[runako]

Since the S-1 filing, xAI has taken over and is likely the largest share of revenue. I would estimate that ~95%+ of xAI revenue, and 100% of its profit, is from renting their datacenters.

This is a datacenter REIT bolted onto a social media company bolted onto launch business bolted onto a niche ISP. The expected price to sales is ~100x. The best datacenter REITs trade at ~10x and pay a dividend, which SpaceX does not. Meta trades at ~7x sales. Comcast is one of the best-run ISPs, and it pays a 5.5% dividend on a stock trading at < 1x sales.

To say SpaceX is overvalued is to even beginning to convey the magnitude of the situation. It's going to be very painful when the valuation normalizes.

[rootusrootus]

TSLA has a forward PE of ~200x. That is probably the most logical comparison with SpaceX. Proof that the market can stay irrational for quite a long time.

It fills me with a bit of dread about the future of the market. I am 10 years out from retirement, have a bit over 1M sitting in that market, and I wonder if it will implode in the meantime. I am fairly committed to the "invest like a dead man" (i.e. index funds, no touch), but the world we live in today makes me have real doubts that the next few decades will look anything like the last few.

[davedx]

Start gradually converting your equity to bonds is the standard advice on that timeframe. If you're dreading equity drawdowns, that's what fixed income is for.

[Gareth321]

Bonds are no longer recommended. Current research indicates 100% equities to be the best composition leading up to, and past, retirement.

To point, the economic uncertainties around geopolitics, AI, and war, plus irresponsible debt spending by governments and the prospect of QE (and higher inflation), is pushing long term rates steadily higher. There’s a reasonable chance that 30y treasuries are nearing 6% by the end of next year. Remember that rates and bond prices are inversely related. Anyone who holds bonds in this market will likely lose money. Holding to maturity won’t help much either because if inflation continues to rise, as is a major concern, most or all of that 5% yield gets eaten.

[k2enemy]

> Bonds are no longer recommended. Current research indicates 100% equities to be the best composition leading up to, and past, retirement.

Are you referring to Anarkulova et al? Might be worth mentioning that the fixed income part is replaced with international equity, not more domestic equity.

[dhosek]

That’s been something I’ve started doing. The nice part of the bond chunk of my investment portfolio is the current income aspect of it, with monthly dividends that give an annualized return of a touch under 4% on top of the capital growth.

[chrisweekly]

4% on top of the capital growth? Please ELI5.

[jonfromsf]

Stocks for the Long Run makes the pretty compelling case that over longer holding periods stocks are less risky than bonds.

[zie]

Their definition of long run and your definition of long run are probably different.

Also, it should be noted, just because it's the optimal to have the most $'s that shouldn't be the goal. The goal should be to survive your retirement with "enough".

And it should also be mentioned, most people can't stomach holding 100% equities, for a very good reason. When the 40-60% market crash happens, people get emotional and make emotional decisions. Sure there are the lucky few that can hold out, but most can't. Are you going to be one of the few lucky ones? If you haven't yet been through it once(last one in the USA was 2008/9), how do you know for sure?

[skywhopper]

Yes, and “I’m nearing retirement” is the opposite of the long run.

[gommm]

What would you recommend to increase international equity exposure? Index funds ETF like VWRA?

[Gareth321]

For most people, $VT (or VWRA) is optimal. You should have a U.S. tilt because most growth is coming out of the U.S. $VT will naturally rebalance into international equities on that growth. If you already have a U.S. heavy portfolio and want more international exposure, $VXUS.

[gretch]

> Anyone who holds bonds in this market will likely lose money.

Yes, you lose money (or more precisely you lose opportunity) but you gain certainty. Which is what you want for retirement

That’s pretty much the definition of risk premium.

[randerson]

Bonds only give you certainty to the extent that inflation remains certain.

Stocks generally rise with inflation, whereas bonds continue paying out the same nominal amount, which buys you less over time.

As a retiree I'm 50/45/5 in stocks/bonds/cash, having opted for a conservative portfolio. The stocks are the only reason I haven't lost buying power. But the bonds have performed so poorly that I've barely kept up with inflation despite the amazing bull run in stocks.

[kgwgk]

You may not have heard of TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities) but they give you certainty even if inflation is uncertain.

Currently you get 2.75% yield in real terms for the 30 year maturity: https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US30YTIP

[Marazan]

That's why you buy inflation linked bonds

[throwaway2037]

Wow, I am surprised that you think 50% in stocks as a retiree is a "conservative portfolio".

[marticode]

Are we talking about bonds or government bonds here? The former will beat inflations assuming you don't just buy AAA rated ones. Investment grade perpetual bonds in US dollars yield over 6.5% on a Yield-to-call basis.

[lokar]

It depends on the goal / priority. In most financial / retirement advice they are focused on average middle class Americans. They tend to have too little savings, and not a lot of options.

If you have more than enough saved to meet your basic needs, it does (IMO) make sense to give up some total income for lower variance.

[SecretDreams]

I sleep on certainty. I feel bad for the people based their futures entirely on a trajectory from a time we'll look back on as "utterly unsustainable".

[toomuchtodo]

If you don’t have hope when you have little else, you don’t have anything. The behavior is understandable, even if wildly irrational.

[ifwinterco]

Bonds will give you poor (probably negative) real returns, but if you're 10-20 years away from dying you're more concerned with wealth preservation than growing your wealth.

People have forgotten this but equities are an infinite duration asset that are prone to periodic, significant, often violent crashes.

(Edit: often at a time when everyone is absolutely convinced they're the best asset class...)

You can keep some equity exposure but you don't want 1929 or 2008 to happen the day after you retire when you might live for another 30 years

[GuB-42]

The theory I have seen when they say we should convert into bounds near retirement is that you don't really get to decide when to sell, that's money you need to live. And if you are unlucky enough to need money when there is a market crash, you are screwed.

