AI chips", presumably either for X.ai and/or Tesla, so perhaps he's basically put X.ai on hold until he can reboot his efforts with his own chips (& perhaps a new datacenter)?
The "93% AI company" is also a huge mischaracterization since this isn't AI business - it's datacenter/GPU leasing business which their 2 customers can pull the plug on with 90 days notice.
It will very likely be valued much, much higher. The SpaceX IPO is, in itself, a marvelous piece of financial engineering (requiring co-operation among multiple actors) which has been a long time in the works.
- Right out of the gate nearly all retail investment platforms have dramatically reduced requirements for purchasing an IPO, most notably Fidelity, which previously required $500,000 in your account to participate in an IPO reduced (on Friday) this amount to $2,000
- Retail investment, despite being quieter in the post-WSB era, is at all time highs.
- Reports are that the SpaceX IPO is already highly oversubscribed, meaning there are many more retail investors interested than there are shares available.
- SpaceX has a wildy low float of only ~4% which means price discovery will be much slower then normal, especially with aforementioned demand
- All of these retail platforms enforce some sort of "soft lock-in" whereby you're excluded from future IPOs if you sell your shares within 15-30 days. So if you want to get out you're not going to be able to participate in Anthropic/OpenAI IPOs in a few months.
- Coincidentally, most of the major indexes (thankfully excluding the S&P 500) have adjusted their rules to require only 15 days post-IPO before inclusion and have no profitability requirements. Many also adjusted the rules so that low float IPOs have their weight multiplied despite the low float.
- Many retirement accounts, in one way or another, are required to track these indexes and will be forced to buy these SpaceX shares at a very likely frenzied price and further drive the price up.
SpaceX will very likely open with far more retail demand than shares, the insiders (VCs, employees etc) will still be legally locked from selling, retail investors are penalized if they sell, and so the demand will be high and supply very low.
If they can keep this demand hyped for just 3 weeks, price will still be elevated when retirement accounts are forced to buy... roughly the same time retail investor start seeing the penalty for selling expiring (meaning it is not irrational at all to be in the IPO, but it is irrational to sell before being listed in an index).
Fun fact: the other fascinating thing about this IPO is the terms for insider lock-in. At first earnings (Jun 30) inside investors unlock and can therefor liquidate 20% of their shares... but if the stock performs well, they can unlock and additional 10%. There are additional rules for continued unlocking of more shares depending on performance as time goes on. So everyone on the inside has a very vested interest in a spike in stock prices: not only will their stocks be worth more, but they can realize that value faster.
I would be surprised if SpaceX price doesn't explode in the first few weeks because for everyone involved this would make sense. It's only in August that we'll start seeing the really interesting things start happening.
Not at all surprising that the US in 2026 has degenerated to the point of turning the equity market itself into a bucket shop.
I understand the gist here, but come on. This is a generational company. It’s the only relevant space launch business, and has its tentacles deep in AI infrastructure as well. Maybe the AI bet is foolish — I don’t know — you should short it!
It’s possible, and common, for one large company to have multiple business lines, each worthy of a very different P/E multiplier. In principle you end up with a weighted average of some sort.
edit: Matt Levine has some great articles about this phenomenon and how some companies try to juice it.
All of Musks business stuff highly depends on first mover advantage.
If people now selling it as a 'generational company' than it becomes even more stupid.
He didn't invent an unkown solution he is hiding to transform something into gold, he only put a lot of money into rockets.
And the rockets right now don't even have enough payload to have unlimited potential. If Space-X knows how to build a rocket very efficient, 10 years later other companies can do that too.
Do they? Out of all of them, I think only one of them really depends on, or even benefits from, first mover advantages: Starlink.
