What the SpaceX I.P.O. Means for You, and a Giant Act of Vandalism in D.C.
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Friday, June 12th. Here's what we're covering. This morning, SpaceX will make its debut on the stock market in what's poised to be the largest initial public offering in history. The IPO is expected to not just break the previous record set by the oil giant Saudi Aramco a few years ago, but likely double it, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion. The stock's performance will be a barometer for how enthusiastic people are about Elon Musk and all the things he's promised the company will do, like putting data centers into space, and even sending people to Mars. It will also test Wall Street's enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, since Musk rolled his AI company into SpaceX, too.
So far, the hype has been high, with investors going all in. But a lot of other people are also about to own a piece of SpaceX, whether they wanted to or not. That's because a lot of Americans' retirement plans, their 401Ks, include index funds that are going to automatically invest in SpaceX.
In the past, you normally wouldn't get a newly public company in your index. There'd be a big lag time for a number of reasons. But one of them is that stocks are very volatile in the early days and weeks and even months of trading as the market is established for them. Essentially, they're just much riskier than older companies that have an established history in the stock market as public companies.
Maureen Farrell covers Wall Street for The Times. She says that earlier this year, according to two people familiar with the situation, SpaceX told the world's largest stock indexes that once it went public, it didn't want to wait to be included like normal. It wanted an ASAP. And some have now changed their rules to allow that.
What we learned from our reporting is basically, in a lot of ways, the rules are being changed because of SpaceX. I mean, some of the index providers told us and have said that they didn't do it just for them. But it's been this idea that SpaceX is coming. So is Anthropic. So is OpenAI, some of the biggest companies ever. And there's a fear of missing out on these generational companies and missing out on the potential early gains there before they were in the index. We did talk to economists who said this decision was unprecedented and shocking in so many ways because they're exposing investors to risks of a very newly traded company.
Three updates on the Trump administration now from a major change for NATO to a giant act of vandalism on the National Mall.
First... Look, NATO is taking advantage of our country.
For years, President Trump has railed against NATO, saying the U.S. was contributing more than its fair share to the Transatlantic Military Alliance, which was formed after World War II.
Whether you like it or not, it's only as good as we are. If NATO doesn't have us, NATO is not very strong.
What does the SpaceX IPO mean for everyday investors?
Right now, The Times has learned that his administration is pulling back some key military resources, essentially scaling back the protections the U.S. has offered its allies in Europe for decades. According to two senior European officials, the U.S. plans to significantly reduce the number of fighter jets, reconnaissance planes and warships that it has previously committed for NATO operations there. The drawdown, which could happen very soon, would limit NATO's ability to launch long-range strikes and to conduct surveillance on Russia, for example.
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