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You don't have to believe. If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch. The IPO will go great, because the company will float a fairly smal

• throwaway290 7mo ago
  > If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch You will be an investor in spacex and xai which it bought. Fun fact, Xai net loss 6 billion dollars per year and SpaceX net profit 8 billion on a good year (https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-xai-posts-net-quarterly-loss-146-billion-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-01-09/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-xai-posts-net-quart... https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/spacex-registers-take-rocket-maker-public-blockbuster-ipo/ https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/spacex-registers-tak...) If you remember xai, it's that company currently being sued for the undressing kids feature (https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/895639/xai-grok-teens-lawsuit-grok-ai-elon-musk https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/895639/x... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok_sexual_deepfake_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok_sexual_deepfake_scandal) in its flagship product. By the way the feature is still enabled apparently Is there something about why spacex wants to go public ? if not then this is definitely about xai... to hide unprofitability and offload it on general public ASAP.
  • lokar 7mo ago
    The SpaceX profit is EBITDA, not real. And presumably includes massive starlink depreciation and stock based comp.
• saalweachter 7mo ago
  Only NASDAQ so far; S&P 500 is apparently "reviewing its rules" but hasn't changed them yet. So you've got a full year to wait on that index fund, assuming they don't cave.
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • lokar 7mo ago
    Also, would individual funds that track the S&P have left themselves some wiggle room to delay this if they wanted?
    • morepork 7mo ago
      I am not an expert, but my understanding is most funds don't change allocations immediately, but it would be part of normal rebalancing, e.g. VOO and other indexes that track the S&P500 do it quarterly
      • lokar 7mo ago
        And even with that, they give themselves some room for tracking error, I think.
    • grogers 7mo ago
      They all smear the purchases and sales from index changes, but I don't think they publish on what timescale. Most funds try to minimize tracking error. There are funds that take this to a different level. When a stock is added to the big indexes, it tends to do poorly over the next year, and on the flip side when a stock is removed it tends to perform well. Dimensional funds have automatic rules to take advantage of this type of thing. There are other companies that have funds of this style, but overall they are much less widely used than the big index funds from vanguard, blackrock, state street, etc.
  • testbjjl 7mo ago
    Cave? That’s the boring company, this is the space company.
• Betelbuddy 7mo ago
  Uter and complete corruption: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389233 - "Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait." Honoré de Balzac
  • Saline9515 7mo ago
    "The secret of greath wealths with unknown causes is a forgotten crime, because it was properly done" for those who don't speak french.
• bryanlarsen 7mo ago
  The flaw is the limited float. Indexes will be forced to buy a huge number of shares which don't exist, driving up the price. For general investors if this is going to eventually happen, the earlier the indexes buy in the better. Otherwise more sophisticated investors will buy ahead of the indexes and grab the profit.
  • lokar 7mo ago
    if they weighted (fully) by float (perhaps the average float from the trailing 90 days to the re-balance) it would not be as easy to game. The Nasdaq is accounting for float, but not completely.
    • dmoy 7mo ago
      Aren't basically all the huge serious index funds float weighted?
      • lokar 7mo ago
        Matt Levine wrote (uh, yesterday?) that the Nasdaq 100 was adding it (not a full linear weighting....) right now to accommodate this scam.
        • dbt00 7mo ago
          Yeah, the OEX is a more serious index for more serious people.
        • dmoy 7mo ago
          Ok fair, I forgot that QQQ is as big as it is. Edit: wait, but QQQ is float adjusted? What are the biggest not-float-adjusted index funds?
          • lokar 7mo ago
            I don't know about the funds, but it's really about the index. Both for the index funds that use the index, and the active mutual funds and index funds benchmark to that index.
• fermentation 7mo ago
  This is absolutely vile. The xAi merger made no sense and this is forcing working class people into purchasing risky assets from a known scammer.
