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>Nothing wrong with SpaceX or Anthropic getting into indexes with fair rules, this rule change is pure creed+corruption.

What evidence do you have that these rule changes are motivated by "creed" or corruption?


What evidence do you have they are not? You've been questioning everyone, please justify your position

> What evidence do you have they are not?

What evidence do you have that 9/11 was not an inside job?

> please justify your position

I'll cite Matt Levine from Bloomberg:

>1. In the next few months, SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI will all probably go public at massive valuations.

>2. They will be fast-tracked into the major stock indexes, because those indexes are designed to reflect the stock market, and reflecting the stock market, in 2027, will absolutely require big allocations to those three companies.


Dude, need to @ Elon on X with a link to these comments. Pretty sure he replies to fans as dedicated as you to his cause.

I hope Elon Musk gets some particularly nasty disease and dies a slow, painful death. He is a vile individual, as are you for attempting to associate me with him.

I'm sticking to the facts, shove your ideological struggle up your ass or go pollute a different website.


How would you "design" an IPO to do that? What exactly is that even supposed to mean?

Passive investors and retirement accounts are heavily in on automatic indexing.

This deal has been pushed hard to be included prematurely in the indexes to the point that Nasdaq changed the rules.

The accusation is that these changes were made so that index funds will buy this stock automatically far earlier than they would have previously. Given the… uh… astronomical asking price, it looks like SPCEX is meant for Elon stans and institutional index investors to be the bag holders.


>This deal has been pushed hard to be included prematurely in the indexes to the point that Nasdaq changed the rules.

Pushed by whom? Can you link some reporting on this topic?

> Given the… uh… astronomical asking price, it looks like SPCEX is meant for Elon stans and institutional index investors to be the bag holders.

"asking price" lmao, buyers decide the prices they'll buy at.

Edit: I wonder, why is pointing out that this apparently massive conspiracy hasn't been covered by a single credible news outlet worthy of so many downvotes?


> buyers decide the prices they'll buy at.

Not if they're index funds. They buy at the price it is, until they've satisfied their holdings represent the appropriate share of the market. Which, pre-IPO and early-days-after-IPO, is likely to not be accurate to the long-term price.


Index funds don't buy at any "asking price" set by SpaceX.

It’s been covered extensively and is common knowledge. One example after a 5 second google: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/may-jobs-report-stock-marke...

Where does your link describe this claimed external pressure?

It has been covered extensively. The change of nasdaq rules has been covered by Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT, and most others who have reporters on the Wall Street beat. Columnists at all three of those publications have called it out as a possible play on institutional indexing money. I don’t need to tell you who like it’s some big secret either. It was Elon Musk on behalf of spacex. The changes were openly part of the ipo.

I’m not going to cite sources for a major financial news story that is being extensively covered in the financial and general press.


Here's Matt Levine from Bloomberg saying something along the lines of "lol, obviously the indices have to do this, they'll look like fools if they don't because these will be the biggest companies on the market". He famously spends much of his time making fun of Musk, but seems to reject the idea of his influence here.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/ind...

Perhaps you can provide a single counterpoint? I can't find the columns you refer to.


That is one of the columns. The headline makes my point succinctly. Your paraphrase of the column misses the crucial point. A Nasdaq index fund doesn’t buy a company unless it is in the Nasdaq. Under the old rules SPCEX was ineligible for listing. Now Nasdaq index funds all have to buy. Index funds by nature do not selectively buy stocks, if the stock is in the index, they buy, that’s their mandate. That’s the game, to be included in as many indexes as possible that force institutional investors to buy. That’s hundreds of billions worth of funds that now have to buy in, that previously wouldn’t have had to if it wasn’t listed on the Nasdaq.

The SP500 did not waive the rules, and that made above the fold news this week, because it is a major blow to the big IPOs happening this month since they are valued so high. It will be harder for them to move stock if the massive index funds aren’t buying automatically. The big IPOs this month are asking for prices that demand hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of liquidity. Index funds are automatic liquidity, but only if you are on the index.

They didn’t ask them to change long standing rules for shits and giggles.


>They didn’t ask them to change long standing rules for shits and giggles.

Who are "They"? Did you maybe forget the ((())) or are we just supposed to guess? I don't know if you intended it that way, but using the vague nudge-nudge wink-wink "they" like this sure comes across as an antisemitic dog whistle.

> That is one of the columns. The headline makes my point succinctly

Regardless of how you choose to interpret the headline, the actual column seems to say the very opposite of what you claim.


