Still thinking about the profitability of Apple stock issue. Asked Gemini to
redo the price per share graph, and add the splits. This gives a better idea of
the evolution of an investment.
https://gemini.google.com/share/d8f127b7a8ce
The splits:
Watched a fascinating vid on the greening of Saudi Arabia. Below:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1XseYJ4AHJ/
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For those impatient about Friday's SpaceX IPO:
https://gemini.google.com/share/7692837bb00f
Sometimes it is a good idea to see oneself from the perspective of someone other.
Below, Montreal. Gets all the Geography right!!
Ken, Looks like I didn't wish you a Happy Birthday on your actual BD. Let me do so now:
Have a very Happy Birthday!. Below, a little ad-free music to enjoy this summer...
https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=Yw7X98ATN5A
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Perplexity Ai ...SpaceX, cont'd:
But then Apple stock became insanely valuable once the company matured... Maybe this is...
Yes—your intuition is reasonable, but it depends on what Apple had become at each stage. Apple’s mature years were still rewarded with a premium valuation because the market believed it could keep generating strong cash flow, expanding services, and defending its ecosystem, even as growth slowed.
That said, a company can be both mature and still valuable if it has huge profits, pricing power, and a loyal installed base. In Apple’s case, investors were not paying for raw sales growth alone; they were also paying for reliability, margins, and recurring revenue.
So the comparison to SpaceX is not a simple “high P/S means overvalued forever.” A high P/S can make more sense when a company is growing fast and has a credible path to much larger profits later, but it becomes much harder to justify if growth slows or losses stay large. Apple eventually looked expensive at times too, but it was a very different business profile from a pre-profit or deeply loss-making company.
A clean way to phrase your thought is:
“High revenue multiples can be justified for companies with exceptional scale, profitability, and durable competitive advantages, but not every expensive stock is an Apple-like exception.”
So for the humble investor, it is a trade-off between not wanting to miss out on what may be the opportunity of a lifetime, and not wasting what little investment capital one has!!??
Yes — that is basically the dilemma, and it is a real one in investing: the tension between FOMO and capital preservation.
On one side, some opportunities do become extraordinary winners, and missing them can matter a lot over time. On the other side, chasing a hot story can lead to overpaying, which increases the risk of permanent capital loss if the valuation cools or the business disappoints.
A sensible way to frame it is:
If the position is small, the upside of being early can be meaningful, but the loss should still be survivable.
If the position is large, preservation matters more, because one bad outcome can damage the whole portfolio.
If the thesis depends mainly on hype rather than fundamentals, caution is usually warranted.
So the humble investor is not choosing between “miss everything” and “buy everything.” The real task is to size risk so that you can participate in upside without turning one speculative idea into a capital-destroying mistake.
From the German-language MSN:
Article by Frohn, Philipp • 1 day
June 12 could be a day of superlatives for the stock market: The US space company SpaceX is planning its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) for next Friday - at a valuation of around 1.8 trillion dollars. This would put SpaceX ahead of Meta and Tesla. It would be the largest IPO in history.
The IPO is likely to make SpaceX founder Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. Musk wants to raise around 75 billion dollars with the IPO. A good part of this is to come from private investors. SpaceX is courting these with conspicuous vehemence.
On Thursday, the neobroker Trade Republic first announced in a customer mail that it had been confirmed as a sales partner for the SpaceX IPO: Users should be able to subscribe to the shares. In the evening, the Flatex brand Degiro followed suit with a similar email. Meanwhile, even more banks and brokers are offering their customers to participate in the SpaceX IPO, including ING, Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank. This is remarkable because it is usually difficult or impossible for European private investors to get a direct hit on new US issues. At Trade Republic, it is even the first time that customers can subscribe to shares.
SpaceX is also targeting retail customers in the USA: Private investors will be able to participate in the IPO at the same time and at the same issue price as institutional investors via five online brokers – including Robinhood and Fidelity.
At first glance, this sounds like the "democratization of investment" that financial companies repeatedly invoke in the finest marketing speak: Everyone can participate.
