This weekend, my favorite futurist, Peter Diamandis published his take on the SpaceX (SPCX) IPO.
If the name doesn't ring a bell, here's the context: he's been close friends with Elon Musk for more than 26 years, was an early investor in several of his companies, and founded the XPRIZE Foundation.
Elon Musk shakes hands with XPrize founder and Executive Chair Peter Diamandis
His piece has been circulating on trading desks since Saturday, and one part of it is exactly the lens I want you using heading into Thursday.
The Smartest SpaceX Take You'll Read This Week
Diamandis argues that trying to value SpaceX the way you'd value a normal company - on revenue multiples, on price-to-sales - misses the point entirely. His comparison is the transcontinental railroads of the late 1800s. If you'd valued those railroads purely on ticket sales and freight revenue, you would have badly underestimated what they were worth.
The real value was never in the trains. It was in the towns, the mines, and the farms that the railroad made possible along the route.
He calls what's happening with SpaceX "the greatest wealth-creation event in human history."
The fortunes won't be made by the passengers riding the railroad. They'll be made by the towns built along the route.
This is exactly the framing I've been using since May. I didn't build a portfolio around SpaceX. I built it around the towns along the route - the supply chain companies that benefit as the space economy expands, regardless of which rocket happens to be carrying the cargo.
Diamandis goes further, too: he describes SpaceX as three businesses in one - a launch company, a satellite internet business in Starlink that throws off enormous cash, and an AI research lab in xAI - and argues the next chapter of this story may have less to do with rockets and more to do with AI computing infrastructure moving into orbit.
Wall Street Just Made Its Own Statement
On June 11, the Nasdaq 100 announced its newest additions, effective next Monday, June 22.
One of them is Rocket Lab (RKLB) - one of the most recognizable names in commercial launch. It joins the index alongside four AI infrastructure companies in the same announcement.
A space economy company and four AI infrastructure companies, added to the same elite index, on the same day.
That's not a coincidence. That's a recognition.
But here's the part I want you to notice.
Rocket Lab's stock actually fell on the news - even after a year in which shares had more than tripled. That's not unusual. Good news often gets sold in the short term, especially after a big run.
It's the same pattern I described yesterday with my own four-stock portfolio: the market doesn't always reward good news immediately, and the gap between the news and the price is often exactly where the opportunity lives.
This Thursday — I'm Pulling It All Together
The SpaceX IPO, the railroad-to-orbit framing, the Nasdaq-100 validation, and what I'm watching next across the space economy supply chain.
Free to attend - questions answered live.
To your future success,
Matt McCall
Founder, NXT Wave Research
P.S. - Diamandis has been right about Elon for 26 years. Rocket Lab's move into the Nasdaq 100 means index funds alone will now be buyers of space economy stocks. Thursday, I'll show you where the rest of the "towns along the route" are - including the four I told subscribers about back in May.