In the context of my message it is very clear that they is SpaceX. This isn’t a secret. Nasdaq has said that they are changing the rules specifically for this listing.

It’s clear you aren’t interested in a good faith conversation. Thanks for the discourse either way.


The idea that SpaceX would have to ask Nasdaq for anything is preposterous.

Also, you're getting the most basic details wrong. Nasdaq didn't change their listing requirements. SpaceX has been eligible for listing under their rules for years.


You use your back channels and good ole boys club connections to try getting the rules for inclusion changed. Maybe collude would be a better verb than design? Is that your objection?

Can you share any credible reporting substantiating this theory?

Common sense and rationality says that you cant motivate rules changes simultaneously across 3 independent indices without outside pressure. Can you provide some reasoning why this wouldn’t be the obvious situation?

Common sense and rationality says this: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/ind...

>index providers will have to decide: Are they in the business of giving passive investors exposure to all the stocks that the market thinks are good, or to all the stocks that the index committee thinks are good?

>There’s only one plausible answer.

Can you explain why your theory is better than the one widely believed by people who actually work in the financial industry?


Lol, the dude asking for reporting to justify his oligarch dickriding dismisses patrick boyle in his chat history as just a youtuber while using paywalled links to support his position.

My theory is better because it isn’t ignorant of the billionaire dynamics in play.


Criticizing Bloomberg as a poor source for finance-related reporting is kind of hilarious, but then I guess your position does seem vastly more credible when viewed through a lens that also rejects Bloomberg.

newly created alt because apparently my main account has hurt too many feefees to allow me to respond to a discussion I'm having. "posting too fast" my swingin dick...

I'm not criticizing bloomberg, i'm criticizing you for posting paywalled links to support your position in an open discussion.

Given I'm bailing on this convo now because hackers news is a shite application getting in the way of people trying to talk, let me respond to our sibling thread with the closet thing my opinion has to evidence: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=smH. IMO we remain at an all time high of financial flimflammery as a portion of our GDP and there have been a number of recessions triggered by the financial sectors malfeasance during my lifetime because of it.


You assume far too much competence from the supposed conspirators. If what you're claiming was truly happening, it would have been leaked and widely reported.

Yet, somehow, no journo covering the world's leakiest industry has been able to break this massive-if-true story.


Common sense and rationality go out the window in corrupt, unregulated environments with perverse incentives.

Why "unwilling"? That's a weird wording. S&P Dow Jones Indices decided to not go through with their rule change after it became a political issue. Obviously they were willing, the proposed rule change originated from them!

Please provide some support that the rule changes were proposed from within. Given the fact they tried pulling this nonsense on 3 indices, it seems very unlikely the rules changes originated from within.

It is what S&P Dow Jones Indices themselves say, so the burden of proof to prove otherwise must fall on you.

And anyway, the rule change is truly the only reasonable way they can react to the current situation.

It will absolutely be untenable to keep Anthropic , OpenAI and SpaceX off the S&P 500 with them also being the highest valued companies on the market.


If I were the DJI I would have proposed the change, simply so that we could get some outrage flowing and shut it down.

Without the proposal, you'd have outrage out the other side that it wasn't included (especially if it shoots off like, well, a rocket).


But why? Won't that just make it far more awkward when they're inevitably forced to go through with very similar changes in the end?

Quatsch. The indices will say whatever benefits their power the most, regardless of truth. The fact that they are bending now to pressure is proof enough for me.

We live in an age proving that valuation is just a manipulation.

This whole story is just like the BaM situation: the people with more money feel emboldened to pull every dastardly trick they can to tilt the table towards their pockets, away from the honest participants. SpaceX and the AI IPOs are just the latest and most grand scheme. I’m guessing you were surprised by the collapse of lehman brothers back in the day.


So you don't actually have any evidence to support your claim? This just seems like a matter of faith at this point, that's fine.

I don’t think you have either?

It’s and interesting point. I’ve done a bit of searching and am also empty handed.


>I don’t think you have either?

I don't know how I could? The indices have already provided their reasoning for these rule changes, but that's just summarily rejected by the conspiracy-minded.

To laymen this appears to be a grand conspiracy. Rules are being changed to accommodate big companies, that's usually bad.

To people in the financial industry, it's fait accompli. The indices exist to reflect the market, these IPOs are going to be big enough that the 90s-era rules will/would result in untenable divergence.


They became effective last month.

Why did you feel the need to post this comment?

>Why did you feel the need to post this comment?