  • g-technology 7mo ago
    It does when you look at it with a few less zeros… it’s like a broke person floating checks for payday loans.
• barumrho 7mo ago
  Do the ETF managers have no discretion in determining when to buy? I was under the impression that they usually handle these changes to indices gradually even under normal circumstances.
  • ihsw 7mo ago
    [dead]
  • nh23423fefe 7mo ago
    of course they do. read any prospectus for a FUND and funds track INDEXES using rules. inclusion in some index doesn't hamstring anyone. blind purchases are not going to happen. people assume passive indexing is brainless, but it isnt.
  • quickthrowman 7mo ago
    The operators of the fund are allowed to do whatever they outlined in the prospectus to track the index, some funds allow futures, options, and swaps along with equity shares to maintain parity with the index. There are ways to gain exposure to a single stock without directly purchasing shares, options and swaps being the most common. Owning the actual shares makes things easy for the fund operators, but there are other ways.
  • t0mas88 7mo ago
    They do, but one performance metric for these ETFs is tracking error. So they want to try to match the index closely.
• ihsw 7mo ago
  [dead]
• mosura 7mo ago
  Ever since SNAP the whole IPO show has been a transparent scam to game the index funds. The market simply doesn’t have enough people actively investing because it rewards mass stupidity over generating meaningful returns.
  • lotsofpulp 7mo ago
    Based on the list of businesses at the top, the stock market seems like it rewards profit margin and profits, by businesses that sell meaningful products and services. https://companiesmarketcap.com https://companiesmarketcap.com Can you provide an example of any of the businesses on that are on that list due to "mass stupidity"? They all seem to operate factories, employ many highly qualified people, and make a material difference in many or even most people's lives around the world. Meanwhile, SNAP has returned -14.98% per year to its shareholders since it IPO'd (Jun 3 2017), and at an $8.27B market cap, it makes up a negligible portion of any broad market index fund, so not sure how SNAP's shareholders have been rewarded by mass stupidity, especially given that the founders still own half of the business. They would have been far better off liquidating their shares and investing in SP500. https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/?ticker=SNAP https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/?ticker=SNAP
    • riffraff 7mo ago
      I mean, that list has Tesla, which is overvalued by any plausible valuation approach.
      • lotsofpulp 7mo ago
        Even if Tesla is overvalued, surely 1 example is insufficient to substantiate that mass stupidity is being rewarded. I spent many words explaining that the list of businesses at the top are basically at the top of their game, worldwide.
        • riffraff 7mo ago
          you wrote "can you provide an example" and I provided an example. If you wanted to say "I think the market mostly does this, with large caveats" then we're in agreement.
• TheAlchemist 7mo ago
  I really wish more people were aware of this. It's a major scandal and definitely not being talked enough about. Nevermind SpaceX, which at least have some importance for US defense industry, but xAI ? We will be investing in Elon's private venture, at the price that he himself set and which is at least 2 orders of magnitude too high...
  • lacy_tinpot 7mo ago
    In order to be incredulous at xAI, you'd have to be incredulous of the AI business in general, which is fair. But then you'd also be basically betting against the entire tech sector, and really the entire US economy and against the value add of AI. That kind of bet is much more difficult to swallow.
    • riffraff 7mo ago
      That's not true at all. I am confident some companies will make bank with AI. I am also confident xAI is not one of those. It's as if you said "if you don't think Lycos is a good business you don't think search engines can work in general".
      • sublinear 7mo ago
        I kinda disagree because while most search engines failed and Google succeeded, they did not succeed by simply being a better search engine. This is only further demonstrated by their excellent leverage of Gemini. Google continues to succeed at being Google.
        • irishcoffee 7mo ago
          They absolutely succeeded because they had a better search engine. Without a doubt. I imagine there’s more than a few folks around here who used shit like askjeeves, altavista, et. al. Google was heads and shoulders better than those, and continued to get better over time. No, I’m no Google fan, but it’s revisionist history to say they didn’t have the best search engine.