Bounds are not as volatile, so even if you lose some money from inflation, you are less likely to lose a lot of money, money you need to live, from the whims of the market. You want to protect your capital, yields don't matter as much if you near the end of your life.

If you are younger, and you make reasonable investments and not gambles, you can expect that your value will go up (more so than with bounds) within a decade or two, and because you have income, you don't need that money and you can wait for the market to recover before selling.

[bradleyjg]

TIPS are yielding 2.1-2.75% _real_ across the curve from 10 to 30 years out.

[queuebert]

Worth noting the cost of dealing with Treasury's absolute dumpster fire of a website, though.

[bradleyjg]

I bonds have to be bought from that website but tips can be bought from dealers.

[throwaway2037]

Why not use a broker? I usually recommend Interactive Brokers here.

[tony69]

There’s TIPS ETFs

[SkiFire13]

> Remember that rates and bond prices are inversely related. Anyone who holds bonds in this market will likely lose money.

That's assuming you sell the bonds before their end.

[davedx]

"Current research" Citation needed. Multiple, given the extraordinary claim.

[throwwbonds]

Could you please link to the research?

[rootusrootus]

I'm technically not really in pure index funds, I just wanted to avoid trying to complicate my thoughts. Nearly all of my investments are in VFORX or Schwab's equivalent, and have been for a long time. So they are really composed of total market funds, bonds, etc, and Vanguard changes the ratio a bit as 2036 approaches. So while not really an index fund, from my perspective as a lay investor I treat it like that and consider myself an honorary Boglehead. I just put money in and forget about it.

[throwaway2037]

I looked at the fund (VFORX) here: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...

It looks excellent for your needs, and have an incredibly low expensive ratio of 8bps(!). Currently, it is 75% stocks, and 25% bonds. Don't worry about a bubble in the stock market.

EDIT (after reading many, many more negative comments below):

The problem with discussing your investments online, there are a million negative replies. No one ever says: "Yeah, looks pretty good. Leave it alone." I'm here to be that guy.

[rootusrootus]

> I'm here to be that guy.

I really appreciate when someone chooses to be that guy.

[digitaltrees]

You absolutely need to get inflation adjusted bonds. Otherwise you’ll get wiped out. I am in the krugman, stiglitz monetary camp; so not prone to constant fear of hyperinflation but what the government is doing makes inflation certain and the only way out a fairly painful recession either of will be hard on equity and bonds.

The market of a good leader is a lack of chaos. We are seeing the effects of a chaotic mind untethered from an accurate view of reality. Buckle up

[bsder]

One of the lessons from 2008 is that even the contrary position gets obliterated when the whole damn system implodes.

So, the optimists all swim in the cash while your contrary position fails to keep pace with the bull market; and then the bear market hits and you all get obliterated equally.

[gorgonian]

As others have pointed out, bonds are barely (or not) keeping up with inflation. I would like to suggest a third alternative to stock index and bonds: stable dividend stocks. They should increase in value along with inflation but still pay out a steady dividend as long as the company is strong.

[throwaway2037]

    > As others have pointed out, bonds are barely (or not) keeping up with inflation.

I see this sentiment a lot, but the stats do not hold up. For example, the annual inflation rate in the US in 2025 was 2.7%. That number comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For looking at corporate bond rates, it is useful to consider the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index (aka "the Agg"). It has a weighted average maturity of about 8 years (intermediate-term), currently has a yield-to-maturity of about 4.75%.

Everytime I see a debate of stocks vs bonds on the Internet, someone pops into the convo to remind everyone about "stable" dividend stocks. Honestly, for sophisticated investors, I just to don't see this strategy frequently deployed. It seems more like talking heads on the Internet. Has anyone done backtesting on performance of high div stocks vs some combination of S&P 500 and investment grade corp bonds? I would expect the latter to greatly outperform.

[zie]

Very different risk profiles.

Bonds are about steady cash flow, not about total return. "stable" dividend stocks are almost never really stable when the financial world crashes.

[throwaway2037]

    > "stable" dividend stocks are almost never really stable when the financial world crashes.

Completely agree. Also, many div stocks are just one industrial accident or scandal away from a huge drop in their stock price. People who tout preferred shares are in a similar camp in my opinion. As we discovered in 2008/2009, during a crash, there is no where safe except cash. Suddenly, all financial assets have a correlation of 1.0.

[oezi]

With the big caveat that strong dividend yields can be an indicator that the market is considering the company to do poorly in the future.

[riffraff]

Buy inflation linked bonds? They won't yield much above inflation but if you have >1M that's enough to last through retirement.

[solenoid0937]

This is absolutely terrible advice and is out of touch with modern financial understanding. Bonds feel psychologically safer, but lead to failure more often than total market equity portfolios, even when you account for market crashes.

https://youtu.be/p25PPBgMiEk

[rootusrootus]

I feel like I should go learn some more. I'm not in a pure index fund, I'm really in VFORX (almost completely, I'm not too original nor sophisticated financially and don't try to pick my own stock picks these days except with my "lunch money" just for fun). Do you think something like VFORX is a bad option? It's actively managed, so the fees will be a little higher than a pure index fund, but it's Vanguard and the fees are still really low. And it has total market components in addition to bonds.

[solenoid0937]

Active management in general is a poor idea. You'll get better risk adjusted returns by investing in total world equities (like VT). Check out Bogleheads to learn the basics. If you want to get more advanced, you can learn about factor investing as well, but VT is enough for the vast majority.

If you want to get intuition for why this works, this is a really fun and interesting video: https://youtu.be/TQuxVz52w2w

[donbox]

For VFOROX, the expense ratio is 0.08% which is pretty low. Also VT is 45% of it. VFOROX looks well balanced to me, with 3:1 equity to bond ratio.

https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...