In reality, however, SpaceX’s push toward retail investors is more of a warning sign for investors. It raises questions: Is Musk unable to place the roughly 555 million SpaceX shares that are set to go public with major institutional players? Does he need retail investors—even those in Germany—to fully sell the shares at his ambitious price expectations?
SpaceX is an extremely highly valued speculative stock. With a price-to-sales ratio of 94 for 2025, the space company is very expensive. At the same time, the company reported a net loss of just over $4.9 billion in the 2025 fiscal year. Many investment professionals are unlikely to be convinced by these figures. A Danish pension fund has already announced that it is placing SpaceX on its blacklist.
Another warning signal: SpaceX plans to offer its shares at a fixed price. Typically, IPOs include a price range as a way to test market demand at different valuations. A fixed price limits this price discovery process.
The fact that Musk is offering the shares at a fixed price suggests that he wants to defend SpaceX’s valuation—and may fear that the desired level would not be achieved through a standard pricing process. This shifts the risk toward investors, who now face an even greater danger of subscribing at an inflated price.
The recent decision by index provider S&P Global—not to approve a special rule for SpaceX, unlike Nasdaq—may also have contributed to Musk now increasingly targeting retail investors. The special rule that had been under discussion would have meant that the aerospace company could have been included in S&P indices and related ETFs more quickly than usual. Without the automatic demand boost from index investments, the stock will need to be more convincing after its debut in order to gain value.
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Mount Everest; a big deal is made of people who have the reached the summit, but then one hears of the guides - sherpas - who make it all possible. Have these people been able to climb up all along??
Yes — Sherpas have been capable of climbing Everest‑level terrain long before Western climbers ever arrived, but they did not traditionally climb the high sacred peaks until foreign expeditions introduced mountaineering in the early 20th century.
🏔️ The key point
Sherpas always had the physical ability and high‑altitude adaptation to climb Everest, but they did not climb it for sport or conquest. Their culture regarded the highest mountains — especially Everest (Chomolungma) — as sacred, so they lived among them, traded across them, and worked at altitude, but did not attempt summits until hired by Western expeditions in the 1920s.
🌄 What Sherpas were doing long before mountaineering
Sherpas migrated from eastern Tibet centuries ago and settled in the high Khumbu region, living at 3,000–4,000 m and above. They:
farmed and herded at extreme altitude
traded across high passes like the Nangpa La
developed unique physiological adaptations to low oxygen
This meant that when British expeditions arrived, Sherpas were already far better adapted to altitude than any outsider.
🧗 When did Sherpas start climbing Everest?
Sherpas began climbing only when Western expeditions hired them as porters and guides:
1920s: Sherpas first employed on British Everest expeditions
1922: Tenzing Norgay among the first recorded Sherpa climbers to attempt Everest
Initially, they carried loads and fixed ropes, but soon became indispensable high‑altitude experts.
🏅 Did Sherpas reach the summit early on?
Yes — and famously.
1953: Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first confirmed people to stand on Everest’s summit.
Norgay had already participated in multiple attempts in the 1930s–1950s and was considered the most experienced climber on the mountain.
Since then, Sherpas have summited Everest thousands of times, often multiple times per season, and are responsible for fixing ropes, carrying loads, and making the route possible for others.
🧭 So why do outsiders get most of the attention?
Historically, early expedition reports credited foreign climbers and treated Sherpas as hired labor rather than full team members. Only in recent decades has the global mountaineering community begun to acknowledge their central role.
⭐ Bottom line
Sherpas always had the ability to climb Everest.
They simply didn’t climb sacred peaks until outsiders arrived, after which they quickly became — and remain — the world’s most skilled high‑altitude mountaineers.
If you’d like, I can also explain why Sherpas are so physiologically adapted to altitude, or how modern Sherpa climbers dominate Himalayan mountaineering today.
For a long time, it has been assumed that the most extreme sacrifice that
could be asked of a citizen was to go to war for one's country, and possibly loose one's
life doing it. Now it appears that there is worse: one can envisage going into space as
a settler, and - at best - becoming a different life form. Still an American, no doubt, but an
Martian-American !! Now that is weird!
