The Lazy Workaholic, Rampant Inflation and The SpaceX IPO...Also Unpicking Stocks Is The New Picking Stocks

I have been on a food bender all weekend in New York.

PopUp Bagels, pizza slices, wonton noodle soup and some Katz’s… just today…and it is only 3pm…only Eli Lily can save me now!!

Onward…

I saw this clip of David Senra’s interview with Rick Rubin and I can’t get his ‘lazy workaholic’ riff out of my head. Rick calls himself a lazy workaholic and that feels very Larry David to me (you can watch the full video with Rick Rubin here on YouTube).

I live for the moments of ‘revelation’ that Rick Rubin speaks to in the interview…

To get these moments you have to be there, do the work and show up. If you only wait for inspiration, it won’t come! If you are not in the practice of allowing the thing to happen…it won’t happen!

Over the last few months I have had a few of these moments myself. I have been putting in the hours as I always do writing, reading, taking spontaneous meetings and meeting with my smart friends without a very clear picture of the future and in the last few weeks a lot of clarity has appeared.

One project has to do with my ‘degenerate economy’ theme. Over the last six months I have been brainstorming with my friends Rob Petrozzo and Fred Wilson (on an idea I have had since 2019). The idea started out as a bit of a joke, but the explosion of AI, prediction markets, longevity, Zyn, peptides along with the decline in alcohol consumption has made me dig in further. The revelation is ‘Beeks’…

In this era of YOLO bets, inflation and parlays ‘you can’t lose if you don’t play’ is the new ‘you can’t win if you don’t play’. More soon.

Next up…

Inflation is rampant.

Prices are going up along with global interest rates. From ‘badcharts’…

The White House could care less about spending, the debt or your pocketbook. The bond markets care and are speaking loudly.

The have’s are spending like money is worthless…Patek’s, wine, trading cards, and Knicks playoff tickets.

Stocks are no different…

Wall Street, Elon and The White House are solely focused on ‘feeding mayo to the tuna’. SpaceX is the mayo and you are the tuna.

SpaceX has filed for an IPO targeting a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion, planning to raise up to $75 billion in what would be the largest public offering in history. I have no idea how the hell the banks came up with this valuation, but I enjoyed Om’s deep dive and take and this one from Fiscal AI.

As only Elon can do, he has forced every American that indexes to own SpaceX out of the gate at a very 'frothy’ valuation. Because of its unprecedented size, major index providers are changing their rules to force the stock into passive portfolios almost immediately. It’s gross.

I have no idea what happens post IPO, but I do not want to own SpaceX at $2 trillion. I am not exactly sure how the Indexes will weight the SpaceX IPO, but I imagine at a $2 trillion valuation it would be between 5-10 percent.

The $2 trillion in SpaceX stock stuffed into your index will unlock for all the private investors in 90 days, not the typical 180 days. Furthermore, another $2 trillion or more is coming to the market soon after with the Open AI and Anthropic IPO’s. If the $4 trillion combined does hit the market that is the equivalent of approximately seven percent of the S&P hitting the market.

This is a huge moment for ‘UNpicking’ stocks and direct indexing. A few years ago I wrote about our investment in FREC.com and explained that ‘unpicking stocks was the new picking stocks’. Frec now has over $1 billion in assets and these massive IPO’s are a great reason to start direct indexing right now. The FREC.com difference…

Have a great rest of the long weekend.