[ifwinterco]

The boglehead approach has worked fantastically for ~40 years, but now that everyone is doing it, it may no longer be the case going forwards.

Normally with these things when absolutely everyone is crowded on one side of the boat, you want to be on the other side

[senordevnyc]

I always thought the psychological safety was exactly part of the point, since 100% equity portfolios do better in theory than practice, because people are more likely to panic sell.

[GoatOfAplomb]

I agree with everything in the video you linked (which is not surprising, given it's Ben Felix). That includes the parts about equities being less risky than bonds in very important ways, but also the parts about behavioral loss tolerance and risk capacity, and how they can indicate higher bond allocation.

So I disagree that "If you're dreading equity drawdowns, that's what fixed income is for" is absolutely terrible advice.

[eep_social]

What you said is not what the linked video says, so at best this is terrible advice piling onto terrible advice.

[solenoid0937]

It is precisely what the video says. Ben has discussed this multiple times as well, not just in this video. If you have better behavioral tolerance for volatility (as in you're not the type to panic sell), total market equities will outperform and lead to less failure in retirement.

[zie]

While partially true, that "If you have better behavioral tolerance for volatility" is HUGE. Most people can not do this. Once they see their net worth go from $x to $x/2 or worse, they panic sell. People are emotional beings and it's very very hard to not let your emotions dictate what's going on.

If you haven't lived through a market panic and crash(last one in the US was 2008/2009), then chances are you shouldn't count yourself as being able to do it.

Also, their 100% equity time frames are measured in many lifetimes, not in a single lifetime.

If the goal is to have the biggest $ balance, then sure 100% equities for the win, but if the goal is to survive your retirement with little worry, 100% equities is a terrible idea.

Bonds provide stable cash flow. Equities provide growth/return. Use both in the appropriate amounts for your situation.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

PE isn't a great way to value a company in their growth phase.

Amazon's PE in 2013 was 3000+, but you'd still be up almost 20x if you purchased their stock back then.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/markets-ne...

That doesn't mean Tesla or SpaceX are good buys though. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't.

[throwawaycan]

Bus Tesla isn’t in anything looking like a growth phase

[thelastgallon]

2024 total deliveries: 1,789,226

2025 total deliveries: 1,636,129

8% decline YOY, Tesla shut down production of Model S & X. Eventually, they will become a pure speculation as a service stock, with zero production. But its cheaper to produce than bitcoin, no energy needs to be expended, runs on pure Musk energy!

[throwaway2037]

I feel that the value of their supercharger network is overlooked. No one outside of China is even close to their global footprint. It would probably be a great business to spin out of Tesla if they pivot away from building cars. When I watch YouTubers talk about the trouble of getting their EVs charged, many complain that competitors are much worse on a variety of metrics. Time and time again, they favour Tesla. And these are not Tesla fanatics -- many don't even own a Tesla.

[thelastgallon]

The charging networks will be largely irrelevant in the long run. People go to gas stations because there is no supply of petrol to homes/offices. Electricity is available at every building, where people live and work. Cars are parked for 22+ hours a day, and eventually you can charge anywhere you park. No need to going to a special place just to charge cars.

[blonder]

That value is only growing as new supercharger builds are now compatible with almost all EVs in the US. Supercharge.info is a good 3rd party website for tracking superchargers, and is interesting to play around with filters to look at how the supercharger buildout has progressed.

[maxlin]

They shut down production of S & X to make more capability for cars that they want to focus on and which sell way more, AND Cybercab.

Tesla grows in large steps. Next big step is Robotaxis, which is well on its way. After that, robots, for which they have the best real-world AI platform for.

You could say Tesla is a speculation stock as well when they had released the Roadster. Tesla shorters always lose.

[throwaway2037]

    > Tesla shorters always lose.

This is categorically untrue. Look at a chart of their stock from 2020 forward. It has massive spikes up and down. Plenty of shorters made good money in those falls using put options.

[mrhottakes]

> They shut down production of S & X to make more capability for cars that they want to focus on and which sell way more, AND Cybercab.

Which Tesla models sell more than the S and X?

[rootusrootus]

> Tesla shorters always lose

Isn't that true more often than not no matter what company you try to short? It's a tough game to play.

[sroussey]

It is in the shrinking stage with robot dreams.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

It might be. It might not be. That's where the money is or isn't.

I think the mature part of their business is 3/Y, energy storage, and maybe cybertruck, although I also think it's too early to call it because it depends on lower cost cell in house cell production and they only started that recently.

In the near term, the growth part is Semi, cybercab, FSD, lithium cell production, and maybe cybertruck.

In the long term, it's potentially Optimus, more general autonomy, and gigafactories.

[sethops1]

The growth part of Tesla is the increasingly large promises of snake oil Elon can spin.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

That's what many said when they were ramping the S/X, the 3/Y, and energy storage.

https://www.wired.com/2009/10/audi-etron/

That doesn't mean they can't make a mess of things all by themselves. But comparing their infra investments/growth strategy to snake oil when they've gone from nothing to $100 billion/year in 15+ years might be short sighted.

[tsimionescu]

Semi is DoA, FSD has been 1 year away for 10 years now give or take, cybercab is flailing, cybertruck same, and China is eating everyone's lunch on lithium cells.

[throwaway2037]

Why do you think "Semi is DoA"? The current offering for heavy haul electric trucks is tiny (very few competitors), but the addressable market is huge. I think there is a good chance we will be surprised by its success. Even if you dislike the wild hype around Elon Musk (I don't care for it), it is hard to disagree that he has built an incredible EV company. The products they produce are excellent (minus the Cybertruck, too early to say for Cybercab), both from a hardware and software perspective. I think they can do the same for heavy haul electric trucks. The economics of diesel vs electric for heavy haul trucks is a no-brainer. Diesel is much more expensive per kilometer compared to electricity. And maintenance is much cheaper for electric vehicles.

