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Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

Watch Fortune Daily, our new video show that brings you inside the Fortune newsroom and the boardroom

SpaceX created a new class of ultrawealthy. Here’s what comes next

At SpaceX’s market debut on June 12, the perfect trade already looked obvious. Shares priced at $135, valuing the company at roughly $1.8 trillion, and closed near $161, pushing its market capitalization above $2.1 trillion. Four days later they reached $225.64, and for one brief week the chart resembled the trajectory of one of the company’s own rockets.

Then gravity returned.

Seven weeks later, SpaceX trades below $110, far below its IPO price. More than $1 trillion of market value has evaporated from the peak. Most employees could do nothing but watch because their pre-IPO shares remained locked up.

In hindsight, the right trade is obvious. In real time, it never is.

What makes........

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