They’re taking everything thats not nailed down. A wealth tax is the only way, it cannot continue like this.
There's no rule you have to own QQQ and indeed most people don't. There are thousands of low cost ETFs that provide passive exposure to the market. If this new rule bothers you, be like most people and buy one of those instead of QQQ. Problem solved.
Like sure, let's improve our tax systems (as an aside, I would say there are many more efficient and progressive options than a wealth tax, but whatever), but I don't see how there is even a tangential link between that topic and the NDX rule change.
mv some_rich_ppl_money some_poor_ppl
You're making it more inefficient; any other hop in such a system is inefficiency.
Such a tiny minority of real people are not that important to the species. Maybe that important to some mind palace of some contemporary meat suits but they're going to die anyway; kicking the can down the road for future people. If we can fuck the future, fuck us then. Our existence is just as forfeitable
My neighbors and family have been expressing such. If we're just going to screw the next generation via environmental collapse and serfdom to rich overlords they opt to give up on the living enabling it
If you own an ETF that buys SpaceX but without overweighting vs. float, then you're not contributing to the inflated price in that sense. You're still buying at the inflated price though, so the NASDAQ rule change still affects you indirectly.
I guess the point of the "wealth tax" comment is that any higher taxation of the wealthiest individuals would reduce their power to shape the rules to their favor, and a wealth tax is potentially harder to avoid than income taxes. I think most prior attempts just made them emigrate, though.
> for a trillionaire[!]
This writes itself. It shouldn't, but "should" as a concept needs a lot of work.
And even that isn't accurate. They are not bending the rules for a trillionaire, they are maintaining the consistency more systemic rules. This is how it has always been. We can all point to real or perceived ethical islands. They certainly exist, and are worth creating and preserving. But for now, the sea still sets the rules, and the sea is deep. For the deeper system, island visibility is a useful distraction. Sometimes something heavy moves near the surface and we misinterpret visibility as exception.
> Grant me that at least
Granted, indeed, and with the summarily bestowed honor of our royal favor.
Yes. The changes for Elon are exactly what they look like. Preferred treatment in exchange for the priveledge of being paid vast sums to serve him.
My sober point is that this is absolute par for the course. Every whale gets this treatment. Elon can take his business somewhere else, and expects something for not doing so.
The exception here is not a bent rule. But that the special treatment his spending power "merits" is so enormous, that the proportional conflict-of-interest sacrifice, is unusually visible.
It's really not clear, which is why I listed 3 plausible options. I'm also not going to bother attacking an imaginary position and be accused of "strawman" or whatever.
There are also perfectly ordinary situations in which this pattern is used to imply the influence of an unknown party. "They built a bridge over the river." Clearly the speaker does not believe that bridges over rivers construct themselves. She doesn't need to know who built the bridge.
This excuse only works if who built the bridge isn't central to the discussion. Otherwise this is just generic conspiratorial thinking that we're being oppressed by The Elites™.
To understand why this isn't a conspiracy of a sort by some "elite" group of people to take money from 401ks and IRAs, you'd have to argue that there's a good reason to shorten the window that outweighs the reason the window exists. The fact remains that many many IPOs crater within a few months. The rule change seems to exist to leave small low-effort investors holding the bag.
Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get us.
It's also not hard to think of half a dozen other groups that could possibly benefit and plausibly have enough clout to steer things in their favor, hence why the need to make a specific claim rather than beating around the bush a vague "they" that can't be refuted.
It isn't central to the discussion. The appearance of corruption is clear; nailing down the culprit is difficult. It isn't reasonable to expect people to have a theory of corruption in order to complain about it.
>Otherwise this is just generic conspiratorial thinking
The perception of corruption is not a conspiracy theory. Corruption is an ordinary financially motivated crime, while conspiracy theories usually involve some kind of grandiose or mystical objective ("new world order").
Anyway, the question is moot because the only possible answer is "the regulatory authorities". We know who makes the rules! I just didn't want to tolerate this kind of fallacious nitpicking.
