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If SpaceX goes public, it won’t feel like a normal IPO. It’ll feel like an event—one of those rare moments that spills out of finance and into everyday conversation. People won’t just ask whether it’s a good business. They’ll ask if you “got in,” the way they asked about Facebook back in May 2012, or Google before that, when those tickers became cultural shorthand for opportunity.
And the story is easy to understand. SpaceX is the company that made private spaceflight feel real, but the excitement is also about Starlink—a global broadband network that turns space into infrastructure. These two businesses paint a picture of science fiction-like technologies turning into reality.
As of this recording, there’s no confirmed SpaceX IPO date, but this episode isn’t about forecasting SpaceX. It’s about understanding how IPOs work and how you should think about them in your portfolio.
In this episode, you’re going to learn: who’s involved in an IPO and when the public market actually gets access, why “the IPO price” isn’t the price most people can buy, and how prices tend to behave on day one as well as in the months after the opening hype fades.
We will close the episode with a framework for how to think about investing in IPOs, and if you’re interested in learning more about how Plancorp can help you invest, there is a link at the top of the episode description. You must have $2 million to invest with us, but that link will let you book a call with me during our next set of openings
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IPO 101: How an IPO Works (and Who’s Involved Before You Can Buy)
An IPO is the process of turning a private company into a public one. It’s not a moment where the stock simply “appears” on your brokerage app. Before that happens, shares have to be priced, sold, and distributed.
First is the company. Going public is a way to raise money for growth, give early owners a path to cash out some of their stake, and create a market where shares have a daily price instead of an occasional private one.
Next are the underwriters, usually large investment banks. Think of them as the organizers. They help the company market the deal, collect interest from potential buyers, set the initial terms, and decide how the first block of shares gets distributed.
Then come the big institutions—mutual funds, pensions, hedge funds, and other large pools of capital. These are the buyers who can commit meaningful dollars before the public market ever opens, and their demand plays a major role in how the initial pricing takes shape.
Finally, there’s the public market. That’s when the ticker goes live and the stock starts trading in the open—where price stops being negotiated and starts being contested. For most individual investors, this is the first realistic point of entry.
If you keep just one idea in mind, make it this: an IPO is a staged launch. The first shares are sold and distributed before you can place an order, and only then does the open market take over.
IPO Price vs Market Price: The Two Prices Everyone Confuses
Here’s where IPO headlines trick people: they talk about “the IPO price” as if it’s the price everyone could buy.
It isn’t.
There are two prices, and they happen in two different moments.
The first is the offer price. That’s the price set before public trading begins. It’s used for the initial sale of shares during the IPO process, and it’s the price you’ll hear quoted when someone says, “It priced at $X.”
The second is the market price—the price that appears once the stock starts trading on an exchange. That price is formed in real time by buyers and sellers in the open market, and it’s the price most of us can actually access.
Once you see the difference, the day-one headlines start to make more sense. When you hear, “The IPO popped 30%,” the comparison is usually offer price to early market price—not a return that every investor could have captured. If it opens above the offer price, it’s called a pop. If it opens below, it’s framed as a flop.
And this is why it’s worth sticking with the episode: if you want to understand why IPOs jump, who tends to benefit, and why most investors experience IPOs differently than the headlines suggest, it all starts here.
Why IPOs Pop—and Who Actually Gets the Offer Price
So why do IPOs pop at all? If a company is valuable, why not just set the price perfectly and capture every dollar?
Because an IPO price isn’t discovered in a clean, open auction. It’s set during a short window, with limited public history, and plenty of disagreement about what the business is worth. The underwriters are trying to land the plane: price it high enough to raise meaningful capital, but not so high that the stock stumbles out of the gate and the deal looks like a failure.
That’s where the pop comes from. During the roadshow, underwriters collect orders and feedback from large investors. They use that demand to set an offer price that gets the deal done and gives it momentum. In practice, that often means leaving a little room—pricing at a level where demand is likely to be stronger than the available shares. If the market’s appetite turns out to be even higher than the offer price reflects, the first public trades reprice the stock upward.
Then comes the next question: who actually gets the offer price?
In a hot IPO, demand exceeds supply. There aren’t enough shares to fill every request, so the underwriters ration them. And rationing isn’t random. Allocations tend to lean toward large, repeat participants—investors who show up deal after deal, can buy in size, and help create a stable launch. That’s not a moral judgment. It’s how a relationship-driven distribution system works.
Some brokerages do offer retail IPO access. But in the deals people are most excited about—the ones where a pop is most likely—allocations are often tight. Even eligible investors may get a small fill or none at all.
So the clean takeaway is this: the headline return is often tied to a price many investors never had a realistic shot at. And once trading begins, most people enter at the market price, where the trade is different.
After the IPO: Volatility, Lockups, and Insider Selling
Okay—so the ticker goes live. What happens next is often less about fundamentals and more about price discovery. The story is loud, expectations are high, and the market is trying to agree—quickly—on what this company is worth. That process can be choppy, especially in the first days and weeks, because so many investors are reacting at once to the same fresh narrative.
Then come a few predictable calendar events that can matter more than most people realize. The biggest is the lockup. In many IPOs, insiders and early investors can’t sell right away. When that restriction ends, more shares can come to market. Even if nothing changed about the business, the balance of buyers and sellers can change—and so can the stock’s behavior.
That’s why IPOs deserve a different mindset than long-term investing. If you’re tempted to buy early, it helps to know when those supply-and-demand dynamics can shift. I’ll include an IPO timeline table in the show notes—S-1 filing, first trading day, first earnings, lockup expiration, and index inclusion—so you can reference it quickly.
Should You Buy an IPO? Investing vs Trading
Now let’s put all of this where it belongs: inside the purpose of a portfolio.
The reason we invest is to grow our savings faster than the rate of inflation without taking undue risk. That’s the job. Not to win headlines. Not to tell a good story at a dinner party. Not to be early.
Headline IPOs—especially ones with as much gravity as SpaceX—tend to pull you in the opposite direction. They turn investing into an event. They create a scoreboard. They make it feel like there’s a narrow window where you either act or you miss out. That’s why, for most people, IPOs function more like a trade than an investment.
And I’m going to be direct: I don’t believe individual stocks belong in your long-term portfolio. I’ve laid out the case in Episode 166: Why You Don’t Have to Pick Winning Stocks.
If you feel the pull of “easy money,” run a simple thought experiment before you do anything.
First: How much would you have to put on this for it to meaningfully change your life? Not make you feel smart. Not give you a dopamine hit. Actually change your life.
Second: If it doesn’t go the way you expect, what changes? Do you lose sleep? Delay a goal? Feel pressured to make it back?
For most investors, the honest answer is uncomfortable: to be truly life-changing, a single stock has to be an outsized bet relative to your portfolio and net worth. And the odds of any individual stock trailing the broader market over the long run are higher than most people want to admit.
That’s why your plan shouldn’t require it. Your plan should work on the days you’re bored, and it should still work on the days the world is obsessed with one ticker.
The Calm Takeaway: Your Plan Doesn’t Need IPO Access
SpaceX might be a great company. If it IPOs, it will be a story people want to be part of—because it feels historic, and because it’s the kind of ticker that turns into conversation overnight.
But if you don’t get access to the offer price, that’s normal. That’s how the process works.
If you want help applying these ideas to your own plan—position sizing, diversification, tax decisions, and the difference between investing and trading—you can learn more about Plancorp here. We’re typically a fit for households with $2 million or more to invest, and if we are a fit, you can request an intro call during our next set of openings.
Until next time, to long-term investing.
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