SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic IPOs Alone Can't Save This Market
SkimNews Take
Private valuations set during the cheap-money era now collide with a public market facing thinner inflows and tightening macro conditions, meaning the larger the IPO, the narrower the actual window to clear it.
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- SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are headed for IPOs at valuations of $2 trillion, $380 billion, and $830 billion respectively, with the author arguing no pool of capital exists to absorb them without forcing sales of other stocks
- OpenAI was valued at $500 billion and then $830 billion within weeks 'with nothing real happening other than continued user growth,' and the author notes these companies have no P/E multiples and no plans for profitability
- WTI crude for May delivery jumped 11.4% on Thursday, up nearly 12% over four days and marking its sixth positive week out of seven, driven by the ongoing Middle East war
- President Trump is keeping open-ended two-to-four-week war estimates that the author argues sustain the market by discouraging exits, while the author notes the president has not stated clear war aims and invokes General Curtis LeMay's later-walked-back 'bomb them back to the Stone Age' rhetoric
- Inflationary pressure is spreading beyond oil as plastics and aluminum plants in the Persian Gulf are knocked out, with the author warning Fed rate-cut hopes are fading and a new camp arguing for rate hikes has been introduced into discourse by prediction markets
- AI stocks are 'zero-sum destroyers' rather than creators, the author argues, pointing to how AI first crushed software-as-a-service stocks and then enterprise software as a whole
Why it matters: If the syndicate desks let too much of the mega-IPO float trade at once, the S&P faces a forced-selling cascade just as oil-driven inflation is killing the rate-cut thesis. The author's central stake: retail investors are being told these IPOs are the next sure thing, but the math of absorbing $3+ trillion in new equity demand against a market that's already missing the typical 20% oil-double correction suggests something else will have to be sold first.
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