The Back Door Into SpaceX
You can’t buy SpaceX or OpenAI in your brokerage account. A small Toronto-listed fund let us own both before the IPO, and we were up 27% walking into the biggest listing in history.
The most exciting companies of this era (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks) are private. Ordinary investors are locked out of the entire run-up and only get to buy in at the IPO, after the early money has already made its money. We spend a lot of time hunting for the side door. Sometimes we find one.
01 / The MethodOwning the private market through the public one
A back-door play is a publicly traded security whose value is driven by an asset you can’t buy directly. We’ve used the structure for years, a listed holding company, a fund, or an operating business that happens to sit on a stake in something far more interesting than its own day job. The point is access: a regular brokerage account, an RRSP, a TFSA, and suddenly you own a slice of a company that doesn’t trade.
A liquid, publicly listed vehicle that gives you exposure to an illiquid or inaccessible asset, which is usually a private company or a hotly anticipated IPO. You buy what you can to own what you can’t. The edge is access plus timing: getting positioned before the crowd can.
The catch is that good ones are rare, and the obvious ones get bid up. So this is a search discipline as much as an analytical one. We keep a running watch for vehicles trading at a reasonable price relative to what they actually hold, and most of the time, we wait.
02 / The FindA Toronto micro-fund stuffed with pre-IPO gold
Stack Capital Group (TSX-V: STCK / OTC: STCGF) came to us as an unglamorous, thinly followed Canadian-listed fund. Under the hood, it’s a publicly traded vehicle that buys pre-IPO shares in private growth companies, with a healthy chunk of dry powder to deploy into new opportunities as they appear.
Two things made it a buy. First, the portfolio is a direct line into the Post-Singularity Stack, concentrated AI and frontier-tech exposure that’s otherwise off-limits to public investors. Second, it gave us a clean back door into the single most anticipated IPO in history: SpaceX. We added it as a supplemental position in the spring of 2026.
03 / The CatalystThe biggest IPO in history shows up
On June 13, 2026, SpaceX went public. It priced at $135 a share (a $1.7 trillion valuation) with brokers so swamped they were rejecting market orders and accepting limit orders only. This is precisely the event a back-door play is built to harvest: you don’t need an allocation in the IPO if you already own a vehicle that’s been holding the shares all along.
By the morning of the listing, STCK was up about 27% from our entry a couple of months earlier. We’d caught the run-up in the back door while everyone else was waiting in line at the front.
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Mar 2026Flagged STCK; added as a supplemental for AI exposure and the SpaceX back door.
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Spring 2026Anticipation builds into the most-hyped IPO ever; the discount on the vehicle narrows.
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JUN 13, 2026SpaceX IPOs at $135 / $1.7T. STCK up ~27% from entry — gains protected with a stop.
04 / The DisciplineHarvest the event, don’t marry the hype
Catalyst trades cut both ways. A long-awaited IPO can “ring the bell at the top” — the way the Coinbase listing marked the top of the 2021 cycle — or it can be the starting gun for a whole new theme. Rather than guess, we managed the position around the event: protect the gain first, decide direction second.
The plan was specific: a mental stop around $25 on a closing basis to lock in profit, and if the stock reversed higher, take some off near the prior highs around $34. We held the core, because STCK isn’t a one-trick SpaceX proxy, the OpenAI, CoreWeave and Databricks stakes are their own future catalysts. As we put it, this IPO may not be the bell at the top at all, but the opening shot of the Space Age trade.
“Maybe this SpaceX IPO, instead of ringing the bell at the top, is actually sounding the starting gun for the Space Age trade and the Moonshot Economy.” — Mark Jeftovic, The Sovereign Capitalist, Trade Alert, June 13, 2026
The Playbook Behind This Trade
- Buy what you can to own what you can’t. The best private companies never reach a retail brokerage. A listed vehicle that holds them is the legal, liquid side door — access is the whole edge.
- One vehicle, many shots. STCK isn’t just a SpaceX bet. OpenAI, CoreWeave and Databricks each carry their own future IPO catalyst, so a single position holds a portfolio of moonshots.
- The crowd’s entry is your exit window. Retail can finally buy SpaceX at the IPO, which is exactly when the patient back-door money has its chance to ring the register.
- Protect the gain before you predict the direction. Into a binary event, a stop-loss on the profit matters more than a forecast. Lock it in, then let the position prove itself.
- Keep hunting; most days you wait. Good back doors are scarce. The discipline is staying on the lookout and only acting when the price-to-holdings actually makes sense.
For educational purposes only. This case study describes an open position in the model portfolio at the time of writing and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. STCK is a thinly traded fund and the “+27%” figure is an unrealized mark into the SpaceX IPO, not a realized return; the position may be exited at a gain or a loss. Holdings of any fund change over time. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Figures are drawn from contemporaneous trade alerts and portfolio letters. Do your own research.