| Buy | What it is | Amount | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| VTI | Every public company in America | $11,000 | Now |
| VXUS | Companies outside America | $5,500 | Now |
| AVUV | Smaller US companies, cheaply priced | $1,650 | Now |
| GLDM | Gold | $1,650 | Now |
| SPCX | SpaceX | $2,200 | 3 buys: Sep, Nov, Dec |
| Silver | — | $0 | — |
| Total | $22,000 | ||
Open only what you're curious about — nothing below changes the answer above.
The IPO already happened, on 12 June 2026. It's an ordinary stock now, around $134.
| Bought at | Price | Where they are now |
|---|---|---|
| The IPO price | $135.00 | −0.7% |
| First day of trading | $150.00 | −10.6% |
| The peak | $225.64 | −40.6% |
Latest quarter: revenue $7.81B, up 92% in a year and well ahead of forecasts. Starlink alone brought in $4.29B and made $1.66B operating profit — that part is real and profitable. Subscribers doubled to 12 million.
Valued near $1.75 trillion — about 45 times next year's expected sales, while still losing money and burning $25 billion of cash in six months, with no stated date for when that stops. The stock fell after those good results, because of the spending.
Morningstar says $62. The average target is $228.95. The range runs to $800. That thirteen-fold spread isn't disagreement at the margins — it's an admission nobody can price this yet. It also swings 78% a year, roughly 5% on an average day.
When a company goes public, insiders are blocked from selling for a while. SpaceX floated only about 4% of its shares in June — the rest is released on a published schedule, and every release adds sellers.
These are dates on a calendar, not predictions. Buying after each one means buying the event rather than walking into it. There is no reward for rushing.
Gold is 22% below its January record of $5,598, near $4,356 an ounce. Good twelve months (+21.6%), negative year so far (−6.8%) — the gain came early and has been leaking out since.
Gold pays no dividend and earns nothing. It's a rock. The only way it makes money is if someone pays more later. That's why it gets 7.5% and not 30%.
What it does do is move differently from stocks. In a year when the other 82.5% struggles, this part often doesn't — worth a slice regardless of today's price.
Every gold fund holds the same metal. The famous one, GLD, charges 0.40% a year. GLDM charges 0.10% for the identical thing. IAUM is marginally cheaper at 0.09%. There is no upside to paying more.
Silver is 47% below its January record. It went from $34 to $110 to $58 in twelve months.
Silver fell roughly 30% in a single day — not because anything changed about silver, but because the exchange raised the collateral required to hold it, forcing borrowed money out all at once. It dropped another 20%+ in June, its worst month since 2011.
Its twelve-month return still reads +58.6%, and that number is a trap — it measures from before the run, not from the top. Year to date it is −20.1%.
It carries 42% annual volatility against gold's 23%, costs 0.50% a year against GLDM's 0.10%, and has no central-bank buyer beneath it the way gold does. Nothing gold doesn't give you, with much more that can go wrong.
| Whole market | Gold | Silver | SpaceX | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volatility | 13.3% | 23.3% | 42.4% | 78.3% |
| Past 12 months | +19.8% | +21.6% | +58.6% | 8 wks old |
| This year so far | +10.5% | −6.8% | −20.1% | — |
| Past 5 years | +74.3% | +116.2% | +120.9% | — |
| Pays you anything? | Yes | No | No | No |
That last row is the quiet one. Companies earn money and pass some back. Gold, silver and an unprofitable SpaceX all depend entirely on someone paying more later.
| Held for | Ended positive | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 1 year | ~80% | Good odds, real chance of a loss |
| 10 years | 93.0% | 910 of 978 periods |
| 20 years | 100% | Never negative — worst still made +3.1% a year |
Funds and gold — 10 years minimum, 20 if you can. No exit plan. Don't sell in a downturn; that's when the arithmetic is working, not failing.
SpaceX — hold to at least late 2027, with one hard rule: if the company still hasn't said when it will stop burning cash by its mid-2027 results, sell it.
Every holding trades on a public exchange. You can sell any part on any weekday, in any amount, and have cash within a day or two. No lockup, no penalty, no withdrawal window, no minimum holding period. A real advantage over property, a fixed-term deposit, or physical gold you'd have to find a buyer for.
Being able to sell isn't the same as selling at a good price. Need it within a year and there's roughly a one-in-five chance you'd be selling at a loss. Worse, needs and downturns arrive together — the slow economy that squeezes your income is usually the one with the market down. That's what the Treasury-bill reserve is for: not because these are hard to exit, but so you're never a forced seller.
Worth a word with an accountant before any large sale: gold funds holding physical metal can be taxed differently from stock funds, and it's cheap to check first.
One scheduled event. At SpaceX's Q3 results in late October or November, watch whether management finally states when the cash burn turns positive. A credible date makes SpaceX meaningfully more attractive. Continued silence — twice in a row on the only question that matters — means the 10% should come down, not up.
And the personal one: if any of this money turns out to be needed within five years, it belongs in Treasury bills, not here.