Is it too late to buy SpaceX's stock? Here's how Tesla's did after one day - and five years.-To The Moon - Tiger Brokers Online Investing Community

Is it too late to buy SpaceX's stock? Here's how Tesla's did after one day - and five years.

Dow Jones06-13 04:06

MW Is it too late to buy SpaceX's stock? Here's how Tesla's did after one day - and five years.

By Philip van Doorn

Also in Weekend Reads: A bitcoin-pricing model that looks way ahead, the bear market for gold and retirement-planning advice

SpaceX had its market debut on June 12.

Now is the time to start thinking about whether or not SpaceX's stock might be a good long-term holding.

Investors who were unable to buy shares of SpaceX $(SPCX)$ at the initial public offering price of $135 might still be looking for an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon.

Another of Elon Musk's companies, Tesla $(TSLA)$, provides an example of a hyped-up IPO that initiated a scramble for shares. That stock's IPO price was $17 on June 29, 2010, and the shares rose 41% that first day of trading. If you had missed out on the IPO and gone in at that first day's closing price of $23.89, and then held the stock for a year, your gain would have been 18%, trailing the 12-month total return (with dividends reinvested) of 28% for the S&P 500 SPX, according to FactSet.

If you had held Tesla for two years after buying at the close on June 29, 2010, your gain would have been 31%, still trailing the S&P 500's return of 36%. But if you had held it for five years, your Tesla gain would have been 997%, against a 120% return for the S&P 500.

So what about SpaceX? If you tried to buy in at the IPO price of $135, chances are you were unable to participate. The offering was oversubscribed. The stock rose 19.2% on Friday to close at $160.95. Here is some of MarketWatch's extended SpaceX coverage, including discussions of the company's valuation and long-term prospects:

-- The big question facing SpaceX investors: What are you really buying?

-- Here's what could be SpaceX's biggest upside surprise, according to a leading Silicon Valley investor

-- Gwynne Shotwell is the 'unsung hero' of SpaceX as its blockbuster IPO launches

-- Brace for SpaceX's stock to show 'extreme' volatility, a bullish analyst warns

-- SpaceX's stock could follow the same path as Tesla's - not always trading on fundamentals

See MarketWatch's live coverage of the SpaceX IPO for much more.

In an email Friday morning before SpaceX's stock began trading, Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments in Nashville, Tenn., shared her opinion that the appropriate analogy for SpaceX as a public company was Amazon (AMZN). "This was a company that changed the way we live," she wrote. "The question becomes: what's your time horizon, and do you believe in the technology?"

"Our time horizon is three, five, seven, even ten years," Tengler wrote. If SpaceX's stock were to decline quickly from the IPO price of $135 to $100, "it wouldn't change our long-term view. We want to participate."

In another email to MarketWatch, Nicholas Anderson, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management in Santa Fe., N.M., emphasized SpaceX's potential as a provider of artificial-intelligence computing capacity. In its updated IPO filing, SpaceX disclosed new contracts with Anthropic and Google that could bring in $26 billion in revenue annually.

"That's more than double Starlink's entire 2025 revenue. If margins resemble those of publicly traded AI infrastructure providers, [graphics processing unit] leasing is already SpaceX's highest-margin business," Anderson wrote.

There is still plenty of excess capacity at SpaceX unit xAI's Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tenn., beyond what will be used to service the new Anthropic and Google contracts, according to Anderson. "AI compute remains so severely supply-constrained that SpaceX's terrestrial data center business may be generating better returns than everything the company has spent the last 26 years building," he added.

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For a juiced bet: SpaceX IPO spawns leveraged ETFs for bullish and bearish bets on its stock

More are coming: Worried that big IPOs will torpedo the stock market? These factors suggest otherwise.

How much might bitcoin be worth five years from now?

Bitcoin's price is lower than it was two years ago and less than half what it was when it peaked in October.

Amid another cycle of declining prices for bitcoin (BTCUSD), Mark Hulbert shared an objective model for the cryptocurrency's valuation that has been closely correlated with its price-fluctuation cycles since 2012. The model points to how much value bitcoin might gain over the long term from here.

More coverage: Bitcoin bulls are still around. These charts show they just moved on to hotter markets.

Tech companies and tech stocks

Stocks in the information technology sector have been on a seesaw ride so far in June. Here is some of this week's coverage from the MarketWatch Technology team:

-- Missed the rally in optical stocks? Coherent and Lumentum just got more attractive, according to J.P. Morgan.