Before finishing this reply, I checked for recent news about the Tesla Semi. I learned that they have a new separate factory (1.7m sq feet!) that has started production and has capacity to produce 50,000 Semis annually. It is next door to the original Gigafactory.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

What you're saying about Semi and cybercab is what everyone said about S/X and 3/Y.

https://www.wired.com/2009/10/audi-etron/

They might might fail, but I wouldn't bet on it. Also cybercab isn't out yet, so any discussion is premature at best.

Cybertruck has been disappointing, but I think a big part of that is cost. They started in house dry 4680 cell/pack production a couple months ago, so we'll see how that goes over the next few years.

Even with China subsidizing cell production and being dominant in the world market, Tesla is still at 150gwh/year compared to 200gwh/year from BYD.

The big question is how the dry cell 4680 packs will perform and how well they can scale production if performance is adequate.

FSD is always a year away, but that's generally OK as long as it keeps improving and there isn't a comparable product in their cost bracket. If someone leapfrogs them, they're done. If not, they might be able to roll everything up all the way through Optimus.

[Waterluvian]

About 10 years out as well. I’ve concluded I just invest a very balanced set of index funds and bonds and GICs across a handful of institutions, and then invest in my home because even if the housing market collapses I get to enjoy my nice home.

Other than that I’m just not over investing for retirement and instead making sure the money is spent today on family growth and experience.

I eventually just got tired of everyone with an opinion on what doing it right looks like or how to predict the market.

[zuzululu]

would you invest in vending machines

[tony69]

Plenty of hedged equity funds out there. Trade some performance for peace of mind.

[throwaway2037]

What is a "hedged equity fund"? Can you provide an example?

[zuzululu]

there's no such thing. He's talking about L/S funds. The market neutral funds survive by capitalizing edge cases but during real market turmoil the whole thing blows up.

[davedx]

Eh, Tesla had a relatively normal growth company valuation for a while when they were growing strongly. The problem is the stock still hasn't compressed the multiple back down as growth stagnated... because the market swapped out "valuation based growth" for "call option on robotaxi success" at the blink of an eye.

[WarmWash]

Robotaxi failed so now it's Optimus bots.

[maxlin]

Failed? When? It's not doing too bad last I checked. While the competition flounders.

Robotaxi is the next great growth thing. After that, it's Optimus.

[sroussey]

The truly terrifying thing is that someone could short the Musk companies, and with one bullet can cause them to drop 50-90% right away (thanks to meme-ness). And they are valued so high that such a person could make billions overnight, maybe 10s of billions. Terrifying to be Must or anyone that shares a car or plane with him.

[simondotau]

Add that to the litany of reasons why shorting should be illegal. There is some value to shorting, but it doesn't justify the consequences.

[gowld]

And also, longs? The war in Iran has actually killed thousands of people, for market-manipulation purposes.

[mystraline]

We've been diversifying with physical metals.

Stocks, bonds, etc are effectively NFTs of "you own a monkey image". That monkey image can go poof on a 'market correction' aka 95% of investors lose everything.

With precious metals, you own the material. And silver, gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium and others have innate usage for a variety of industrial and jewelery uses. Their prices may change, but catalytics arent just going to bottom out.

We still have stocks, cause 401k's. But we also have a sizable metal buffer now.

[gowld]

"Stocks, bonds, etc" are nearly the entirely of the real economy. 95% of the value of gold is "you own a monkey image". The value of gold for catalytics is tiny. If gold wasn't used as a reserve currency for the world economy, it would be extremely cheap for industrial and jewelery uses.

[gordon_freeman]

In a similar situation: I basically have just 2 funds in my retirement portfolio: SnP500 index fund (75%) AND Berkshire Hathaway B shares (25%)

from my research I know that in years where SnP500 drops too much (recessionary periods), BRK-B would soften the blow as Value stocks tend to do well in such times. And usually that works for me.

[toomuchtodo]

What about swapping the SP500 for VT (total world equities)?

[throwaway2037]

For those unaware (myself included), VT is the Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF which "tracks the FTSE Global All Cap Index, covering roughly 9,000 stocks across more than 40 developed and emerging markets."

I see this argument a lot online: "You need more diversity." First, you didn't provide any reason or evidence about why this is a good idea. Second, "more diversity" isn't always better.

The S&P 500 has crushed VT since inception (June 2008). Most people will be surprised to learn that adding smaller cap (domestic) stocks, or international developed country stocks, or emerging market stocks will probably reduce your returns. As an example, you can compare the returns of S&P 500 vs Russell 2000 since 2005 [1]. It is not even close -- S&P 500 crushes again. Also, the vol in S&P 500 was lower than Russell 2000.

My investment philosophy comes directly from Warren Buffett: "Never bet against America". Of the three largest economic zones in the world with free markets (United States, Europe, and Japan), the United States is by far the most dynamic. Ask yourself: In the next 30 years (or more), which of those three regions will grow the most? In my view: Absolutely the United States.

Finally, to people who say that you need international stocks in your portfolio else you are "missing out". You don't. Why? The S&P 500 already has 30% of revenues from countries outside the United States. [2]

[1] https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/compare-indexes/russell-2000-vs...

[2] https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/research/researc...

[mafuy]

I do not understand how you can talk about US, EU and Japan but not mention China. Because I'd bet China is in a similar league and has better prospects than any of the three.

[oezi]

China's equities aren't really tradable. If they were it would be nice.

