5 ms·

Makes me wish average joe could buy spacex stock. Willing investors shouldnt have to be elite or accredited. Just believers and supporters of a better future.

mikeyouse 12y ago
That's all well-and-good for SpaceX but it proved to be pretty catastrophic for the dozens of pump-and-dumps that bankrupted many Americans when we tried that previously.
- elberto34 12y ago
  Sounds good in theory, but nowadays what happens is companies go public when they are fully valued, making them ripe for collapse when insiders take advantage of the liquidity to exit positions. When companies go public early, opportunities are created for retail investors to make huge money (AOL, Dell, Amazon, Walmart to name a few examples). Now it's like, you get to buy at the very top and it's for your own good. horaaaaay
  - Gustomaximus 12y ago
    If you believe that then short some of these companies. I agree the game can be a little rigged but there is still massive opportunity to invest well on the open market.
    - marincounty 12y ago
      I know what you are getting at, but by the time the average Retail Investor can even get the opportunity to short the stock it is truely gambling. "In a hot IPO, when many investors are clamoring to get shares, many of those who do get the newly issued shares will flip it—immediately sell it in the open market for instant profits. The investment bank must, by law, sell the new shares at the offering price regardless of demand. Because of the demand for the new issues, they have to be allocated, and usually it's the biggest clients of the investment bankers who get the issue—small investors almost never get to participate" http://thismatter.com/money/stocks/investment-banking.htm http://thismatter.com/money/stocks/investment-banking.htm
- pcarolan 12y ago
  Certainly there's that risk. But saying that only millionaire's are 'smart enough' to invest in private companies seems worse.
  - patmcc 12y ago
    It's not about whether they're smart or not - it's that a multimillionaire can lose a bunch of money on a private company and not be out their retirement savings. That's not nearly as true for the typical middle class person.
    - fixedd 12y ago
      Agreed, but I could drop a couple K on SpaceX and it wouldn't hurt me if it disappears.... but I'm not allowed to.
      - simonh 12y ago
        I'm sure there are some people who could safely drive on the roads without speed limits and other traffic laws, but the number of people who could not is far greater. So it is with careful, responsible investing. Many laws are designed to work on a statistical basis, for the greater overall good. This is one of them. It's not designed to prevent 'ordinary' people from sharing in investment profits, it's designed to protect the public purse from having to support millions of people that lost their savings due to unwise investments.
      - hnnewguy 12y ago
        Are you trying to make money off of an investment of that sort, or do you merely want to help contribute to the success of SpaceX? If it's the latter, then there are probably far more creative ways you could help their situation than contributing a few thousand dollars.
        colordrops 12y ago
        Sure, but it's not the business of legislation to force him to make that choice.
- aswanson 12y ago
  So has putting it all on black in Vegas, alcohol, and any other number of statistically proven vices. At least investment has some measure of upside. But yeah, I'd like the $n trillion in debt government tell me how to manage my money.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    The government that is able to borrow money at an interest rate lower than inflation? Yeah, they probably could tell you (and me) a thing or two about how to manage money.
    - eru 12y ago
      They should borrow all the money and invest in an index fund. (Only semi-serious.)
      - jjoonathan 12y ago
        That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about how sovereign debt works to dispute it. I suspect that the failure mode would be that it would inhibit the US government's ability to continue to borrow at such rates.
        eru 12y ago
