MW SpaceX IPO hype is massive - and the FOMO can ruin your retirement
By Kurt Supe
A stock that dips is a blip at age 30 - for older investors in or near retirement, it's a portfolio disaster
The hot SpaceX IPO is generating FOMO - the fear of missing out. Investors approaching retirement can't afford that emotion.
You've seen this movie before - even if you've forgotten how it ends.
SpaceX $(SPCX)$ just staged the largest IPO in history, establishing a roughly $1.75 trillion valuation at $135 per share on its Nasdaq debut Friday. The headlines are breathless. Group chats are buzzing. And my phone has been ringing off the hook with clients asking the same question: Should I buy?
They're not wrong to ask; one of the deal's lead underwriters predicted retail demand "never seen before." But behind those calls are people who have spent decades carefully building a nest egg and are afraid to miss the SpaceX launch.
You've seen this movie before - even if you've forgotten how it ends.
Here's the uncomfortable truth about risk: It disappears from view exactly when it's most dangerous. When markets climb for years, people stop thinking about downside. The portfolio that felt terrifying in 2009 feels boring in 2026. We start measuring ourselves against the most aggressive thing we could have owned, instead of against our own goals. That's not investing. That's fear of missing out dressed up as a strategy.
And for people over 50, FOMO isn't a harmless emotion. It's a math problem.
The risk nobody talks about until it's too late
A steep drop in the first few years of retirement, while you're pulling money out to live on, can permanently cripple a portfolio even after the market recovers.
There's a concept called sequence of returns risk, and it's the single most underappreciated threat to a retirement. Here's the idea: When you're still working and adding money, the order of your returns barely matters. A bad year means you're buying cheap. But once you stop adding and start withdrawing, the order becomes everything. A steep drop in the first few years of retirement, while you're pulling money out to live on, can permanently cripple a portfolio even after the market recovers.
This isn't theory. Look at what happened to people who retired in early 2000.
The late 1990s felt unstoppable. The dot-com boom delivered five straight years of huge gains, and many investors convinced themselves the old rules of investing no longer applied. Then the bill came due. The S&P 500 SPX lost 10.14% in 2000, 13.04% in 2001 and 23.37% in 2002 - three losing years in a row. An investor who retired at the start of that decade and pulled an inflation-adjusted 5% a year from an all-S&P 500 portfolio would have run that money completely dry by 2017. Same withdrawal rate, a more diversified portfolio and the balance survived the full stretch. The difference wasn't the size of the loss. It was the timing - and planning for it.
Most people hadn't. They had a plan to accumulate wealth. Risk management was a separate conversation they'd get to eventually. That's the fateful mistake. An investing plan and protection against loss are not two different things. A retirement plan that doesn't account for a 2000-style downturn or a 2008-like crash isn't a plan. It's a hope.
'This time it's different' - the most expensive phrase in finance
Every era produces its own version of the unstoppable winner, the thing you'd be foolish to bet against. Right now, a lot of that energy is pointed at SpaceX.
Set aside whether it's a remarkable company. The question for your retirement is the valuation. At roughly $1.75 trillion, the SpaceX offering was valued at roughly 95 times annual sales. The company posted a $4.9 billion net loss in 2025 even as revenue rose 33% to $18.7 billion.
Pay particular attention to the deal's structure. Reports indicate retail investors would receive around 30% of the offering, with only about a 3% initial free-float. In plain English: A small slice of shares trades freely, a large slice is being routed to eager individual buyers, and the people who got in years ago at a fraction of the price now have a marquee event to sell into.
That's not a conspiracy. It's how the game is built. IPOs of this size are engineered to let early insiders and institutions convert paper wealth into real wealth. And the hype that makes that possible is supplied, in part, by ordinary investors who don't want to feel left out. The wealthy don't get richer despite the frenzy. They get richer because of it.
Read: SpaceX is launching a historic IPO - but its biggest risk has nothing to do with rockets
None of this is a prediction about where any single stock goes. SpaceX might soar. It might crater. The point is that you don't know, and if you're in retirement or approaching it, you can't afford to find out with money you'll need to live on. A position that could be cut in half is survivable for a 30-year-old with three decades to recover. For someone planning to draw income within a few years, it can be a portfolio disaster.
See: Social Security is facing a 22% cliff - 4 ways to build an income stream Washington can't touch
Reduce risk; don't chase it
The time to reduce investment risk is when things feel great, not after they've fallen apart. By the time fear sets in, the damage is done. The discipline is in trimming exposure while everyone else is still celebrating.
Stock investors hurt in 2000 and again in 2008 weren't foolish. They were optimistic at the wrong moment - and optimism without a plan is just exposure. If you've spent decades building something strong and secure, the goal now isn't to make it dramatically bigger. It's to make sure no single headline, no single IPO, no single "this time it's different" story can take it from you.
The market will always give you one more chance to feel like you're missing out. Your retirement plan gives you only one chance at not running out.
Kurt Supe is a CPA and retirement planner with CFD Investments, Inc., a registered broker-dealer, and Creative Financial Designs, Inc., a registered investment adviser. For additional information and disclosures, visit www.creativefinancialgrp.com.
More: Here are all the red flags in the SpaceX IPO
Also read: These 'nerds' earned millions betting on space years before the SpaceX IPO made it cool
-Kurt Supe
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 13, 2026 14:56 ET (18:56 GMT)
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