COLUMN - SpaceX is expected to become one of the largest initial public offerings in history.
The company is targeting a valuation of around $1.75 trillion to $1.77 trillion. In rand terms, at roughly R16.50 to the dollar, that is about R29 trillion. Elon Musk could become the world's first trillionaire.
But perhaps the more interesting story is the employees.
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about SpaceX employees receiving a crash course in how wealthy people manage money. Thousands of current and former employees own shares or options in the company.
One former employee reportedly has shares worth $21.4 million at the expected IPO price — about R353 million at today's exchange rate.
Imagine that.
You go to work every day. You help build rockets and satellites. You accept part of your compensation in shares. Years later, the company lists, and suddenly your net worth is measured in hundreds of millions of rand.
That is both wonderful and terrifying.
But beyond the personal finance story, there is something larger here.
SpaceX is a demonstration of wealth creation. This is the part of free markets that many people struggle to understand. Wealth is not a fixed pile of money waiting to be divided up. One person does not have to become poorer for another to become richer.
In a functioning market system, new wealth can be created.
SpaceX did not make its employees wealthy by taking money from someone else. It made them wealthy by building something the world now values enormously. The wealth came from creation, not extraction.
That is what free markets, at their best, actually do.
Adam Smith described it in The Wealth of Nations in 1776. When people are free to pursue their own interests through voluntary exchange, property rights, savings and investment, something remarkable happens. Wealth gets created. Living standards rise. Capital flows to ideas. Risk is rewarded when it works and punished when it does not.
Not because anyone planned it from the centre. Because the system channels individual effort into wider outcomes.
Free markets are not perfect. They are not moral by themselves. Bad actors exist in every system, and everything human beings touch can eventually become corrupted. But the underlying mechanism remains real, and SpaceX listing tomorrow morning makes it visible.
The lesson is not to chase the next SpaceX.
It is simpler than that.
Observe the system. Own productive assets. Diversify. Be patient. Let human ingenuity and the market work for you over time.
You do not need to build the rocket.
But you can own part of the market that makes rockets possible.
Matthew Matthee has a wealth management business that specialises in retirement planning and investments. He writes about financial markets, investments, and investor psychology. He holds a Masters Degree in Economics from Stellenbosch University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Financial Planning from UFS. [email protected]
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