HX Weekly: Remember THIS Day

I am not sure exactly when I made the decision to spend my life working on Wall Street, but it was probably in 1988 – almost 40 years ago.

The movie Wall Street, with Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, came out in December 1987. Honestly, I don’t recall if I saw it back then, but I must have—I’ve always been a big movie person.

At the time, Wall Street was a big deal in the American psyche.

At the time, Wall Street was a big deal in the American psyche. It was the Reagan era, and the stock market was soaring. This time also saw the rise of the leveraged buyout and the emergence of “corporate raiders” like Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens.

As President Trump would say, Wall Street was “hot, very hot.” Ha ha!

To the sixteen-year-old me, there was one major appeal…

As many of you know, I grew up quite poor. Being poor was not enjoyable, and I had set my goals on doing everything I could (that was legal) to NOT be poor. Most importantly for my mother, who had fought and suffered incredibly to get us through my childhood.

From what I could tell, Wall Street was the best way for someone who had NO money and NO connections to get “un-poor.”

Sure, there was an “old boys” club and network. Like any business, knowing the right people and coming from the right background could help immensely.

Wall Street, though, felt different.

It struck me as a place where if you could show that you could WIN, they would let you play.

A bad example given the legal aspects of the movie but look at film, Wall Street!

That assumption I made when I was just sixteen years old turned out, however, to be VERY true.

It absolutely was a place where – if you did the hard work and showed talent – you could succeed.

I have spent the last thirty years of my life working on Wall Street, and it has been a great honor and privilege. It has been an even greater honor to share my wisdom with my readers over the past seven years.

Throughout my long career on Wall Street, there have been quite a few memorable moments.

I can remember when I had my first 1-million-share short report accounting fraud. That night I went out with my friend Kenney and told him I thought I might make my first million dollars! (Note – I didn’t. The guy who ran our hedge fund blew it during the collapse of the Internet Bubble and we went out of business – ha ha!)

I remember when I DID make my first million dollars. I asked our CFO to have it issued to me via a check. Then I walked to the local Chase ATM and deposited it. To this day, I still have the deposit slip on my desk…

Recently, though, I have been thinking about another day. Perhaps not as personally momentous as my first million dollars, but certainly bigger for the stock market.

That day was August 9, 1995.

At the time, I had just started at Lehman Brothers and was working in the back office of the fixed-income department.

I had been hired to join their training program that started in September, but I wanted to start early. Partly because I was eager to impress, but also because I didn’t have any money, so I needed the job.

At the time Lehman was at Three World Financial Center down by the World Trade Center. The back office was a big open floor plan like a trading floor and there were close to a hundred of us responsible for clearing trades.

It was always loud on the floor but on that particular Wednesday there was a distinct buzz. Something BIG was happening…

When I got in that morning, I noticed the buzz and asked a couple of the other guys, “What is going on?”

They explained to me that the internet browser company, Netscape had gone public the night before and was going to open for trading.

Now, I was familiar with the Netscape browser and used it. Like most at the time, I spent a little time on the Internet but not that much. There wasn’t much to do on it.

Remember this?

I also had known that Netscape was going to go public but didn’t really pay attention.

The noise on the floor, though, got my attention.

Remember now, this is the fixed-income trading floor. We traded bonds, not stocks.

Yet, the entire floor was abuzz waiting for the stock to open.

The stock had priced the previous night at $28 per share. This was after a last-minute decision to double the price from $14 per share due to the tremendous demand for the offering.

The stock opened for trading with the stock market at 9:30 a.m. EST.

It immediately skyrocketed! It traded as high as $75 that day before closing at $58.25.

While that may sound normal for what we have seen in the last thirty years, back then it was nothing like anyone had ever seen.

Here was a headline from the Wall Street Journal at the time…

The story of Netscape is a fascinating one. The technology, the founders (Marc Andreessen), the stock price, and Internet Bubble, etc.

The BIGGEST story about Netscape, though, marked (in my opinion) the REAL start of the Internet era.

There had been plenty of talk and developments in the Internet prior to August 9, 1995, but THIS was the moment it really came to life.

There have been a lot of folks who have made the analogy between Netscape going public and the day ChatGPT debuted. The analogy is between the introduction of the Internet and Artificial Intelligence.

We think it is a good analogy.

Today, though, we think there is an even better analogy.

Today – Friday, June 12, 2026 – is the day we will see the biggest IPO in history happen.

The IPO of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. or “SpaceX.”

As I am guessing almost all of you know, it priced 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock last night at $135 per share. That will raise roughly $75 billion and give the company a $1.7 trillion valuation.

At some point today, it will start trading.

This is truly a historic day.

As I have been thinking about it this week, it brought back these memories of the day Netscape went public.

That was a similar day.

A record IPO that no one had ever seen.

A revolutionary new technology company.

Most importantly, the IPO of a company that would augur the emergence of an industry that would change human history.

THIS is what I think is happening TODAY!

When Netscape went public some thirty-one years ago, we all thought that the Internet would have a big future.

We had NO IDEA, though, HOW big it was going to be and how much it would change our lives.

While it seems like science fiction, I think the space economy is THE SAME.

While it is hard for us to imagine space playing a big role in our day-to-day lives, I think that in the coming decades it will. A massive role.

I don’t know if it is twenty years or fifty years, but in the lifetime of my children (the youngest is 5), they will think of the space economy the way we think of electricity, airplanes, and the internet. Something that is a big part of their lives and was always there…

It may happen sooner or may take longer, but I honestly believe this is where we are headed.

If I stick with 1988 as the year my interest in Wall Street began, then I am in my 38^th year of the stock market. G-d willing, hopefully I have another good 30 in front of me.

However it plays out, I am confident that THIS day is one we will remember for a LONG time.

I hope all of you soak it in and enjoy this moment as we begin this next era for both the stock market and humanity. Space.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this week’s issue of HX Weekly…

Do you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback? Tell us more in the comment section or at [email protected].