• manquer 7mo ago
  >float a fairly small issuance SpaceX are widely reported to be planning to raise $75Billion in new capital. It may seem small a % for the valuation target. However that is about 3 times previous highest raise of $29B when Saudi Aramco went public few years back. The market simply may not be that deep[1] There is a good chance this one becomes the Wework of this decade. The valuation, amount being raised, cooling interests in AI, and middle eastern capital changing priorities, interest rate outlook for the rest of the decade. These are all strong head winds to overcome even when not raising the largest ever amount in an IPO. That is not say that it is destined to fail, Elon is excellent salesman of vision when fundamentals are weak, There is no better proof than Tesla P/E . It is by no means clear this would be successful or not. The valuation, funds being raised, future growth potential are all not based on just SpaceX core businesses which would have been an easy sell. --- [1] i.e. it could be still under-subscribed even if everyone buys into the vision, growth projections, is comfortable with valuation gets fully onboard including retail. Even in this best case scenario SpaceX would have to sell at the lower end of the target range or go even lower and still end up being short matter what, because there could simply be not enough money in the market.
  • xenadu02 7mo ago
    I think you have to temper the skepticism a bit though. SpaceX has dramatically lowered the cost of launching things into space. They are still the leader here. They can put a kg into orbit cheaper than anyone, even heavily subsidized state operations (EU and China). Their order book continues to be full. Every single launch vehicle they roll off the line was pre-sold years ago, including its re-use flights. I agree that Elon is their biggest potential problem and a big risk but their launch business is sound and wildly successful. If you believe access to space will be a growing segment of the economy in the future it isn't exactly a bad investment. I remember all the people putting Tesla down when they IPO'd. I bought $4k of stock (all I could afford at that time). Sold $100k of it a few years ago, still have the other half worth near $220k. Their numbers at IPO time were garbage and it wasn't clear they would even survive. Then they started shipping hundreds of thousands then a million cars. YMMV, consider all sides and make your own judgement. Just be careful about trusting the anti-SpaceX case. Even if everyone is technically correct about them it can still be a huge miss not to invest! The future is not static and if they can put the raised capital to productive use the IPO could end up being a fantastic deal. And FWIW I also agree the largest immediate risk is they are over-valued. Only time will tell on that front.
• stickfigure 7mo ago
  Serious question: Is there some ETF that is "Index of S&P500 minus anything that smells like Musk"?
  • delecti 7mo ago
    Yes, kinda. Goldman Sachs launched that under the symbol SPXXAI last month. I'm not totally sure how to actually invest in it yet though. https://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/ai-goldman-sachs-stocks-index https://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/ai-goldman-sachs-stocks-ind...
    • robocat 7mo ago
      SPXXAI, which lets you invest in the S&P 500 benchmark index minus all things AI That isn't non-Musk. I also wonder where Google and Microsoft and Facebook fit in to the index (each isn't AI but have AI correlated exposure?)
  • CactusBlue 7mo ago
    If you have a big enough portfolio, direct indexing (using something like Frec or Wealthfront) could be an interesting option, and weighting the companies that you don't want at 0.
    • cj 7mo ago
      Wealthfront offers the ability to blacklist stocks in your account (the feature is meant for people legally prohibited from investing in certain tickers). It won’t exclude from regular indexes, but it will exclude from the direct indexing. I’ve been using it to exclude NVDA ever since it peaked (or at least reached the peak valuation I’m comfortable with) Wealthfront’s portfolio minimum used to be $100k, but I think they have a new direct indexing product with a $5k minimum.
  • Spooky23 7mo ago
    If you have $100k, you can do it with direct indexing at Schwab. The management fee is 0.40%. I looked into it, but there are gotchas with wash sale rules and taxes. You really need $500k-$1M to avoid tracking errors. End of the day, the overhead seemed more problematic than the problem, so I ended up increasing my global allocation instead.