Maybe parent feels like rocket science is a field that should have few launch failures?

I can't give you a quantitative answer since I'm usually focused on new research rather than what company/nation did said research... but their stuff does seem to blow up on the launchpad more often than NASA's :-)


NASA does not produce any launch vehicles. It produces payloads and buys launch services from others.

Unless you count test artifacts, an actual catastrophic failure of a rocket on a launchpad (or even in flight) has been rare in the last 10 years.


Pop quiz, how many rockets has SpaceX launched in the last 5 years? How many have blown up the launchpad?

Trivia question. When did NASA last launch a rocket not built by a commercial entity

Why post anything online?

Im getting the sense that you are here to defend Space X and Elon Musk on the battlefield of internet forums.


I certainly am not. The only positive thing I have to say about those two is that SpaceX has cool rocketry tech.

>Why post anything online?

Typically people post things on HN for different reasons than they do on reddit or bsky, but your post seems like a much better fit for reddit or bsky. These types of factually nonsensical ideological signaling posts are popular on those websites, but are generally considered to be in poor form on this website.


[flagged]


> Because he suffers from MDS and as such can not but complain endlessly about anything which Musk has started. It is an unfortunate affliction for which the only cure seems to be extraction from whatever environment the sufferer inhabits and removal to another environment where there are no other sufferers, then slowly acclimatising to this new environment until the sufferer is again able to consider the person causing the derangement objectively.

Pot, meet kettle. It sounds like both of you should go outside and touch some grass.


Im not saying Dragon will explode. Im just saying that its ironic the person I was replying to used the word "supposed" like it may malfunction.

As for MDS/TDS, be careful about accusing other people of those. Its not really about politics, more about bring your character into question of supporting pedophiles.


> Im just saying that its ironic the person I was replying to used the word "supposed" like it may malfunction.

I think you've simply misunderstood what "ironic" means.


It's very telling that all of your links are either to instagram.com and youtu.be. Surprised tiktok isn't included, perhaps a reddit post would be good also?

Two of those YouTube links are to Patrick Boyle who is a very respectable and knowledgeable ex hedge fund manager who dives DEEP into the topic while remaining entertaining. It’s a hilariously outdated take to say that YouTube content guarantees a lack of value or authority.

Patrick B is also a finance professor and most of his presentations (generally) maintain a level of academic rigour.

he got into the youtube during covid because he was posting YT vids for his students, and they just kept sharing them with everyone; he just ran with it

also: he talks deliberately slowly for subtitle and non-english speaker purposes; use the settings to speed him to x1.25 or x1.5 speed


Who cares? Only people who are willing to give their DNA samples to meta and google can access those links anyway.

Of course, they'd also have to be willing to consume the content in the least efficient format imaginable.


And your argument is?

Why would there have to be one?

It should be very obvious what I'm doing here: I'm attacking their sources for being youtube and instagram


>> I'm attacking their sources for being youtube and instagram

Bzz..Bzz.- [LogicLint #GENETIC-FALLACY]

Input: “It was on YouTube/Instagram.”

Expected: refutation of claim.

Received: complaint about delivery vehicle.


Where did I say I was refuting their claim? Why would you expect that?

Why didn't it occur to someone without occurring to someone first?

People within Meta have been campaigning for this for _years_; even people as high up as John Carmack were pushing for open bootloaders on deprecated hardware (and he achieved that on the Go headset, but not as a general policy)

Because the idea that something this obvious occurred to the CTO first is very, very unlikely. What is more probable was that leadership ignored people who disagreed until the CTO convinced himself it was a good idea and went ahead with it.

>I don't understand why we suddenly change the rules and rush things

Because this is how the rulemaking processes for these indices have always worked?

Why are you suddenly making this argument now, and weren't complaining about previous rule changes?


Because the rules are clearly going to result in lots of buying pressure from passive indexes on a large stock with little time for price discovery.

Come on, let's be adults here. Is there a prior example of this on a comparable scale?

It's already well known that passive indexes bleed ~0.5% performance solely to front running and exploitation from the market. This is that writ large.


This comment was flagged, it does not contain anything that could possibly deserve that. Shame on you people.

Ah, so you'd like the passive broad market index which contains the 500 biggest good companies?

Do tell us if you find one I guess.


To me it's more about how real the financial strength of the company is versus being propped up on some shady accounting. Not sure if that was the case with Carvana or any of these new IPOs, but personally I have my nest egg in the S&P and don't want sharks abusing the index for their pump and dump exit strategy.

