Sometimes, one of the hardest things to do as an investor is…nothing. And when I was considering the SpaceX investment opportunity ahead of its IPO, doing nothing was exactly the decision I made.
Just before SpaceX went public in June 2026, excitement surrounding the company was everywhere. After all, it would become the largest IPO in history. Headlines were breathless, investor enthusiasm was soaring, and retail investors were being offered unusual access to one of the world’s most talked-about companies.
Plenty of people were convinced that hesitating meant missing a once-in-a-generation investment opportunity. And I understood the excitement.
SpaceX is a fascinating company.
But I also believed its $135 IPO price, and the enormous valuation that came with it, required an extraordinary amount of future success to already be reflected in the price.
So I waited.
Then something very interesting happened.
SpaceX shares initially soared.
And then they fell.
But this isn’t really a story about whether I was “right” or “wrong” about SpaceX.
It’s a story about something much more important: why a great company isn’t necessarily a great investment at every price.
And why your investment process matters even when FOMO is telling you to throw it out the window.
The SpaceX Investment Story: What Happened After the IPO?
SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, with its shares beginning to trade publicly on the 12th of June 2026 under the ticker SPCX.
The excitement was extraordinary.
Shares initially climbed well above their IPO price, eventually reaching a record closing high of $211.39.
And yes, I watched them climb.
Did part of me wonder whether I had been too cautious?
Of course!
I may be a financial educator and former Wall Street professional, but I’m also a human being with access to financial news and a perfectly functioning FOMO button. 😆
But here’s the important part:
The stock price rising didn’t suddenly make the valuation more comfortable for me.
Nor did it change the reasons I had chosen to wait.
Eventually, the picture changed.
After reaching those early highs, SpaceX shares fell substantially, at one point trading below their $135 IPO price.
Does that mean I was “right forever”?
Absolutely not.
It doesn’t mean SpaceX is a bad company. It doesn’t mean its shares can’t recover or ultimately become an extraordinary long-term investment.
I may even decide at some point that the price and opportunity make sense for me.
But that’s precisely the point.
An investment decision shouldn’t be determined by whether everybody else appears to be making money today.
💡 Money Wisdom Tip: Do your research and don’t let FOMO take over your investment process.
A Great Company Can Still Be the Wrong Investment at the Wrong Price
This is one of the most important investing lessons I can share.
A great company and a great investment are not necessarily the same thing.
You can love a company’s products, believe deeply in the industry it operates in, or even be correct that the company will grow substantially over the next decade.
But the price you pay still matters.
Why?
Because when investors pay a very high valuation for a company, they aren’t simply betting that the business will perform well.
They’re often betting that it will perform exceptionally well enough to justify expectations already embedded in the share price.
That’s a much higher bar.
And this is particularly relevant in periods of intense excitement, when investors begin pricing companies based not simply on what they earn today, but on what they might earn many years into the future.
The AI Boom Is Becoming Very Expensive
SpaceX’s story is part of a much bigger question confronting investors:
How much money will companies need to spend before their enormous AI investments produce equally enormous and sustainable profits?
Consider Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
In the second quarter of 2026, Alphabet generated approximately $39.1 billion in operating cash flow.
Pretty healthy, right?
But during that same quarter, the company spent approximately $44.9 billion on capital expenditures, much of it connected to the enormous infrastructure demands surrounding AI.
The result was approximately $5.9 billion of negative free cash flow, an unusual development for one of the world’s most profitable technology businesses.
What Is Free Cash Flow?
Free cash flow, often abbreviated as FCF, is broadly the cash a company generates from its operations after accounting for the capital expenditures needed to maintain and grow the business.
I like to think about it this way:
You earned plenty of money, but after paying the bills and funding the big renovation, how much cash was actually left?
In Alphabet’s case during that particular quarter, the answer was less than zero.
That does not mean Alphabet is suddenly in financial trouble.
It remains an enormously profitable business with significant financial resources.
But it does illustrate something investors shouldn’t ignore:
The AI race is becoming very, very expensive.
For a while, markets appeared willing to reward companies simply for announcing ambitious AI investments.
Increasingly, investors are asking another question:
What return will all this spending ultimately generate?
And when hundreds of billions of dollars are potentially involved, that’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
💡 Money Wisdom Tip: When researching a company, don’t look only at revenue growth. Pay attention to how much cash the business must spend to achieve that growth.