[throwaway2037]

China is not considered a developed market nor "free". Also, in most developed markets, when the economy is strong, the stock market will boom. China has many, many years when the stock market is weak, but the economy is strong. It is hard to be excited about the Chinese stock market.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.apolloacademy.com/sp-500-concentration-approachi...

> The 10 biggest companies in the S&P 500 make up almost 40% of the index, and if Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX are added later this year, the concentration could approach 50%, see chart below. The bottom line is that the S&P 500 basically doesn’t offer much diversification anymore.

> My investment philosophy comes directly from Warren Buffett: "Never bet against America". Of the three largest economic zones in the world with free markets (United States, Europe, and Japan), the United States is by far the most dynamic. Ask yourself: In the next 30 years (or more), which of those three regions will grow the most? In my view: Absolutely the United States.

The next 30 years will not look like the last 30 years, and to be frank, this administration impaired any thesis of the US being at the center of the economic world globally for at least the next decade or two. The ultimate strength of the US economy was that global trade centered around the US. That trade is already reconfiguring around the US, and will continue to do so to de-risk and decouple. How is the US supposed to grow with restricted immigration? 21 states already have more deaths than births and this will continue to all 50 states eventually. India and Africa are the last parts of the world where any growth will be found, everywhere else is in terminal population decline.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/fertility-rate-of-world-pop...

So! VT reduces your concentration risk from the AI bubble (versus the SP500) while still keeping you exposed to a risk asset class (total world equities) to capture higher returns than you’d get with bonds.

Your backtesting is of no value in this context, the world has changed permanently due to the actions of this administration. Portfolio composition decisions made today are for the future, not the past. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Citations:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210104201135/https://advisors....

https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/experts-forecast-stoc...

https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Perspectives/The-Long-Run-Is-Ly... (click through to the full version, the last decade+ of US out performance was mostly just the US getting more expensive, not US companies being much better than foreign companies)

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/you-might-think-industry-... (We see the same results looking at the more recent period of July 1963 to September 2024. US stocks returned 10.64% annually, high-tech stocks returned 11.35%, healthcare stocks returned 11.99%, and both were outperformed by beer, which returned 12.18%, smokes, which returned 14.56%, and guns (defense), which returned 12.77%. Even shops (wholesale, retail, and some services such as laundries and repair shops) outperformed, returning 11.88%)

[simonebrunozzi]

Watch a lot of Ben Felix. Tons of good advice for you.

[holoduke]

Inflation is covering all the inflated valuations eventually.

[runako]

PE of 380 against deteriorating margins & profit. This story doesn't end well. But to your point, it's likely a cult of personality that can stay upright until Musk leaves the company.

[bwfan123]

Circular financing at its finest. And Self-dealing between the hyperscalers, openai, and anthropic.

google invests in anthropic and spacex - and shows appreciated values as earnings. Then it turns around and rents tpus to anthropic to show it as revenues. The main buyers and sellers for all of this are the hyperscalers, openai and anthropic.

It is a game of musical chairs while the party is still on.

[SwellJoe]

They're all betting ignorant retail investors will be the final bagholders. It's a license to steal from retirement accounts.

[webninja]

I think the measurable term for this is “Velocity of Money”.

[akarii]

They are just trading company stocks for compute.

[fc417fc802]

> Comcast is one of the best-run ISPs

You mean the company with such a bad reputation that it had to aggressively rebrand? I take it you've never had the displeasure of doing business with them.

That said it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to learn that it was one of the most profitable ISPs for investors. That would fit quite well with the general theme of prioritizing the interests of investors over all else.

[kube-system]

Comcast is a successful business in spite of their customer satisfaction. You don’t need to please your customers when when you can involuntarily extract their money anyway.

[Robotbeat]

Comcast is not a rapidly growing company, though.

This isn’t hypothetical. SpaceX is increasing Starlink revenue by like 50% per year. And their current Starlink constellation, about 10,000 satellites, has been launched entirely by Falcon 9. They’ve been waiting to launch much larger satellites on starship (in fact they had versions of these ready for several years now, and recently did suborbital tests of some of them on recent starship flights). Starship is about 5-10 times the capacity of Falcon 9, is fully reusable, & has larger diameter allowing much larger satellites. They asked for approval for roughly 40,000 of these larger satellites (~3 times the size of current ones, each about 10 times the bandwidth… and half of the 10,000 are even older designs), and they may eventually do about 100,000 of them & further increase the size and reduce latency (by operating at lower altitude). It’s not an exaggeration to say SpaceX intends to increase bandwidth by at least 100x, maybe a lot more. They intend to use a lot of this extra capacity to expand into mobile coverage as well. They are leveraging their platform for incredibly important national defense capabilities as well, and they operate as their own backhaul using on-board laser links. They can service anywhere in the world that will let them, including lucrative sectors like aviation. I do think it makes sense to value SpaceX as a rapidly growing business, not as a dividend-giving, plateaued ISP like Comcast.

This is all before even mentioning the idea of orbital datacenters.

[SkiFire13]

You're trying to justify SpaceX's valuation using Starlink, but it's clear from the S-1 that it makes up only for ~5% of SpaceX estimated TAM.

[Octoth0rpe]

Many people think their claimed TAM is total fiction, and attempting an actual realistic TAM relies far more heavily on starlink. From morningstar:

> Our base-case forecast entails $56 billion in revenue for Starlink in these niche and growth areas by 2035, representing about 45% of the identifiable market we’ve sized

source: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/spacex-what-investors-nee...

[SkiFire13]

> Many people think their claimed TAM is total fiction, and attempting an actual realistic TAM relies far more heavily on starlink.

Then either the TAM for Starlink is ~20x bigger than reported by SpaceX (I doubt they would downplay themselves in such a way) or the whole SpaceX TAM is ~5x smaller (much more realistic, if not more than that)

[Slothrop99]

> aggressively rebrand

That had to be 20 years ago? Not that anyone likes the cable company.

