SpaceX is raising $75 billion by selling 555.6 shares at $135 each. Do the math. That's $75,000.15. Not $75 billion. Someone at SpaceX divided when they should have multiplied, or the headline writer failed third grade arithmetic, or we're all pretending numbers mean whatever sounds most impressive.
To actually raise $75 billion at $135 per share, SpaceX would need to sell 555,555,555 shares. They're off by a factor of one million. Rounding error. Happens to the best of us.
The Nasdaq debut awaits, which means thousands of Robinhood users are currently Googling "how to buy IPO" and discovering they can't. They'll buy it the day after at $340 per share and sell at $87 three months later when Elon tweets a fart emoji at 3am. This is called price discovery.
Record-setting IPO, they say. Largest on record. Really moves the needle when you make up the numbers. I could raise $900 trillion by selling twelve shares at $400 per share. Wait, no. That's $4,800. See, I did it too. Numbers are hard when you're writing financial propaganda.
SpaceX builds rockets that land themselves, reusable spacecraft, and Starlink satellites that provide internet to rural Montana. Impressive stuff. But they can't multiply 555.6 times 135 correctly, which comes out to exactly $75,006, not $75 billion. Maybe they're pricing the shares at $135 million each. That would work. Accessible to the everyday investor.
The technical analysis here is simple: when the underlying mathematics of your headline don't survive a calculator, your stock probably won't survive earnings season.
Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash
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