        I concur, I think there's something wrong with a big nation doing this. (Smaller nations run sovereign wealth funds all the time.) The FED (more or less) sets the interest rates that the US government has to pay; though if they tried to buy everything, we would see inflation. I suspect the actual failure mode is a different one: real wealth is limited by productivity. If the government is buying all the stocks, we have just shifted ownership around, but don't actually increase productivity. Productivity might even drop, because the government is probably not a good activist shareholder. For real estate, there's a decent argument to be made that the government should buy it all, and lease it out for a few decades at a time to the highest bidder.
  - deleted 12y ago
- colordrops 12y ago
  We don't use legal mechanisms to protect citizens from an endless myriad of things, many which are much more dangerous than investing in private startups. This is really a way to keep the proles out of the good investments. It's infuriating and unjust that the wealthy have more rights.
  - grondilu 12y ago
    > It's infuriating and unjust that the wealthy have more rights. No they don't have more rights. There is nothing preventing you from creating your own private company and sell equities only to poor people. It's like people having a party and not inviting you. You can be frustrated about it, but please don't start whining about them violating your rights or anything. Just as people have the right not to invite you to their daughter's birthday party, they have the right not to do business with you. Doing things in private association is a right everybody has, regardless of wealth.
    - aptwebapps 12y ago
      > There is nothing preventing you from creating your own private company and sell equities only to poor people. That's not actually true, which is what the people upthread were referring too. It's not that companies simply don't elect to sell equity to poor people, they aren't actually allowed to in most circumstances.
      - kenrikm 12y ago
        Being an Accredited Investor (in the US) is 1Mil in net worth not including the value of your primary house. Indeed that seems to exclude most "poor people" I know
        vidarh 12y ago
        Being an Accredited Investor in the US involves stating that on a form. If you badly want to buy these shares, and they're available to buy, then from experience bypassing that is trivial. The bigger challenge is that most private companies you've heard of won't even consider taking your money unless you can put in a lot more than any poor person would realistically be able to.
meric 12y ago
You can buy Google as a proxy. A poor proxy but proxy nonetheless. The "plus" side is Google might make similar investments in other ventures like this so your bet on space is more diversified.
- mmahemoff 12y ago
  Tesla would be a more direct proxy surely. (A $1B investment is about 0.3% of Google's total value.)
  - reneherse 12y ago
    Except that Tesla as far as I know has no ownership in SpaceX, while Google now does. My interpretation is that the OP is not just looking for an investment in Elon Musk, but specifically in his space venture.
    - djloche 12y ago
      If you believe in and want to invest in the SpaceX venture, you'd probably want to be investing in a basket of SpaceX related material suppliers.
stevewilhelm 12y ago
Most companies that raise money by other means than publicly trading stock frankly don't want the head ache of dealing with shareholders. A company like SpaceX can raise all the money they need from a small number of like minded investors. It saves them the hassle of dealing with thousands of shareholders with their own risk tolerances, investment goals, etc.
- vidarh 12y ago
  And once you exceed a certain number of shareholders, you are subject to nearly the same reporting requirement as a publicly traded company anyway, so you get the downsides without the upsides.
jacquesm 12y ago
I wouldn't be surprised to see SpaceX do an IPO in the future. I'll definitely buy in even if I would do that as a kind of kick-starter rather than for the potential return.