As a comcast customer, their core internet service seems really solid. It comes in through some sketchy 1980s cables installed by some company who got bought by some company who got bought by Comcast. So occasionally a router in the back of a gas station blows up, the cable system wasn't exactly built to AT&T standards.

[fc417fc802]

> their core internet service seems really solid

If you ignore data caps the core service itself does seem to be much better these days than it was 10 let alone 25 years ago. But then again my sample set consists exclusively of locations where they have one or two FttH offerings as competition so it's not as though they could have remained in such markets without upgrading.

Somewhat tangentially I find it surprising how fast MoCA is when you consider the cables it runs on top of.

[overfeed]

> That would fit quite well with the general theme of prioritizing the interests of investors over all else.

It's not a "general theme", it's right there in the name of the economic system.

[runako]

Yes, my commentary was through the lens of an investor. Comcast does well for investors -> the multiples assigned to it by the market will be a good reference -> Starlink is not likely to have a terminal value anything like what boosters suggest.

[preommr]

My only consolation is that this is so obvious that it's not going to lead to a disaster. Things like the housing crisis happened because long-established institutions like credit ratings and mortgage lenders didnt do their jobs.

It's the swiss cheese model, hidden behind curtains.

This is like a giant sign saying you can buy $2 for a $1.

[adestefan]

This is exactly how the dot com crash happened. People point out this like pets.com, but that wasn’t the issue. It was the musical chairs the played with the fiber telecoms. Today it’s data centers.

[_heimdall]

Not to mention all the IPO rules changes that all but guarantee SPCX will be swept into 401ks and index funds in very short order.

They seem to believe the over valuation can be hidden if the shares get picked up by the public quickly enough or that the it can be a quick exit that leaves the public holding the bag.

[djfergus]

I feel like your analysis is correct and it’s overvalued but employees and insiders have already been selling shares (eg on platforms like Forge) for around the $130-135 IPO price. So there are buyers, question is if there is enough to consume the liquidity of a $75B IPO.

[sroussey]

I think there will be plenty of demand. Most of which is not bothered by price at all.

When the indexes get in -- watch out!

They will have to buy so much SpaceX, that it will force them to sell everything else.

[riffraff]

They won't, SpaceX will weigh less then 1% in most indexes, since they're mostly float adjusted, only NASDAQ will overweight them, but FTSE/MSCI/CRSP/SP will not.

It's still quite some money but it won't crush the market by itself.

[gmerc]

Profit … to be seen. Compute is not a high margin business and Colossus was idle for enough of its depreciation timeline to put a question on profit. In any case none of this is a better investment than Nvdida because that’s where all the money is going

[narrator]

Datacenter REITs do not directly own all those scarce wired up and powered Nvidia chips.

[runako]

The stated reason SpaceX and others are talking about doing the near-impossible (orbital datacenters) for astronomical sums is that they are unable to do what e.g. Digital Realty does as its core business.

Conventional wisdom is that building datacenters is easy, but maybe the CW is wrong on this? If it were easy, companies would not be talking about spending $1500+/kg to put datacenters in orbit. Note that they assume they can get the chips either way, they just need somewhere to run them and they are saying it will be easier to get them orbital than to literally do what Digital Realty does now.

[narrator]

The main problem is that nobody is building new power except China. In space solar panels are 5x more efficient and run 24/7 and you don't need the kind of permits you need to build on earth. That, and you've got NGOs funded by China connected billionaires that relentlessly sue to stop data centers and new power in the United States, and you don't have to deal with that B.S in space because it's federally regulated and there isn't any environmental impact to sue over.

[runako]

> nobody is building new power except China

Really out of intellectual curiosity, do you know where this falsehood originated? Obviously new power generation is being built all over the world (US adding 86 GW this year, for example[1]), much of it solar. But I keep seeing this persistent claim.

1 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205

[anonymous_user9]

If they did, they'd be less valuable. Unlike real estate, those chips will be obsolete in a few years.

[adammarples]

This chips will still be able to process tokens in a few years and you'll still be buying them

[theturtletalks]

Do companies like Uber, Tesla, etc ever intend to pay dividends? If a stock never intends to pay dividends, the value of the stock is simply the price the next shumck is willing to pay.

[missedthecue]

The value of the stock is your share in the underlying business. Because underlying business changes over time (hopefully for the better) you are not simply hoping another shmuck pays you more, like with tulips, whose underlying value does not change with time. You own a portion of a concern that is improving its own fortunes.

Furthermore, dividends are approved by the board once per quarter or once per year. A dividend on a stock is not a contractual guarantee like it is on a bond. Therefore, it cannot be a basis of value.

With your logic, Berkshire Hathaway is a long-running greater-fool tulip bubble whose shares are only bidded up by finding more shmucks.

[nestes]

Well, the value of the stock for people who essentially do not have any meaningful control of the business must essentially be tied to the expectation of some liquidity event down the line -- future cash flows. So this could come in the form of dividends, sale of the stock, bankruptcy proceedings, or a purchase of the business.

If I knew for certain (big if) that a business would never have a liquidity event and I couldn't transfer my ownership then it's dead capital for all intents and purposes and you could consider its value essentially $0, right?

[kjshsh123]

But you can transfer your ownership.

[sebastos]

And you can sell your tulip. But if the mania stopped and you suddenly _couldn’t_ find another person to sell it to, would you now be upset you paid $5000 for a tulip? What’s the value at which you wouldn’t be upset? Ok, that’s the intrinsic value of a tulip to you.

[runako]

The thing about a profitable business that is different from a tulip is that it can at any point decide to issue a one-time or ongoing dividend. It can sell off parts to create cash. It has lots of optionality. Public companies have even more liquidity, which creates more optionality.

