By Ian Salisbury

Space X is set to be one of the hottest initial public offerings of 2026. Some investors don't want to wait and are piling into an obscure ETF -- essentially fighting over ever smaller Space X crumbs.

Lately, Wall Street has been atwitter with the idea that Elon Musk's storied rocket company will offer its share to the public, with talk putting its value as high as $1.5 trillion.

Some investors appear to be jumping the gun. In the past week, investors have poured more than $600 million into ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF, a little known $1.3 billion ETF designed to give investors a mix of public and private stocks with an entrepreneurial sprit.

The fund has previously been in the headlines for its SpaceX stake -- although not always in a positive light. A number of commentators have taken issue with the way ERShares values the privately held SpaceX shares, arguing they should be more frequently marked to market.

Fund manager Joel Shulman has long disputed that claim, arguing he would revalue SpaceX when there was concrete evidence the value of its shares changes. (He wasn't immediately available to comment Friday.)

Investors piling into the fund now, don't seem deterred. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, who noted the trend Friday on one of Musk's other properties, X, likened the situation to an old comedy skit: "All this for a little 3% allocation to SpaceX *insert Dave Chappelle scratching neck meme: Got Any of that SpaceX*," he wrote.

Indeed, there is cruel irony for many of these investors. As recently, as this summer SpaceX shares made up nearly 10% of the fund's portfolio. According to the fund's website, it's now down to 2.2% of holdings.

What's likely at fault: Because SpaceX is privately traded, portfolio managers can't immediately buy more shares when new money pours in, like they can with other top holdings such as Nvidia or Meta.

In other words, investors are chasing small crumbs of SpaceX and the more money pours in, the smaller those crumbs are likely to get. -- --

ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF has returned about 11% so far in 2025, and is up about 1.7% in the past month. By contrast the S&P 500 is up 16% year to date, and 2.5% in the past month.

Write to Ian Salisbury at ian.salisbury@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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December 19, 2025 13:05 ET (18:05 GMT)

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