Shares in space and price wars on Earth

That selfish Elon Musk ruined any thoughts of a peaceful Friday morning for me, firing up his IPO rocket and opening the SpaceX offer. Investors can now apply to buy shares in advance of SpaceX’s stock market debut.

Although subject to final confirmation, I expect the shares to be “admitted to trading” at 2.30 pm UK time on Friday, 12 June, but actual trading could take a few hours to start. US IPOs often have what is called a “price discovery auction” where buy and sell orders are submitted (I think of this like the final few seconds in an eBay auction when the bids jump around the screen) and time is allowed for the market to settle on a value before the opening price for the broader public is set.

The fixed price of $135 per share is what those with pre-IPO allocations will pay. The firm is seeking to raise around $75 billion and could be valued at up to $1.77 trillion.

Should I buy?

This is hugely risky. No-one can really value this firm a few years into the future – it’s all so speculative. SpaceX generated $18.7 billion revenue in 2025 and made a $4.9 billion loss. The proposed valuation would put SpaceX on a whopping 95 x sales. In old money terms, that’s a bit bonkers.

But there are a few points in its favour, beyond all the AI hype. First up, there will be demand from all the index funds. If a share is big enough to be in an index (like the Nasdaq), then all the index or passive funds have to buy it. In the next few weeks, there will be a queue of index tracker funds waiting to invest. They will automatically buy SpaceX shares no matter the price, and with only a finite amount available, it will be busy. You don’t need to be an economist to know that if there are massive queues for a product and limited stock, the price should stay high.

There’s another point to make. Until the big three IPOs are over this summer, I think that all the big players have too much inter-dependency to let it fail. The bankers, the Wall Street analysts, the tech firm CEOs, the firms who buy chips and make chips – they all have a huge amount of skin in the game. There is a lot of vested interest in no-one questioning the hype in 2026.

As a final side note, this could impact the valuation of other stocks in the market. If large investors want to buy in, they will need to free up cash by selling other holdings. They might take some profits from high-performing shares like Nvidia, so I’d expect some knock-on volatility in other shares which have had strong gains so far this year.

It’s a punt. If you want to have a go, do it with money you can afford to lose. Or limit yourself to a small % of your portfolio. Remember as well, that if you own index funds or have a workplace pension, they will buy SpaceX so you will indirectly own a bit anyway. I wrote in more detail on the business model of SpaceX in last week’s blog.

Where to buy?

We will be updating this over the weekend as more platforms confirm their positions with us. For now, Hargreaves Lansdown has said they won’t charge customers a dealing fee or a foreign exchange fee to buy the shares. AJ Bell is also ready to take your orders, as is interactive investor. If you want the lowest fees possible, Freetrade don’t charge fees for trading listed securities and have confirmed their participation (although remember the foreign exchange fees for these US shares). Some will set limited amounts to invest – CMC Invest, for example, has a minimum of £500 and HL has specified it’s £1,000. You will need to get any order in by your platform’s deadline next Wednesday (ranges from 7 pm – midnight so far), so have a think over the weekend.

This table shows the fees you would pay to buy and hold SpaceX on these platforms for a year. We have included platform fees, transaction fees and foreign exchange fees.

Notes: Hargreaves Lansdown is waiving both transaction and FX fees.

CMC and eToro costs are for trading in a GIA, not an ISA.
Interactive Investor costs are higher as their fixed £ fees make it less competitive for the smaller sums shown here.

Not every platform will enable participation, so check with yours if they are not listed here.

Price Wars?

Fees in the UK for retail investors are falling. In big news yesterday, Barclays Direct Investing removed their DIY investment fees, making it free to hold and buy investment funds on their platform. The only fee payable to them is £6 to trade a share or exchange traded fund. This means we can now set up an ISA on a mainstream UK bank platform, buy a low-cost diversified index fund and pay them zilch for the admin or transaction fees. Mega.

The best-selling funds on platforms for months have included the Fidelity Index World Fund. This costs 0.12% a year. So, you could invest £100,000 on the Barclays platform, use this fund, and access over 3,000 of the world’s largest companies in a highly diversified, sensible portfolio (which incidentally will include SpaceX after 12th June). And pay £120 a year in fees to the investment managers at Fidelity and nothing to Barclays. That is good value.

Are you paying too much?

The Barclays news is a big deal. Fees are not the be all and end all, but it is a number we can control (unlike volatile markets). This article has a few pricing heatmaps so you can see how your platform stacks up as the price wars start to rumble. I’m considering my options. No fees to hold mutual funds is pretty compelling!

Ooof. Over and out for the weekend. My youngest finishes her GCSEs today. Never mind her, I will probably be smashed with giddy relief and swinging from a chandelier somewhere by 9 pm. Practising for a French oral with a reluctant, disinterested eye-rolling teen who would rather be watching Love Island and was mauling the language, will go down as a low point of 2026! To add to my delight, I also got Portugal in the office World Cup sweepstake. To the team’s fury :0) Have a good one.

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