Even if you don't have immediate liquidity, it would obviously be worth something to have a slice of e.g. Rolex SA. That's obviously different than owning a tulip.

[cavemandaveman]

Berkshire Hathaway doesn't pay a dividend yet the business has steadily grown more valuable

[jnwatson]

Among the oldest value models, the Dividend Discount Model, says that the value of a company's stock is based on the present value of its future dividend payments.

Even if a company doesn't currently pay dividends, it will eventually do so or be purchased by a company that does. That's the theory at least.

[throwaway2037]

As someone who has been looking at equity "value models" for more than 15 years, I can confidently say it is all bullshit. None of them can explain ("predict") price to earnings ratio or price to book value ratio. Sentiment matters much more in equities than any analyst will admit.

[ozgrakkurt]

This makes no sense. Why doesn’t the “underlying value” of tulips change?

“Underlying value” is a meaningless word btw

[missedthecue]

The underlying value of a tulip is the same as it was in 2000 and 2026. The underlying value of Google is much different in that same time frame.

[ozgrakkurt]

There is no underlying value. It is only how much other people are willing to exchange for it.

So stock marked is always meaningless except considering it is so large and consequanetial and so many people have access to it that it will be rational automagically. This is more of a belief that seems to be fairly correct than a rational line of thinking. This is similar to Democracy in a way

[missedthecue]

You seem to be operating on the assumption that stock values are just totally and completely random and the fact that Google is worth $4T is just as much of a possibility as Hertz Rental Car being worth $1.5B

If you disagree with the above framing, your reasoning will have to concede the existence of underlying value. Yes, obviously the price of a share is the result of the bid and the ask price in the order book. But those prices are based on something, they are not randomly generated. They are based on conceptions of value. The fact that companies with increasing free cash flow over long periods of time always see increasing share prices over time is not random coincidence.

[bitpush]

Things don't have any inherent value. It is priced at a level that a buyer thinks it is worth.

A gallon of oil can be $3 or $6 depending on whether someone is willing to pay. It can also be $10 but only if people are willing to buy it at $10 if not "prices will come down to match the demand" - another way of saying it would be $9..$8...$7...$6 until it matches a buyer at which point gas is $6.

[ozgrakkurt]

This is what I am trying to express. There is no "inherent price" or "inherent value" there is only the real value that it is bought at (in terms of money). There can be other values (non money) like if someone is willing to swap something for it etc.

[dingaling]

> The value of the stock is your share in the underlying business.

Which for most investors with Class C/D shares is... the square root of zero.

They assert no control over the business, the only way to benefit from the stock is to find another shmuck to buy it at a higher price.

[runako]

The price of a growing business should go up because it has more options to create returns for shareholders.

Use Aldi (revenue ~$120B) as an example. Do you think a person would be a shmuck to buy a slice of it now versus when revenue was $1 million? If not, why not? Your answer will help understand why stock has value even without voting control or dividends.

[dragandj]

It depends. What if Aldi bled a trillion dollars for this revenue of $120B? Would it be a desirable purchase?

[throwaway2037]

Google and Meta have a reasonably similar corporate structure. Most of the voting power is concetrated in the hands of a few. They have both done very well since their IPOs. Do you exclude these companies from your portfolio?

[sebastos]

That’s the story, but it’s bullshit. The underlying intrinsic value of a stock can only be materialized if the company liquidates and you receive a share of the sell off of its assets. How many publicly traded companies abruptly decide they’re tired of the business, stop in their tracks, and liquidate their assets? This only really happens if the company is acquired or if it goes bankrupt. Acquisition is the closest the story comes to truth, but it’s also just forced sale to a greater shmuck. If a company goes bankrupt, a tiny fraction of the current stock price would be realized into cash for common investors because of all the privileged investors and lenders ahead of them, not to mention that the actual value of capital assets etc probably doesn’t cover all the losses (the company’s going bankrupt after all). The value of the underlying capital assets are essentially never returned to the common investors, and the idea that you own a portion of them is in practical terms a lie.

[runako]

> The underlying intrinsic value of a stock can only be materialized if the company liquidates and you receive a share of the sell off of its assets.

This is wildly incorrect. A profitable company can decide to begin paying out dividends, which can eventually return > 100% of the investor's purchase price. A company can issue more stock or bonds to raise cash to pay investors. A company can spin off assets to raise cash to pay investors.

Your framing is very much like a short-term PE investor, and if you look to their playbooks you can see there are many ways for intrinsic value to be realized while leaving an operating business behind. There are any number of stories where PE investors make big profits and then turn around and resell the company for more than they paid.

[sebastos]

The grandparent I was responding to said:

>If a stock never intends to pay dividends, the value of the stock is simply the price the next shumck is willing to pay.

So, by construction, we're talking about the value of shares in a hypothetical company that admits it will _never_ pay dividends. And we're asking what value that stock has BESIDES selling it to another shmuck, so for the purposes of the exercise, it's clearest to just imagine we are not allowed to sell to someone else. Most people will tell you that the stock nevertheless still has value because you own a share of the company itself, which entitles you to a share of its liquidation value. However, the argument I've been making here and in other posts are that:

a. A company tends to be "greater than the sum of its parts". The techno-social arrangement of people and business flows is part of what allows the company to be profitable, so disassembling it, selling off the machinery and returning whatever cash assets it had to the investors is unlikely to cover the market cap (at least, as they are priced today in current climate)

b. Even looking at whatever value IS leftover, the circumstances that lead to you realizing that value are extremely fraught / carry other baggage. It usually doesn't lead to common investors getting value back out, and cannot realistically be a justification for the current valuation of most big non-dividend stocks. For instance, consider how valuable it was to own a share of the underlying capital assets of Bed Bath and Beyond when it declared bankruptcy. It was far worse than just point 'a' ("oh no, we sold all the inventory and real estate it still didn't cover the market cap"). No, if you were a common investor, you essentially got $0 because there were lenders and preferred investors ahead of you in line that consumed those assets and left you crumbs.

