{"id":4993,"date":"2026-09-30T08:31:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/?p=4993"},"modified":"2026-09-30T08:39:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:39:06","slug":"five-good-reasons-to-conduct-a-portfolio-diagnostic-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/1642-capital\/five-good-reasons-to-conduct-a-portfolio-diagnostic-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weighing Machine in Zero Gravity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To infinity and beyond.<\/blockquote>

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Buzz Lightyear<\/p>\n

While we are only halfway through the year, I am willing to bet that the defining market event for 2026 will prove to be the IPO of SpaceX.\u00a0 It\u2019s an inspiring company which has achieved a series of major milestones in aerospace engineering, catalyzed the emergence of a space economy and brought \u201crapid, unscheduled disassembly\u201d squarely into the modern meme lexicon.<\/span><\/p>\n

True to the larger-than-life profile of the company and its founder, the IPO did not disappoint.\u00a0 It targeted a capital raise two to three times greater than had ever been tried before, it modestly ballparked it\u2019s total addressable market (or \u201cTAM\u201d)at the size of U.S. GDP, major index providers changed their rules to fast-track entry, and the underwriters price-talked the market to a valuation which made it one of the ten most valuable companies in the world on the open.\u00a0 And with a tightly held float and strong demand, it traded up 50% in the first week.\u00a0 It was a smashing success, easily reaching Wall Street`s Karman line.<\/span><\/p>\n

What does the IPO tell us about the current state of the equity market.<\/span><\/p>\n

We can start by asking who are the buyers?\u00a0 In the case of SpaceX, I suspect there is a special class of buyers we can call the \u201cbelievers\u201d.\u00a0 These are the investors who get behind the founder, the dream, the onward march of humanity, or whatever it is the company represents to them.\u00a0 The investment has everything to do with the ineffable and nothing to do with the financial.\u00a0\u00a0 They will be true through thick and thin and hold for the long-term.\u00a0 Capitalism needs believers; they put money behind the unknown to make it happen.\u00a0 More power to them.\u00a0 Most businesses do not attract believers.\u00a0 Think of the next restaurant concept, the next power producer, or the next fintech to go public.\u00a0 While the founders may have had a vision and pursued it doggedly, everyone else will just want to see the numbers.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the believers lies the broader investor class, which can be usefully understood along a spectrum of time horizon: traders at one end, Warren Buffett at the other, and everyone else somewhere in between. Where an investor sits reflects a mix of business model, temperament, and philosophy, ultimately expressed through holding period and tolerance for drawdown. The market has many names for the extremes\u2014fast money versus real money, speculators versus owners, renters versus buyers, and in Benjamin Graham\u2019s immortal formulation, the voting machine versus the weighing machine.<\/span><\/p>\n

The voting machine is the force of market momentum.\u00a0 It cares most about things like narrative, sentiment, and flows.\u00a0 It has no time horizon that can be meaningfully disentangled from the price direction and is as willing to short a stock as to buy it.\u00a0 The weighing machine is the force of market gravity.\u00a0 It cares most about things like cash flow, moat and competitive advantage.\u00a0 It tries to distinguish the good investments from the good companies and to figure out the valuation at which they converge.\u00a0 The market cycle is the ebb and flow of the two forces, and market efficiency depends on each having its day.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The very success of the SpaceX IPO is indicative of a market where the voting machine remains firmly in the driver\u2019s seat.\u00a0 The large and nebulous TAM, the uncertain future payoff, and the immense capital required to get there seem not so much an obstacle to overcome in the current market as its animating force.\u00a0 Investment processes which have been able to surf on the momentum (be it passively or by design) have been rewarded, while those which have tried to swim in another direction have been left behind.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The unfolding of the A.I. boom with its vast potential for transformational impact has been breathtaking to observe.\u00a0 For now, the weighing machine appears to be floating in zero gravity.\u00a0 It will make re-entry at some point, because it must, although the how and when are unknowable.\u00a0 It could happen abruptly or slowly, from a catalytic event, a macro shock, or just from the gradual narrowing of uncertainty which accompanies the passage of time.\u00a0 But the scales will come out eventually and only then we will find out how much this market weighs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption>

Michael Keenan<\/strong>, Chief Investment Officer, 1642 Capital. September 2026<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Keenan, Chief Investment Officer at 1642 Capital, sees the SpaceX IPO as a sign of a market where momentum still outweighs fundamentals. Drawing on Benjamin Graham, he argues that the weighing machine will eventually make re-entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":15,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"class_list":["post-4993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1642-capital"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5086,"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions\/5086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightstonefinancial.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}