Writing this from somewhere between the Acropolis and the agora, with markets falling on the day, it feels apt to contemplate what the ancient Greeks might make of the current investment landscape. As Athens has stood for millennia, so too has human nature, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the behaviour unfolding around what could be the most consequential IPO wave in market history.
SpaceX is targeting a $2 trillion valuation, with shares set to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on 12 June. The excitement is genuinely without modern precedent, and Musk has structured the offering in an unusually populist fashion: Reuters reported he is discussing allocating up to 30% of IPO shares to retail investors, at least three times the typical allocation in standard public offerings.
Yet the financial reality beneath the spectacle warrants careful examination. SpaceX is looking to raise at least $75 billion having made $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, though losses ballooned from a profit of $791 million in 2024 to a loss of $4.94 billion last year. Morningstar’s discounted cash flow valuation sits at $780 billion, roughly 48% below its private market valuation, and the firm stated that the IPO does not offer the best entry point for retail investors, with greater margin of safety likely to emerge later.
SpaceX does not stand alone. The twelve most-watched companies in the current pipeline represent a combined estimated value of over $3 trillion, with AI and AI-adjacent companies accounting for roughly 92% of that figure, making 2026 the most AI-concentrated IPO year on record. OpenAI is laying groundwork for a Q4 2026 listing near $1 trillion, and Anthropic has confidentially filed with the SEC. Combined potential demand from the leading names alone is estimated at $100 to $200 billion, exceeding the entire 2025 US IPO market by two to four times.
This raises an uncomfortable question: what will investors sell to fund participation? The existing giants (Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft) are the most liquid assets most portfolios hold. If capital must be raised to chase the new, it will likely come from reducing the established. The very concentration of wealth in a handful of technology names that has driven markets to extraordinary heights contains within it the mechanism by which those markets can fall rapidly.
The backdrop already carries the hallmarks of elevated risk. The S&P 500’s Shiller Price-to-Earnings Ratio has averaged roughly 17.4 over 155 years, yet recently closed at 42.32, with only one other period in history recording a pricier market: the lead-up to the dot-com bubble. Jamie Dimon noted “there’s a lot of exuberance out there,” echoing Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” of 1996, after which markets motored higher for three more years before the bubble burst, wiping 49% from the S&P 500 and 78% from the Nasdaq. The parallel is imperfect but not irrelevant.
It is here, in the shadow of the Parthenon, that ancient wisdom feels surprisingly current. The Greeks understood something about human nature that no algorithm has improved upon. Because there is no history to restrain the imagination, the future can appear limitless for a new thing, and futures perceived as limitless can justify valuations well beyond past norms. The ancient Greeks called this hubris. Modern markets call it a price-to-sales ratio of 94 times.
Epictetus taught the discipline of distinguishing between what lies within our control and what does not. Whether SpaceX lists successfully is not within any individual investor’s control. What is within control is how much one saves, how diversified a portfolio is constructed, and how one manages the emotional response to a market narrative designed to provoke urgency. Several analysts have noted that this IPO wave is essentially a transfer of accumulated position risk from early investors to retail participants and pension funds. That observation deserves to sit quietly in the mind before any investment decision is made.
Aristotle counselled the doctrine of the mean: virtue lies between extremes. Not all cash, which erodes through inflation, but not all speculation either. Renewal and rationality are not the same thing, and the distance between them is where portfolios come to grief.
The Athenians built the Acropolis with extraordinary precision and patience. The investors who navigate this period most successfully will bring the same qualities to their portfolios: clear-eyed about valuation, unhurried by spectacle, and guided by judgement that has seen many cycles of exuberance come and go.
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