No, but how about the 500 that

have been profitable under GAAP accounting rules for at least 12 months

have a public float of at least 10% (so that new investors have some governance rights)

have traded for at least 12 months (and won't have sudden changes in public float or shares available due to lockups and recent listing)


Why is that set of rules particularly good?

Ultimately, it's consistency that's more important with stuff like this (IMO, obviously).

Move slow, fix things.

Would approximately 30 years not have been a long enough time horizon to move on this, or what?

No offense but your responses sound like AI or engagement farming. I think the "why are these rules good" is self-evident to anyone who read the comment.

>I think the "why are these rules good" is self-evident to anyone who read the comment

Why is it self-evident? These rules were only introduced in the mid 90s during the dotcom boom, a very different situation than the one we're in now.

They also explicitly go against the whole idea of passive management, if you care about such things. This reduces your exposure to the market, and it does so in a way which is not consistent over time.

>engagement farming

Why would anyone "engagement farm" on HN? That's crazy. This isn't tiktok or instagram where it would be beneficial.

>your responses sound like AI

You are an idiot, I type nothing like AI.


> Why would anyone "engagement farm" on HN? That's crazy.

All sorts of reasons! One is that when you reach 1000 karma, you gain the ability to downvote comments.

You seem like a smart person. I'm sure you can think of some reasons why that might be useful.


This is just silly. HN rewards comments people agree with, not "engagement".

Engagement farming works on social media platforms that reward engagement. Posting engagement bait in HN comments would just result in downvotes.


I mean, this forum is run by a billion dollar startup incubator.

People make farming HN a part of their business model.


> Ah, so you'd like the passive broad market index which contains the 500 biggest good companies?

And a reminder: not just "good" now, but good over time.

Good companies turn bad (Apple almost went bankrupt), and bad companies can become good (see again Apple; in the UK, recently Rolls-Royce).


Rolls-Royce the luxury car or power plant manufacturer?

Aerospace/defence:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings

90 in 2022 to about 1100 now:

* https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/RR./rolls-royce-ho...

Interesting interview with the CEO, Tufan Erginbilgiç:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYkBpzq5Sqw


Power plant - the car company is owned by BMW

That's what "value funds" do.

But do they historically beat the S&P 500?

Yes, but not in the last decade or so.

In any case, it's been only in the last years that we have had an explosion of a huge variety of funds with low fees, so some of these product strategies need to be retro fitted for a time they did not exist.


Please cite funds that beat passive indexes over long periods of time.

Medallion, Renaissance, Dodge, Sequoia.

But I don't think that's what you were really asking.


Interesting those are value funds? Of course that was not what I was asking or what this thread was about.

Your question is still not what you're asking. Passive funds do nothing but follow indexes, so what you're really asking is "have value indexes ever beaten the general sp500 index?".

And the answer is yes, e.g. both the S&P 500 Value Index and S&P 500 Pure Value Index have beaten the S&P 500 historically.

Small Cap indexes, have also *significantly* outperformed the S&P 500 from 1927 till today (a compounded 13.1% annual growth).

Value stocks represent companies whose price-to-book is particularly attractive compared to the underlying business, and since investing is tied by the sell/buy ratio, buying at a discount improves it. Needless to say, value stocks require more risk, and risk is directly related to potential growth.

Small caps, are both riskier and have a much larger room to grow, they have significantly outperformed the SP500 since 1927.

Neither value nor small caps have done well, in the last decade, as the financial markets have multiple times provided better returns to a small but heavy portion of the market that was neither risky nor at any point had particularly attractive price-to-book ratios.


No you’re just assuming what I am asking. You have proven my point so thank you. No examples and lots of buts and exceptions. We are probably talking around each other to some degree but that’s ok!

Not sure what I have proven.

I gave you numbers and names of indexes that have historically beaten the S&P 500 index in the value category.

All of those have one or more ETFs that replicate that index.

There's an extensive amount of scientific literature talking about the outperformance of value and small caps to the broader market, starting from Nobel price winning Eugene Fama.


No you provided examples with but statements and a few of the examples are private close ended funds.

You can just pick stocks - if you pick a fairly low number of large stocks in broad categories with correct weight, you will track the index.

And the relative values of those stocks will shift requiring rebalancing. You might be able to do that with new dollars for a while but hopefully, eventually, the swings are much more than new dollars and then what? Pay capital gains tax on sales to rebalance? Convince yourself the new random allocation is fine?

