Benjamin Felix

There are some pretty interesting stories about ETFs that have gotten exposure to SpaceX.

There are some like Fidelity.

There are a couple of fund companies, active managers who legitimately participate in fundraising and were able to invest in some of these companies early, which is pretty cool.

It'll be interesting to see how that affects the returns of those funds, because obviously this isn't their only holding.

We'll keep an eye on that.

But there are some ETFs that tried to get exposure through special purpose vehicles later on.

So there's one ETF that attracted quite a bit of reporting and attention.

The ER shares private public crossover ETF.

So it bought into SpaceX through an SPV in December, 2024.

Now SPVs are not liquid, not very liquid at least.

So this ETF, it's XOVR, I think is the ticker.

It's had to deal with some pretty unique practical issues because it's a liquid vehicle.

It's an ETF holding a large stake in an illiquid asset.

So Jeff Tak from Morningstar has done a bunch of interesting writing on this.

What's even more interesting though, at least to me, is that despite SpaceX reportedly rising in value substantially since this ETF invested in it in December, 2024, the fund has actually lost money in absolute terms and even more so relative to the market since it made that investment.

There's a whole bunch of reasons for this, and Jeff Tack goes through a bunch of the reasons in an article.

A lot of it is just that the other securities, the public securities that are in the ETF have performed quite poorly.

Jeff Tack, he's the managing director for Morningstar Research Services, if people don't know who he is.

he wisely notes in one of his posts on this that when it comes to investing, the more you covet something, the more you should probably question your desire to own it in the first place.

I think a lot of investors are so eager to get a piece of SpaceX and some of these other companies.