Tesla famously gave away all their patents, and is also being overtaken by Chinese companies with cheaper batteries because batteries are the expensive bit; SpaceX rockets are theoretically well protected because national security regulations >> patent law, but even there lots of Chinese clones popping up; TBC and Neuralink and SolarCity are going nowhere fast; Grok wasn't even the first in its field; Twitter/X is not only in heavy decline but was also always trivially cloneable and the clones are now an open source ecosystem of semi-distributed alternatives; xAI has shown ability to make data centres while pissing off locals but the market for those data centres is other AI companies who also commission their own data centres but found themselves scaling much faster than xAI did.
(Starlink's first mover advantage is "this orbit already contains a satellite").
It’s another misdirection.
Except for people who have pensions/investments in whole market class investments who become exposed to an over valued company with a propped up value.
If you want to start picking and choosing which companies are overvalued and which are undervalued, don’t invest in whole market funds. But most people are not good at that!
The Nasdaq 100 and FTSE Russell made a rule change that allows SpaceX to enter index without mormal time for price discovery. Most index funds have rebalance day just 5 days after IPO. S&P also made rule change for S&P Total Market Index and Dow Jones US Total Stock Market Index, but left SP500 intact.
Nothing wrong with SpaceX or Anthropic getting into indexes with fair rules, this rule change is pure creed+corruption.
What evidence do you have that these rule changes are motivated by "creed" or corruption?
What evidence do you have that 9/11 was not an inside job?
> please justify your position
I'll cite Matt Levine from Bloomberg:
>1. In the next few months, SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI will all probably go public at massive valuations.
>2. They will be fast-tracked into the major stock indexes, because those indexes are designed to reflect the stock market, and reflecting the stock market, in 2027, will absolutely require big allocations to those three companies.
I'm sticking to the facts, shove your ideological struggle up your ass or go pollute a different website.
But there are things to say about your point too. I’ve commented on that in other threads.
As long as there are active investors in the market conducting price discovery. Which there always will be, just pointing out that someone has to care, even if you don’t
SpaceX could rise to be a major winner that makes people a lot of money. And then what? You missed out and underperform the whole market.
Based on "sane"/traditional metrics that and much more is already priced in into the IPO valuation.
e.g. Google had a many times lower P/S ratio at their IPO and was actually profitable (and software companies usually have higher valuations than capital intensive ones like SpaceX anyway). SpaceX is already valued at more than Google was 10 years after its IPO while barely making a tiny fraction of its revenue.
I think so too. I also thought that about Facebook: IPO around 40, swiftly down to 20 - I was laughing about stupid retail getting wrecked. Now it's around 600...
SpaceX IPO price already has many years of extremely high growth priced in. Comparing it to Facebook's or Google's IPOs is like apples to oranges.
Yeah, if a ridiculous premise is given you'll reach a ridiculous result.
xAI has such a shitty AI, that he makes more profit renting his Compute instead of making profit directly from it as the companies doing who have better AI then him.
Space-X is a limited business and he tries to make it unlimited by selling stories of Mars and dyson spheres (literaly), no one will ever finance or need as long as we have still desserts everywhere. In parallel his Starlink business gets competition left and right and despite this, he only has 10 Million customers AND increased prices for STarlink just last month or so.
And the payload, most payload increase is only Starlink. He has to sell us a story, that suddenly even with Starship, he can send so much payload up there to make Space-X this mega trillion company.
He can't even scale Starlink. Its expensive. The satelites work for 5 years and have limited capacity. He NEEDS Spaceship to be able to send up Starlink Server v3 and he hasn't even prooven he can get his ship back which he needs for the payload price.
Twitter/X? Yeah he tanked that one.
Optimus? When did you see the latest non faked demo? And while he works on it, we already have the market cornered here.
Quite the abstraction.
So yes, ridiculous things like that happen and markets are very often not rational at all (short and medium term at least).
Nortel, Sun, AOL, Cisco were all very innovative and rapidly growing companies. Until reality kicked in.
That final number doesn't make sense: if you're trading shares at $X revenue, increasing the revenue by $Y multiplier doesn't increase the share price by the same multiplier.
And the bigger play is this deal pushes SpaceX over the finish line for S&P 500 inclusion. That's worth tens of billions for everyone involved.