After 20+ years in the market, today I learned: "The S&P 500 is a float-adjusted, market-capitalization-weighted index."
So presumably an S&P 500 index fund is not disadvantaged, since it is tracking a float-adjusted index, i.e. the weight of SpaceX will be tiny if its float is tiny.
Or, is there a nuance that I'm missing?
Nasdaq already caved. FTSE and S&P are supposedly considering it.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/03/31/index-providers...
I’m genuinely confused how a passive investor winds up tracking the NASDAQ 100 versus a broader index.
Also, if you’re picking and choosing your exposures, you aren’t passive.
Or would you say that e.g. an ETF tracking MSCI ex-US is not a passive fund?
I’d consider someone that puts $50 into Coca Cola stock every paycheck a passive investor
They’re not. Passive vs active are terms of art in investing. They refer to the degree selection effect is at play.
Assets aren’t passive or not; investing styles are. The degree to which one’s returns earn from, or are expected to earn from, selection effects determines if you’re investing passively or actively. If I say trade SPYs, I’m an active investor. If I buy and hold a custom broad-market benchmark, I’m passive. Buying MSCI ex-US without a hedge is an active investment decision. If it’s bought and held it’s more like a passive strategy over time, provided the U.S. doesn’t dramatically over or underperform the global markets.
You buy VTI, you're impacted.
VTI “seeks to track the performance of the CRSP US Total Market Index” [1]. Not the NASDAQ 100. It will include the latter’s components. But it shouldn’t reference its weights.
[1] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi...
I’m not recommending that index. Just saying it’s separate from the NASDAQ 100. You can absolutely find a total-market index biased towards mature, seasoned issuers.
No? Contractually, maybe. But legally you can do whatever you want with index constructions.
If they are, you'd only get a license when accepting their terms.
Index providers definitely own their trademarks. You can’t market an S&P index without paying S&P. But “the available authority indicates that copyright protection for indexes may extend to the index constituent lists but not index averages, and copyright preemption principles may limit misappropriation protection for indexes to a very narrow class of ‘hot news’ uses” [1].
> * you'd only get a license when accepting their terms*
Sure. But plenty of indices allow for mixing and matching. The terms are designed to avoid confusion—you can’t use the term NASDAQ 100 if it isn’t exactly that. More broadly, there are tons of indices and benchmark portfolios.
[1] https://www.blegalgroup.com/market-index-licensing-a-review-...
If there were a good autopilot energy policy option, it would probably entail doing the opposite of whatever Germany votes to do.
How is this a response?
AFAIK the problem is that they're lobbying the nasdaq 100 index provider to add a 5x multiplier for free float for spacex. Otherwise it would be far less controversial.
Spacex will be around 4.5% of the index [2].
If you believe the thesis of the article that Spacex is about 30% overvalued, and if the only advantage your fund manager has over the rest of the market is that they will avoid Spacex, they will save you 1% of your money over the lifetime of your investment. Assuming you're saving for retirement in 30 years time, the fees will cost you 15% or more.
Maybe your fund manager finds a Spacex-level mispricing every two years. In that case, they're worth the fees. Some people will tell you nobody can beat the market. My employer among others believes very strongly in the idea that some people do make better investment decisions than average. What is certainly true is that not everyone does.
[0] https://helpcenter.ark-funds.com/what-is-the-fee-structure-e...
[1] https://www.invesco.com/qqq-etf/en/home.html
[2] https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/04/01/how-the-spacex-cou...
Of course some do. After all, that's what makes an "average".
Some people are taller than average, too!
Someone can win at roulette and make more money than the average player over some measurement period, but nobody can be good at roulette (when properly implemented and stuff). Stocks are somewhat possible to be good at but results are mostly random and the fee you'd pay is usually way too much.
How would you know it is or is not luck?
> roulette
Has no winning strategy - it's very different.