I thought the point of index funds weighting by market cap is that they don't require rebalancing, because the weight of stocks in the index exactly tracks price movements. You just keep holding the exact same number of shares, and more valuable stocks automatically take up more of your portfolio.

Yes, this is one of the benefits of a cap-weighted index fund.

It doesn't eliminate the need for the fund to rebalance, because of companies moving in and out of the index criteria.

But it certainly vastly reduces the need of the fund manager to trade.

(Also, stock buybacks and new share issuance should in principle not change a company's index weight, but in practice they sometimes do.)


(deleted)

If you pick stocks with the correct weight to track the index, you're effectively running an index fund. And so you don't have to rebalance to keep tracking the index.

1 If you never rebalance, you're never adding new stocks to the index, nor removing stocks that do not belong to it anymore.

2 You need to rebalance to take corporate events into account: new stocks, buybacks, dividends, etc...


You can add stocks whenever you put money in. Whether that's because you got your paycheck or a dividend or some other income is kind of irrelevant. And you can remove stocks when you take money out. But you probably shouldn't start selling one stock to buy another just because their prices moved, unless you have information that lets you time the market.

But then you wind up with a portfolio that isn't balanced and isn't tracking like an index fund. An index fund doesn't simply buy a flat amount of stock and hold it, they buy stock in proportion to the relative weight of the exchange. Which is always moving

Market cap weighting is special. If company A has 500 shares, company B 500 also, than a fund that has 5 shares of A and 5 of B is market cap weighted.

And what happens if company A issues more stock? Company B is delisted? Company C is now listed? Company A and C merge? Company A spins off it's most valuable side business into it's own independent listing company?

Most transactions just getting the results is all you need

This is only true if those 500 shares had identical value, as market cap is the number of shares x the price.

They do have identical value.

500 shares of company A is worth 100% of the market cap of company A.

500 shares of company B is also worth 100% of the market cap of company B.

So if you have 5 shares of each, you'll have 1% of the market cap of each, even if one of those companies finds the cure for cancer or turns out to be a money furnace.


Indexes rebalance frequently. The "correct weight" today, won't be the correct weight in a year.

What are you talking about? Those index fund are constantly rebalancing. This is why you buy an index fund, so you don’t have to constantly rebalance your portfolio.

Philanthropically-minded people will move the winners to a donor advised fund which gives FMV write off without ever paying capital gains.

With index funds you never have the strong winners to do this with, and so giving is far less tax-efficient.


I don’t think this is correct. Gains historically accrue to a small number of companies in a given time window. If you buy all the grocery stores, you’re exposed only to sector risk, if you pick one or two, you’re also exposed to the risk those companies don’t contain the “winners”.

I suspect the number of picks you would need is surprisingly small to reach high parity with the S&P.

If you don’t pick the right grocery company, you have a shot at picking the right telecommunications company. You pick fewer winners, but you’re also picking fewer losers.

The real reason to do this is because you want to avoid specific companies that are inside the index. You would only do this if you felt confident in your ability to avoid investing a lot of capital in losers. Even if you’re great at avoiding the telecommunications loser, you might be worse than average at avoiding the loser in other sectors.


I don't know about the typical HN contributor but I personally lack the cash to but all the stocks in the S&P. There are 503 stocks tracked in the S&P 500 index. It would cost about 2.8 million USD to buy 100 shares (one board lot) of each if you were naive enough to weight your purchases that way. If you were to weight the stocks differently (eg. total market capitalization of each company) the amount would be higher.

Or, I can pick up 100 shares of an index ETF for a few thousand and have someone else do all the work for me including rebalancing and doing all the other required calculations (lot tracking and cost basis calculations etc.).


Trading in lots of 100 hasn't been required since I dunno, the 90s?

Assuming you're in the US there are several competent brokers that sell fractional shares. Any broker will do lot tracking and cost basis calculatioms for you, they're required to.

Rebalancing might be a pain, yes. I'd bet the drift isn't too bad most of the time, but it's probably effort every time you add or remove money. You'd want to build a tool to tell you how to add and remove to get closer to the index. If you can get the index weights and your holdings in a machine readable format, it would seem pretty tractable, but it would take time to setup; there's a reason funds have expenses, but index fund expenses are small.

I'm 100% invested in funds because it's a lot less work, but if you felt strongly about excluding certain stocks, I think it's pretty doable for say S&P 500. Tracking a total market index, or an international index would be more challenging. Bond indexes are also challenging to track, even for bond funds.


Interactive brokers offers fractional shares I'm sure other brokers do as well.

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