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| By Chris Graebe |
Go back to 2019 for a minute …
Uber (UBER) was the most talked-about IPO in years.
The ride-sharing giant had already transformed how the world moved.
It was in 70 countries, it was a verb and even your grandmother knew what Uber was.
Wall Street analysts slapped astronomical valuations on it, retail investors were salivating and financial media ran wall-to-wall coverage for months leading up to the big day.
And then, it went public …
Uber priced its shares at $45 a pop on May 9, 2019.1
It started trading on May 10 and had already dropped before the closing bell.
The stock rose slightly into July but then found gravity again.
By the end of the year, UBER was trading around $30.
Investors who bought the IPO watched their position sink nearly 33% in the months that followed.
The hype was real. The business was real. The returns? Not so much.
But while Uber was stealing every headline in its pre-IPO stages, something interesting was happening in the stocks around it.
Names like Element Fleet Management (EFN) for fleet management technology …
Verra Mobility (VRM) for mapping software and …
The Travelers Companies (TRV) for gig-economy insurance.
All of these were quietly running up.
These were the picks-and-shovels companies that nobody was writing or talking about.
Sound Familiar?
It should …
Fast forward to today, and I'm watching the same story play out again.
Only this time, the hype surrounds SpaceX. And it’s MUCH bigger than Uber’s was.
Elon Musk's company is going public on Friday.
The valuation being thrown around is $2 trillion, which would shatter Saudi Aramco's record for the largest IPO in history.
And just like 2019, you can already see it rippling through the stocks in its orbit (pardon the pun.)
Rocket Lab (RKLB) is up.
MDA Space (MDA) is on a tear.
And Intuitive Machines (LUNR) has seen serious momentum.
The SpaceX effect is already lifting stocks across its own and adjacent sectors. And the company isn't even public yet.
That's the power of a genuine market moment.
When something this big captures the world's attention, capital moves, sentiment shifts and investors go looking for anything connected to the theme.
And some pre-IPO plays absolutely do reward patient investors.
But I can tell you this …
After many years of hunting these deals, I’ve learned that the best opportunity in a hype cycle is almost never the thing generating the hype.
When Uber went public at a valuation that had already priced in years of growth, there was simply no room left for early investors to win big.
SpaceX — at $2 trillion — has the same problem, but even more so.
You're not buying some hidden secret when you buy SpaceX before the IPO.
Every analyst has already done the math, every institution has already positioned itself and the big money got in long before today.
Where I'm Actually Looking
When a tidal wave of capital and attention hits a sector, it doesn't just flow to the obvious names.
The entire ecosystem benefits.
NASA has already announced a three-phase Moon base blueprint, with hard deadlines.
Billions in government contracts are about to flow to private companies across the entire lunar supply chain.
SpaceX will capture some of that. But not all of it.
The rest will be captured by suppliers of power systems, habitat modules, communications relays, terrain vehicles, life support technology and more.
And most of the companies building those things are still small. Still early. Still raising their first serious rounds of capital.
I’ve already been quietly watching one of them.
It's not on your radar, it’s not on CNBC and it’s not the red-hot IPO SpaceX is.
But it's directly tied to the billion-dollar-backed lunar mission.
It's in its earliest funding stage, the “Alpha Round”, before the venture capitalists and the institutional money arrive and reprice everything.
And best of all, without the SpaceX price tag.
I know how to get us in before this deal goes from obscure to overpriced once the big money catches the scent.
This is the real opportunity hiding in all the SpaceX hype.
It’s not the rocket, but what the rocket needs.
Watch my special event to get the full picture.
Don’t miss this!
Happy hunting!
Chris Graebe
