Why Wall Street's Trillion-Dollar Forecasts for the SpaceX IPO Are Drawing Heavy Criticism
New York, Sunday, 7 June 2026.
As SpaceX prepares for its June 2026 debut, Morgan Stanley’s attempt to forecast the company’s earnings 14 years into the future highlights a concerning trend of unreliable market speculation.
The Folly of Fourteen-Year Forecasts
On June 4, 2026, Morgan Stanley distributed an analysis to top-tier investors projecting SpaceX’s financial metrics out to the year 2040 [1]. The investment bank predicted that the aerospace giant’s annual revenue could reach $3.4 trillion, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) exceeding $2.7 trillion [1]. Financial commentators have been quick to deride these long-term projections as highly speculative, with some analysts characterizing the forecasting models as “laughable” and dismissing the exercise as mere “f*ckery tomfoolery” [1]. The precision of these fourteen-year estimates implies a level of macroeconomic certainty that simply does not exist in modern financial markets [GPT].
Retail Frenzy and Suitability Concerns
Despite the questionable long-term forecasts, the immediate mechanics of the SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) are moving forward rapidly, with the company targeting a NASDAQ debut on June 12, 2026, under the ticker symbol SPCX [3][4]. On June 4, 2026, Fidelity Investments outlined the procedures for its retail brokerage customers to participate in what is widely expected to be the largest stock market debut in history [3]. The brokerage detailed mechanisms for retail investors to request shares, including alerts, indications of interest, allocation lotteries, and strict rules regarding the immediate flipping of allocated shares [3].
A Historic Valuation Meets a Float Squeeze
The structural mechanics of the SpaceX IPO present unprecedented challenges for institutional markets [4]. Underwritten by Goldman Sachs, the company’s S-1 filing outlines a massive valuation target between $1.75 trillion and $1.8 trillion, with the goal of raising $75 billion in new capital [4]. To put this capital raise into perspective, the newly issued shares will represent a fractional sliver of the company’s total equity, calculated at roughly 4.286 percent to 4.167 percent of the total valuation [4]. As podcast host Michael Batnick observed, floating such a small percentage of a multi-trillion-dollar company forces the question of where the requisite liquidity will originate [4].
Index Inclusion Confusion and Broader Market Impact
The anticipated pressure from passive funds was initially quantified by Bloomberg Intelligence, which estimated that index fund demand for SpaceX could reach nearly $20 billion [4]. Early projections suggested the company would rank approximately 195th in the S&P 500, placing it alongside established firms like Amgen—which boasts a market capitalization of roughly $182.5 billion and a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 23—and Gilead Sciences, valued at approximately $160 billion with a P/E of 17 [4]. However, this narrative was sharply disrupted on June 5, 2026, when the Financial Times reported that SpaceX will actually not be added to the S&P 500 index [1]. This exclusion fundamentally alters the immediate demand profile from passive domestic equity funds [alert! ‘the exact impact on the $20 billion passive demand estimate remains uncertain following the S&P 500 exclusion report’].