The winning strategy with stocks is understanding the underlying businesses better than the average investor. Peter Lynch's Magellan fund did consistently better than others because Lynch had insights others didn't. When others figured it out, Magellan's returns retreated to market levels.
I.e. investors can do better than average if they have insight others don't have and stay below the radar.
It's hard to know in the moment, but almost every promising fund has subpar long term results. Whether they lost their touch or were lucky in the first place, it means that seeking out promising funds is a very bad way to find a place to put your money.
The number of funds with significant valuable insights is low, and the number where those insights are bigger than the fees is lower.
Anyway my point was just that a big spread of outcomes doesn't prove that significantly different skill levels exist.
Does that article say that? I didn't see "4.5xm" mentioned anywhere. Also jow does QQQ do float adjusting? Will it do the same 5x that we're hearing nasdaq is going to do? (Which would make it what, <1%?). Or something else?
The article isn't a great source, agreed. But it does give this calculation:
> Oddly enough, had SpaceX entered the Nasdaq-100 with a market capitalization of $1.75 trillion on Friday, March 27 [assuming the new rules (?)], it would have supplanted Tesla as the fifth-largest holding in the benchmark. The electric vehicle stock accounts for 3.8% of the Invesco ETFs.
So it would come in somewhere above 3.8%, by those calculations. And it depends on market prices from day to day. Not much changes about the argument above if you make it 3% or 6%, holding constant the assumption that it's 30% overvalued.
It is just not addressed at all in the article, which makes it seem like they're assuming it's 100% of market cap.
But assuming it is: How would you even call it, and how would you describe your methodology in the prospectus? "Tech 100 (compare with e.g. NASDAQ)"?
There is also the concept of "Index Tracking Error". No fund can perfectly mimic the index, and that is expected and understood, but the goal is generally to have the tracking error <0.1%- 1% would be a bad track. And so an index fund could take the risk that they will have a tracking error and delay picking up SpaceX even after it joins the official index, but then if it goes up they will look worse relative to their real competitors, the other NASDAQ 100 tracking index funds. If SpaceX goes down, of course, they will have positive tracking error, but I'm not sure how much potential investors would value that. SpaceX would be something like 4% of the NASDAQ 100 at it's announced expected market cap, so a 10% movement by SpaceX would be enough on its own to get you into the notable tracking error range if you didn't have any exposure to it.
I don’t tend to let my emotions out this much here, but utterly fuck everything about this administration, and fuck anyone who voted in favor of it.
If you’re referring to Biden, who all but guaranteed that Trump would win a second term by having zero sense of urgency or concern, zero drive to push through popular but sweeping changes, zero real vision, falling back to politics-as-usual, and topping it all off with disastrously running for a second term until pulling out at almost the last possible second, then yes, him too, and I will personally never forgive him for stepping in when Bernie had momentum.
For anyone else, it’s hard for me to get as worked up over them. Uninspiring, ineffective, bargain basement levels of corruption is upsetting but not a reason to put fire to everything that has put this country and its residents in a position of economic power, peace and security, and as the diplomatic head of the world. If I could wave a magic wand and strip the right to vote from anyone who thought so and acted upon that belief, I wouldn’t give it a second of hesitation.
I was just making a joke about the outrage OP is showing, I wasn't making a judgment on whether they get taxed too much or too little.
In this specific case I am retired and I have done this based on financial projections assuming the game continues to be played the same. So it hits closer to home for me. But it’s a far bigger problem than just me—this is looting the retirement savings of millions of Americans—and it is far from the only thing about this administration and those who have supported it to make me absolutely livid.
Seems like MSCI can add new large constituents very quickly as well [1], so to remain neutral to the frenzy until a price has been discovered, one might need to actively short.
[1] e.g. https://www.msci.com/eqb/methodology/meth_docs/MSCI_GIMIMeth...
No longer will there be a year of price discovery for index funds, 15 days. Meaning index funds have to buy it at the peak of the hype cycle. Will be a huge wealth transfer from mom and pop retirement accounts to the ultra wealthy.