Selling Dreams, One Rocket at a Time
Of course, this all gets a bit more extreme at the speculative end of the market. Take a company like Virgin Galactic. On paper, its mission to democratise space travel sounds utterly bonkers. The financials are terrifying, and the operational hurdles are, quite literally, astronomical. A traditional analyst would run a mile.
And yet, the company captures the imagination in a way that a conventional aerospace firm simply cannot. It attracts top engineering talent who want to work on something audacious. It generates endless media coverage without spending a fortune on advertising. Why? Because the story is irresistible. Investing here isn't a sober calculation of risk and reward. It’s a bet on a vision, a punt on the idea that the seemingly impossible might just happen. The risk is enormous, naturally, but the potential narrative is revolutionary.