Space Exploration Technologies closed its first day on the Nasdaq at $161, up 19% from a $150 open, parking the company at a $2.1 trillion valuation. This is a remarkable price for a firm whose trailing EPS is negative, which is to say a firm that, per share, currently loses money. The market has looked at this and concluded that the rational move is to assign it more value than the entire economy of Italy.

On June 12, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. lists on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. The offering is already oversubscribed. It is priced at a fixed $135 per share with no bookbuilding range — a deliberate break from convention that tells you the company believes demand exceeds anything price discovery would surface. SpaceX is selling roughly 555.6 million shares to raise $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation, more than twice Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record and the largest IPO in market history by a wide margin. Morningstar’s independent fair value estimate is $780 billion. The 55% gap between those two numbers is not a footnote. It is the entire question, and on June 12 it stops being theoretical for everyone holding a Nasdaq index fund.