mikeyouse 12y ago

That's all well-and-good for SpaceX but it proved to be pretty catastrophic for the dozens of pump-and-dumps that bankrupted many Americans when we tried that previously.

elberto34 12y ago
Sounds good in theory, but nowadays what happens is companies go public when they are fully valued, making them ripe for collapse when insiders take advantage of the liquidity to exit positions. When companies go public early, opportunities are created for retail investors to make huge money (AOL, Dell, Amazon, Walmart to name a few examples). Now it's like, you get to buy at the very top and it's for your own good. horaaaaay
- Gustomaximus 12y ago
  If you believe that then short some of these companies. I agree the game can be a little rigged but there is still massive opportunity to invest well on the open market.
  - marincounty 12y ago
    I know what you are getting at, but by the time the average Retail Investor can even get the opportunity to short the stock it is truely gambling. "In a hot IPO, when many investors are clamoring to get shares, many of those who do get the newly issued shares will flip it—immediately sell it in the open market for instant profits. The investment bank must, by law, sell the new shares at the offering price regardless of demand. Because of the demand for the new issues, they have to be allocated, and usually it's the biggest clients of the investment bankers who get the issue—small investors almost never get to participate" http://thismatter.com/money/stocks/investment-banking.htm http://thismatter.com/money/stocks/investment-banking.htm
pcarolan 12y ago
Certainly there's that risk. But saying that only millionaire's are 'smart enough' to invest in private companies seems worse.
- patmcc 12y ago
  It's not about whether they're smart or not - it's that a multimillionaire can lose a bunch of money on a private company and not be out their retirement savings. That's not nearly as true for the typical middle class person.
  - fixedd 12y ago
    Agreed, but I could drop a couple K on SpaceX and it wouldn't hurt me if it disappears.... but I'm not allowed to.
    - simonh 12y ago
      I'm sure there are some people who could safely drive on the roads without speed limits and other traffic laws, but the number of people who could not is far greater. So it is with careful, responsible investing. Many laws are designed to work on a statistical basis, for the greater overall good. This is one of them. It's not designed to prevent 'ordinary' people from sharing in investment profits, it's designed to protect the public purse from having to support millions of people that lost their savings due to unwise investments.
    - hnnewguy 12y ago
      Are you trying to make money off of an investment of that sort, or do you merely want to help contribute to the success of SpaceX? If it's the latter, then there are probably far more creative ways you could help their situation than contributing a few thousand dollars.
      - colordrops 12y ago
        Sure, but it's not the business of legislation to force him to make that choice.
aswanson 12y ago
So has putting it all on black in Vegas, alcohol, and any other number of statistically proven vices. At least investment has some measure of upside. But yeah, I'd like the $n trillion in debt government tell me how to manage my money.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  The government that is able to borrow money at an interest rate lower than inflation? Yeah, they probably could tell you (and me) a thing or two about how to manage money.
  - eru 12y ago
    They should borrow all the money and invest in an index fund. (Only semi-serious.)
    - jjoonathan 12y ago
      That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about how sovereign debt works to dispute it. I suspect that the failure mode would be that it would inhibit the US government's ability to continue to borrow at such rates.
      - eru 12y ago
        I concur, I think there's something wrong with a big nation doing this. (Smaller nations run sovereign wealth funds all the time.) The FED (more or less) sets the interest rates that the US government has to pay; though if they tried to buy everything, we would see inflation. I suspect the actual failure mode is a different one: real wealth is limited by productivity. If the government is buying all the stocks, we have just shifted ownership around, but don't actually increase productivity. Productivity might even drop, because the government is probably not a good activist shareholder. For real estate, there's a decent argument to be made that the government should buy it all, and lease it out for a few decades at a time to the highest bidder.
- deleted 12y ago
colordrops 12y ago
We don't use legal mechanisms to protect citizens from an endless myriad of things, many which are much more dangerous than investing in private startups. This is really a way to keep the proles out of the good investments. It's infuriating and unjust that the wealthy have more rights.
- grondilu 12y ago
  > It's infuriating and unjust that the wealthy have more rights. No they don't have more rights. There is nothing preventing you from creating your own private company and sell equities only to poor people. It's like people having a party and not inviting you. You can be frustrated about it, but please don't start whining about them violating your rights or anything. Just as people have the right not to invite you to their daughter's birthday party, they have the right not to do business with you. Doing things in private association is a right everybody has, regardless of wealth.
  - aptwebapps 12y ago
    > There is nothing preventing you from creating your own private company and sell equities only to poor people. That's not actually true, which is what the people upthread were referring too. It's not that companies simply don't elect to sell equity to poor people, they aren't actually allowed to in most circumstances.
    - kenrikm 12y ago
      Being an Accredited Investor (in the US) is 1Mil in net worth not including the value of your primary house. Indeed that seems to exclude most "poor people" I know
      - vidarh 12y ago
        Being an Accredited Investor in the US involves stating that on a form. If you badly want to buy these shares, and they're available to buy, then from experience bypassing that is trivial. The bigger challenge is that most private companies you've heard of won't even consider taking your money unless you can put in a lot more than any poor person would realistically be able to.

meric 12y ago

You can buy Google as a proxy. A poor proxy but proxy nonetheless. The "plus" side is Google might make similar investments in other ventures like this so your bet on space is more diversified.

mmahemoff 12y ago
Tesla would be a more direct proxy surely. (A $1B investment is about 0.3% of Google's total value.)
- reneherse 12y ago
  Except that Tesla as far as I know has no ownership in SpaceX, while Google now does. My interpretation is that the OP is not just looking for an investment in Elon Musk, but specifically in his space venture.
  - djloche 12y ago
    If you believe in and want to invest in the SpaceX venture, you'd probably want to be investing in a basket of SpaceX related material suppliers.

stevewilhelm 12y ago

Most companies that raise money by other means than publicly trading stock frankly don't want the head ache of dealing with shareholders. A company like SpaceX can raise all the money they need from a small number of like minded investors. It saves them the hassle of dealing with thousands of shareholders with their own risk tolerances, investment goals, etc.

vidarh 12y ago
And once you exceed a certain number of shareholders, you are subject to nearly the same reporting requirement as a publicly traded company anyway, so you get the downsides without the upsides.

jacquesm 12y ago

I wouldn't be surprised to see SpaceX do an IPO in the future. I'll definitely buy in even if I would do that as a kind of kick-starter rather than for the potential return.