The $45 Billion Lesson in Leverage
And that brings me to one of the wildest investing stories of 2026.
Situational Awareness is an AI-focused hedge fund founded by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher who became known for his writing about the future of artificial intelligence.
The fund reportedly grew dramatically as its concentrated bets on AI, semiconductor, and infrastructure companies soared.
At its peak, the portfolio reportedly reached approximately $45 billion. But there was an important complication: Leverage.
The fund had reportedly borrowed heavily to amplify its investments and when leverage is used, it can magnify gains when investments move in your favor, but unfortunately, it works just as efficiently in the opposite direction.
When several of the fund’s investments began falling sharply, lenders demanded additional collateral.
That’s what we call a margin call.
And here’s the part every investor should understand: A margin call doesn’t care how brilliant your long-term investment thesis might be. It doesn’t care whether you believe your favorite company will dominate its industry in 2030.
What does it care for?
Whether you can provide enough collateral today.
Situational Awareness ultimately sold much of its public-stock portfolio, including positions acquired by Citadel, as it reduced leverage and dealt with the liquidity pressure.
The fund reportedly lost approximately 67% in July alone.
Remarkably, after the extraordinary gains that preceded the collapse, reports indicated it was still up roughly 80% for the year at the end of July.
So was its founder right or wrong about AI? We don’t know yet. And that is precisely what makes the story so useful.
His long-term thesis could eventually prove correct while the way the investment was structured still created catastrophic short-term risk. But in investing, being right eventually isn’t always enough. You also need to be able to survive the journey.
💡 Money Wisdom Tip: Before using borrowed money to invest, remember that leverage magnifies losses as well as gains and can force you to sell at exactly the wrong time.
What the SpaceX Investment Story Teaches Us About FOMO
One of the most psychologically difficult moments for an investor isn’t necessarily watching something you own fall. Sometimes it’s watching something you decided not to buy soar without you.
Suddenly, your carefully considered decision feels foolish, as everyone else appears to be getting richer.
And your brain starts whispering:
Maybe I should just buy it now.
This is where behavioral finance becomes incredibly important.
Our investment decisions aren’t made by spreadsheets alone. They’re influenced by emotion, social comparison, fear, excitement, regret, and our very human desire not to feel left behind.
FOMO can encourage us to confuse price movement with evidence: A stock going up doesn’t automatically prove that it was undervalued. And a stock falling doesn’t automatically prove that the underlying company is bad.
Price and value are related, but they are not the same thing.
That’s why having an investment process before emotions take over can be so powerful.
💡 Money Wisdom Tip: Before buying an investment because its price is soaring, ask yourself: What has changed about my original investment thesis other than the share price?
Risk Tolerance Isn’t the Same as Risk Capacity
We often talk about risk tolerance, meaning how emotionally comfortable you are with investment losses, but there’s another concept that matters just as much:
RISK CAPACITY
This is is your financial ability to withstand losses without those losses forcing you to change course.
Because the thing is that you might genuinely believe you can emotionally tolerate a 30% or 40% decline. But what if you need that money next year? What if you’ve borrowed against the investment? What if losing that capital compromises your emergency fund, retirement plans, business, or family’s financial security?
Your emotional willingness to take risk and your financial ability to take risk are not necessarily the same thing.
And that distinction matters enormously.
My Money Wisdom With Heart®: Being Right Isn’t Enough
There’s an old Wall Street saying that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
Put simply:Your investment idea may eventually prove right, but that’s not much comfort if you run out of money first.
And ain’t that the truth?
That’s why all the below matters
- Valuations
- Diversification
- Liquidity
- Your financial capacity to withstand losses
Investing isn’t about chasing every exciting company or predicting every market move correctly.
It’s about building a process that allows you to participate in long-term wealth creation without putting the rest of your financial life at unnecessary risk.
So before making your next investment, try asking yourself two questions:
“Why do I believe this is a good investment at this price?”
And perhaps even more importantly:
“Can my finances withstand it if I’m wrong…or simply early?”
That, to me, is investing with both wisdom and heart.
With corazón,
Anna
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Anna Orenstein-Cardona is an MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Alum, Financial Coach, and NFEC-Certified Financial Educator (CFEI) who empowers individuals, organizations, and schools to grow their money knowledge in fun and creative ways. She worked on Wall Street and in the City of London for over two-decades, before launching her financial education and coaching business, Wear Your Money Crown®.
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