So not only are the regulators not going to allow things that cause another great depression, they're allowing the things that caused the first great depression too. They must want a rerun.
(Because if you don't allow this you're effectively demanding the extremely rich make good investments to stay rich ... and not even France, otherwise pretty socialist, dares to go that far)
Surely Google can "make compute go" for $1b/month. Nice way to avoid holding the bag, maybe?
This deal is part of that revenue growth. So the new revenue would be already partially or even fully priced-in.
Perhaps it reduces uncertainty around the growth rate, but expectations were already sky-high, as shown by the multiple!
The wrinkle is that they are planning to deploy those GPUs in space. That’s what people are most skeptical about, I think!
Like fsd, will take decades to figure things out.
But satellite cooling already exists (Starlink v2 satellites dissipate heat at over a kilowatt I believe), so that’s why other people find it plausible.
Starship is at minimum a 2030 project at this point.
And even producing the volume of chips needed for the type of growth space data centers would need to have to justify this would be another decade if construction started now on those fabs.
Otherwise a dump works too. There's plenty of money to be made from carefully timed shorting.
The entire AI field has been plagued by circular financing deals, so this is not new. But it's new in aerospace, and the market institutions appear complicit.
Otherwise, why is this IPO getting such unique treatment on such flimsy fundamentals?
Love how we assign positive adjectives to unethical practices by corporates
EDIT: Downvotes? Not sure why. I would say Darth Vader is masterful of the force, and even that Donald Trump is masterful at being provocative. Masterful is not definitively positive or negative, it just describes being very good at something.
Google’s investment in SpaceX is completely orthogonal to the analysis. Equity investments aren’t revenue for the issuer. (Gains on sale would be revenue to the investor, in which case, this would be Google, not SpaceX.)
Google's purchase sends cash to to SpaceX, which they report as revenue, and which they earn a profit from.
You don’t know what you’re talking about and are way out of your lane. Stop now. In fact, you should retract your parent comment and apologize to the community for leading them astray.
Did you even try to ask even ChatGPT or Claude about this first?
And gets a datacenter.
Same thing they used to say about Lehman.
You seem to have ignored the 50% float rule. SpaceX is proposing to go public with about 5% of the float, but S&P requires 50%.
Do we think that the market will absorb the release of 45% of the shares? I'm dubious.
assuming google sells, the stock tanks, nobody wants to buy next year
is this masterful? more like a scam
Didn't they also run up against a "minimum free float" rule?
Not brilliant meaning something actually positive for humanity in any respect at all.
There may be more to it than buying compute but what you're saying does not make sense for Google. More likely Google wants a good relationship with SpaceX and possibly to buoy the stock, but it's a bad NPV trade
So at most they lose like 200M each month. Peanut compares to the potentially gain of the IPO.
We'll need to see audited financials, but if this part is true people are going to be upset. I wonder if all the people who have been acting like the S&P rules came down from the mountain with Moses will start lobbying to change them to keep SpaceX out?
And to be clear, I think SpaceX is way overvalued and I wouldn't buy it stand alone. But there are a lot of companies in the S&P 500 I wouldn't buy stand alone, yet I still own a a lot of an S&P 500 ETF. /shrug
That's not how valuations work. Also, it is not unlikely that SpaceX's valuation drops post-IPO (tech was 6.65% in the most recent trading session) due to its very rich valuation and a long tenured investor based that is probably looking to get liquid.
Google is renting compute from SpaceX because they need GPUs and SpaceX owns a huge supply of them and has excess capacity bc no one uses Grok. Google has stated that this is a temporary arrangement while they continue to build out their own capacity.
Would you really expect a company to increase proportionally in value when they increase their revenue?
Apart from the peasants of course.
Let’s just call it what it is. It’s just basic fraud. They created a very temporary revenue injection right around the time of the IPO to defraud investors as much as they possibly can. Some businesses do this kind of thing just before they die because…why not?
Simple, money.
When Billions of $ are in the picture, people really don't care about ethics.
AI is really a pioneering engineering field