c. Acquisitions are the best chance of turning your "ownership of the company itself" into dollars... but this is also slightly cheating, because you're appealing to sale of the shares to another entity again. Now, in real life, if a single entity owned the entire company, it would probably be able to extract some of the business's cash flows (a power which common investors lacked). So it's not quite fair to call the acquiring entity "the next shmuck", since they may be able to realize actual $ value in a way that the common investor couldn't. But technically, if we're playing along with the thought exercise, the premise is that the company continually reinvests in itself and refuses to pay out to the owners. If somebody buys out the company, takes it private, and redirects the profits to their own coffers, the new owning entity is essentially getting dividends by another name.

[hattmall]

It's not purely the liquidation value, it's the idea that the liquidation value will continue to increase, or profits will be paid out to owners.

[sebastos]

Yes, the profits it pays out are the one thing that actually makes sense, but the premise of the grandparent post was to ask what a share is worth _without_ dividends. And the answer is that shares are intrinsically worth very little. Liquidation value (actual liquidation - bankruptcy or going out of business or an exchange closure) is rarely ever practically realized for common investors. Even if you’re trading on the discounted expectation of a larger liquidation pie, nearly 0% is still nearly 0%.

Voting rights are also not valuable by themselves - they are only useful to steer the company towards greater future payouts, which means you are appealing to some other entitlement to value.

If you zoom out, a company is a temporary arrangement of people and things that makes more money than it spends _over time_. They are not really designed to accumulate and store value in and of themselves. The machines the employees use to do the work is a small fraction of the overall utility of a living breathing business. The valuable part is the capacity of this techno-social organism to reliably and continuously make profit, which is far greater than the sum of its parts. So if the profit that’s being earned is never paid out to stakeholders, then there’s no point in being a stakeholder. If the profit is redirected to make the organism bigger, then you are trading now-dollars for future-dollars which must be appropriately discounted. If everyone expects a company to do this forever, then the correct price is what the expected liquidation share should be, and that number is basically zero.

Yet, stocks that do not pay dividends exist at high valuations. What that tells you is that modern day stock trading is tulips: the lion’s share of the value derives from a temporarily stable, shared, _correct_ perception that someone else will buy it back from you.

The reality is that general investors are the greater fools in this arrangement. The prevalence of preferred stock is a tell that there are owners and there are “owners”. What we should do is recognize this and admit that the big initial investors and employees themselves are the owners, because they are the group small enough to actually realize liquidation value (should it ever be necessary). The public investors have no realistic claim on that value, so their shares should be more clearly labeled as dividend rights, which would cause them to be priced as such.

[cman1444]

By this logic all money is inherently worthless too, and every time you buy a sandwich at the local corner shop you're just passing off that worthless piece of paper to the next schmuck.

In reality, things have value because people believe they have value. That doesn't mean every company that doesn't pay dividends is a speculative tulip bubble.

[runako]

Excellent question. They may not intend, today, to pay dividends. However, the same question could have been asked about the successful tech companies of the '00s. Companies don't like to start paying dividends until they are fairly certain of their future profit stream and therefore ability to continue paying (and increasing) the dividends in the future.

Apple, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, Alphabet, Meta, Salesforce, and Qualcomm all pay dividends now. It's not unreasonable to expect Uber and Tesla to pay in the future. However, the median time after IPO for similar companies to pay a dividend is close to 20 years. So we could expect Uber to perhaps wfstart paying sometime around 2039. Tesla...is Tesla so who knows?

[marcosdumay]

US companies normally do stock buy-backs instead.

It is a way to distribute the money to the investors, that their tax system favors.

[krupan]

There are lots of US companies that pay dividends. Another commentor lists some tech companies that do, and there are lots of other types of businesses that do. A quick internet search will give you a list.

You are correct that stock buybacks are another way that companies reward their shareholders.

[runako]

Good call. I should have said that most of those companies also do buybacks as part of their capital return strategies.

[matwood]

And, as an investor I absolutely prefer buybacks so I can control my tax liability.

[bottlepalm]

Not really, the company reinvests the dividends, increasing the value of the company/stock.

The big difference is you pay taxes of dividends - you don't pay taxes on the stock going up year over year. Unrealized gains compound much faster than realized ones.

[tcp_handshaker]

This is like BMW bragging about their thriving auto business while renting all their car factories to Toyota.

[ChuckMcM]

Yes, yes it is. (going to be painful) If the IPO gets fully subscribed. For a long time I've pointed out that after the dot com crash the 'unicorns' were mostly on private markets and when they washed out only the 'qualified' investors got hurt (and of course their employees needed to find new jobs). The retail investors were protected because the SEC made sure you couldn't lie to them without penalties.

Once the SEC got defanged, retail investors once again became the primary target.

[th234oi34087]

> To say SpaceX is overvalued is to even beginning to convey the magnitude of the situation. It's going to be very painful when the valuation normalizes.

The scale of corruption in trying to use Index-Funds and Retail investors as the exit liquidity to bail out the VCs who were pumping the AI hype is unheard of.

It's become so damn brazen! I'm surprised Musk's image hasn't crumbled in front of his fan-bois.

[bmitc]

> It's going to be very painful when the valuation normalizes.

Painful for everyone except the grifters who are engineering this and can get out early enough with their stolen millions and billions. Musk's companies are just a giant pyramid scheme.

[krupan]

I love this clip (this is the other guy that predicted the 2008 crash, played by Steve Carell in The Big Short). Cult Stock is a great way to think about it.

https://x.com/i/status/2061808563979251857