-- Micron and other memory makers are driving a 'supercycle' for this corner of the chip sector

-- Intel's stock could push even higher thanks to this subtle dynamic, BofA says

-- Apple's AI could usher in a historic upgrade cycle that investors are overlooking

-- Amazon lines up another $17.5 billion for AI as its debt pile grows further

For investors who want to dig deep: This stock-market strategy has cheap exposure to AI and points to an advantage for closed-end funds

The bear market for gold

This chart shows the price movement for continuous front-month contracts for gold (GC00) on the New York Mercantile Exchange for three years through early Friday:

Early on June 12, 2026, front-month contracts for gold on the New York Mercantile Exchange were trading for $4,210 an ounce, down 25% from an intraday high of $5,627 on Jan. 29 and down 3% from a Dec. 31 close at $4,341.10.

Gold has given up nearly all of its gains for 2026, but even so, it has more than doubled in price from two years ago. Myra P. Saefong spoke with professional traders about what gold's recent price decline signals for the economy and for long-term investors.

Mark Hulbert explained how gold's usefulness as a hedge against geopolitical risk depends on how long you wish to commit.

A difficult Social Security timing decision

What if you are turning 62 and can afford to wait several years before you claim Social Security benefits? If you wait until you are 65, your monthly payment should increase by about 26%, for a compound annual growth rate of roughly 8%. If you wait until age 67 - your full retirement age, according to Social Security's rules - your payment will be about 47% higher than it would have been if you had taken it at the age of 62. If you wait until you are 70, the payment may be 84% higher than it would have been at age 62.

It is easy to recommend that if a retiree needs the money immediately, they should begin taking Social Security benefits at 62, and if they don't need the money, they should wait. But Alessandra Malito answered questions from a couple who are both 61 years old and face a complex set of decisions on Social Security timing. Here are their Social-Security decision points and the contingencies they need to plan for.

How about a credit card for your student?

Don't Short Yourself - MarketWatch's new weekly newsletter - offers smart tips to help you earn and grow your money.

If your child is a university student, they will face an onslaught of credit-card offers that are designed "just for them." In this week's Don't Short Yourself newsletter, Beth Pinsker lays out sound advice for parents and students on how to begin using credit cards.

More from Beth Pinsker: Worried about a lower Social Security benefit? How to calculate the exact impact it will have on your retirement.

Gemini picks a 'new' World Cup winner

The 2026 Men's World Cup will feature 104 matches over 39 days.

The World Cup soccer tournament has started, with teams from 48 countries participating in this year's men's competition. Only eight teams have won the tournament during its entire 96-year history. The last new addition to the winners' club was Spain in 2010. Google's Gemini chatbot crunched the numbers for the teams, including the players' professional statistics and the World Cup match schedules, to predict a "new" tournament winner. Weston Blasi spoke with executives working for firms involved with sports betting and predictions markets and shared what they had to say about Gemini's World Cup pick.

More coverage:

-- The World Cup could deliver Fox a ratings bonanza: 'There will be all sorts of viewership records'

-- As the World Cup begins, researchers warn sports bettors may be gambling with their grocery money

Which careers can stay ahead of inflation?

U.S. price inflation hit a three-year high of 4.2% in May. Chances are that your annual salary or wage increase is less than that amount. Andrew Keshner shared a list of jobs with average salary increases that far outpaced the rate of inflation over the past year, according to Payscale.

More career coverage: The hiring recession is over - but landing a new job is much harder than it looks

The Moneyist and annuities

Quentin Fottrell is the Moneyist.

For retirees or other investors seeking safety and a guaranteed return, annuities managed by life insurers might be appropriate, in part because the income they provide can be tax-deferred. But there are many details to consider, including the financial strength of the insurance company and, for example, how easy or how difficult it might be for the investor to get their money rather than having a fixed-rate annuity roll over at maturity.

Quentin Fottrell - the Moneyist - answered questions from a reader whose financial adviser was making repeated attempts to sell them an annuity product, as well as another reader who thought an annuity sales presentation featured results that seemed "too good to be true."

More advice from the Moneyist:

MW Is it too late to buy SpaceX's stock? Here's how Tesla's did after one day - and five years.

By Philip van Doorn

Also in Weekend Reads: A bitcoin-pricing model that looks way ahead, the bear market for gold and retirement-planning advice

SpaceX had its market debut on June 12.

Now is the time to start thinking about whether or not SpaceX's stock might be a good long-term holding.

Investors who were unable to buy shares of SpaceX (SPCX) at the initial public offering price of $135 might still be looking for an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon.

Another of Elon Musk's companies, Tesla (TSLA), provides an example of a hyped-up IPO that initiated a scramble for shares. That stock's IPO price was $17 on June 29, 2010, and the shares rose 41% that first day of trading. If you had missed out on the IPO and gone in at that first day's closing price of $23.89, and then held the stock for a year, your gain would have been 18%, trailing the 12-month total return (with dividends reinvested) of 28% for the S&P 500 SPX, according to FactSet.