The anglers who earn the most are not chasing the largest catch.
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Hello reader.
In Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 novel, The old man and the seaA fisherman named Santiago sails into the deep waters of Gulf Stream, where he discovers a giant marlin.
After several sleepless nights, he finally caught a marlin and bashed it against the side of his boat… only to see it eaten by sharks on the trip home.
Santiago was left with nothing but her skeleton.
The market is chasing the giant marlin this week: SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s space exploration company is targeting a Nasdaq debut on June 12 at a valuation of $1.75 trillion, making it the largest initial public offering in history. Talk about a big fish.
Come Friday, thousands of investors — perhaps millions — will drop a line in the water for this prize. But catching these fish profitably will not be an easy task. From the moment SpaceX goes public, competitors will surround the company to take a piece of its ambitions. In the early days, SpaceX’s stock price will likely lose some of its meat.
Admittedly, SpaceX is a marvel in many ways. But even a cosmic explorer does not deserve such a stratospheric evaluation. The company continues to generate billions of dollars in losses quarter after quarter. At some point, investors may decide that a $1.75 trillion company should be profitable.
Meanwhile, thanks to SpaceX’s IPO, hundreds of billions of dollars in new investor interest will flow into the commercial space sector, looking for companies that build, supply and enable the new space economy.
Most of this interest will flow toward names that investors already know. But the opportunity for the smart speculator lies elsewhere — in companies that do the core, non-glamorous work that makes the missions possible.
In fact, history suggests that the biggest gains often come from companies that work one step downstream.
In major technological transformations, the companies that capture investors’ attention are rarely the only winners. Their success often helps foster growth across related companies.
So, on the day Smart moneyLet’s explore why investing in SpaceX subsidiaries is a better option than buying a stake in the IPO itself.
The benefit trade has worked before
Ignoring the largest fish may seem counterintuitive. The advice can seem quite “fishy”. But history shows that the most obvious opportunities are rarely the only or best ways to invest in a major trend.
We have seen this phenomenon manifest with the advent of the Internet.
Like SpaceX, Alphabet company‘s (Google) The IPO was highly anticipated. The company went public on August 19, 2004 at $85 per share and raised approximately $1.67 billion. Since then — which led to a massive stock split — GOOG shares have risen more than 17,000%.
But that remarkable comeback was only part of the opportunity.
Google’s success helped validate the Internet economy as a whole. Investors gained confidence that Internet-based business models could expand globally and generate huge profits.
This trust has not been beneficial to Google alone. As businesses increasingly shift to the Internet, software delivered over the Internet — what we now call software as a service (SaaS) — has seen tremendous growth.
Salesforce Inc. (Customer relationship management)which went public in June 2004, was one of the biggest beneficiaries. The company priced its shares at $11 and raised about $110 million. Since then, Salesforce shares have risen 6,355%, adjusted for its 2013 stock split.
Investors who recognized Salesforce as a beneficiary of the Internet economy were able to present a similar investment thesis with much less competition.
Viva Systems Company (VEEV)a cloud-based software company serving the life sciences industry that initially built customer relationship management (CRM)Customer relationship management) product on the Salesforce platform, and went public in 2013 at $20 per share. Since then, it has returned 734%, outperforming the S&P 500 and the broader software sector.
In short, Google validated the Internet model, Salesforce rode the wave, and then Veeva rode the Salesforce wave.
Each link in the chain represents a less obvious way to invest in the same underlying trend. And at a more convenient entry point.
SpaceX will likely create the same type of series.
When that happens, the most attractive investments may not be in SpaceX itself, but in companies that can capitalize on the next wave.
The space economy is real — but the best stocks aren’t clear
Here’s the speculative gist of the thesis: A successful SpaceX IPO at its $1 trillion-plus valuation would legitimize commercial spaceflight as a broadly investable sector, and would likely accelerate capital flows to competitors and suppliers alike.
Just as Google’s IPO accelerated investor interest in online businesses, SpaceX’s debut will introduce millions of investors to the idea that space isn’t just a government program. It’s a complete economy.
Many of these investors will want skin in the game. Most would buy SpaceX outright, especially given how revenue rose 33% year over year to $18.7 billion last year, driven primarily by a 32% increase in Starlink satellite internet sales.
But growth and investment returns are not always the same thing.
SpaceX also reported a huge GAAP net loss of $4.94 billion for all of 2025 and a steep loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of this year — mainly due to Musk’s push into AI infrastructure. (SpaceX invested about $12.7 billion last year in AI capital expenditures.)
Despite its impressive growth, SpaceX is still spending heavily, making near-term profitability unlikely.
That’s why I recommend looking for SpaceX-related companies that have real revenues, real contracts, and real hardware already in orbit.
We’ve identified a company in the aerospace manufacturing space that can credibly lay claim to all three, and it has already crossed double digits in less than a month since we added it to our portfolio in Speculators.
I also recently recommended another space-focused company, Speculatorson the other end of the spectrum. You can think of it as “investing in space for chickens.”
Inside this very large, very profitable, very boring company is a robotics company with a direct connection to SpaceX. As SpaceX’s IPO approaches, this connection may be more important than most investors realize.
Santiago Hemingway returned home with a skeleton. He had caught the biggest fish in the Gulf Stream, but he had nothing to show for it.
Investors who bought SpaceX on Friday may tell a similar story. The valuation is sky high, the losses are real, and the sharks are already circling.
The smarter game is not chasing marlin. It’s fishing in the waters around it – the smaller, faster-moving fish that the entire ecosystem depends on.
This is where these two companies live. In our experience, those are the areas where the real money is made.
To get the full details of these companies before SpaceX joins them on the stock exchange, Click here to learn how to become a member Speculators.
It is considered,
Eric Fry
editor, Smart money