• cosmicgadget 7mo ago
  The indexes buy based on market cap or float?
  • tonfa 7mo ago
    Most serious index do float, nasdaq has somewhat different rules (but it's a weird index...)
• abeppu 7mo ago
  ok so it seems pretty bad that they changed the index rules both to allow spacex in early and the wonky weighting stuff. But if one already has index-based things that are likely to be captive on the wrong side of this, and one wanted to benefit or at least balance out, to confirm my limited understanding the goal would be: - buy shortly after the IPO, ideally less than 15 days - and sell less than 6 months later when lockups would end and insiders are set to cash out?
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• actionfromafar 7mo ago
  So that’s what he’s been busy with. I was hoping it was Ketamine.
• nick__m 7mo ago
  Thank you for posting that. I also read that on some less authoritative source I don't remember. It's truly scandalous. I wish ETFs will revolt and apply the old rule for inclusion, but I have no illusion it will happen.
• quickthrowman 7mo ago
  SpaceX will not be part of the S&P 500 when it lists, so you can avoid owning SpaceX for now by sticking with non-NASDAQ funds. IIRC it would take about a year for SpaceX to qualify for the S&P 500, four consecutive profitable quarters is needed I believe. If you own a NASDAQ fund or total US stock market fund, you will have exposure to SpaceX.
• browningstreet 7mo ago
  They’re notably going for a large issuance.
  • georgeecollins 7mo ago
    But a low stock float. I once had a meeting with a guy who said his company was worth $100m. How did he get that valuation? He sold 0.4 % of stock to friends and family at $400k.
• derwiki 7mo ago
  My 401k has BrokerageLink set up and invests in VT/VTI. It takes less than 15 days so if your company offers BrokerageLink, you can avoid investing in SpaceX.
• rsync 7mo ago
  "If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch." This is not a given. Many people have many different kinds of investments inside a 401k. Your 401k can own a rental property. Or gold. Or, in a more mundane scenario, the Russell 2000. If it weren't for the glacial pace of plan administrators and plan holding companies there would be an opportunity for a fund provider to offer "S&P500exSpaceX". It's just another index, after all ...
• bilsbie 7mo ago
  I can see both sides of it though. The old rule made more sense when companies ipo’d at small valuations. It could be argued it’s wrong to keep one the top five market cap companies off the sp500 for a year.
• bko 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • a4isms 7mo ago
    My dude(ette): This place discusses SpaceX technical things all the time. But SpaceX is not a research lab. It's a company. That does business. And is going public. Taking a little time off from arguing about thrust and payload to talk about their business paratices, lobbying and late-stage capitalism is not only appropriate here... Look around you. This may be called "Hacker News," but it is run by and for the benefit of a business, YCombinator. Speaking bluntly, if you come here only to talk tech, you're only getting half of the HN value proposition. The value of HN is that it mixes business with pleasure, so to speak. Many people here will either work for a tech business or found one. You can find technical discussions everywhere. Business discussions tailored for tech? That's actually very, very valuable.
• throwawaypath 7mo ago
  Initial public offerings whose market capitalizations rank within the Nasdaq 100’s top members will normally be eligible to be included after 15 days of trading, Nasdaq said in a statement. The timeline is shortened from at least three months currently. “Industry professionals, including asset managers and institutional passive portfolio managers, were mostly supportive of the Fast Entry proposal and proposed timing,” Nasdaq said in the statement. 15 days vs 90 days isn't some huge shift nor is it inherently some "flaw." These changes have been asked for long before Elon entered the White House.
• raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  Most people don’t have their money in the NASDAQ. They have it in the S&P 500. SpaceX hasn’t been fast tracked into it.
• HWR_14 7mo ago
  Why do people keep claiming that every 401k invests in the NASDAQ 100? Few do, and you probably have a choice of a couple of 401k plans, at least one of which will not include SpaceX.