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Comment by noelsusman

4 hours ago

Very few 401ks offer the NASDAQ 100 as an investment option. Last I checked it was <1%.

Apparently the rule change also affects CRSP, which is the index behind Vanguard's Total Stock Market (VTI) index funds.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-ipo...

VTI in turn is the primary holding of most of Vanguard's Target Date retirement funds, which are widely held in 401ks.

  • NASDAQ index has a 3x float weighting (and a far, far smaller total capitalization) which makes it far more susceptible.

    Other indexes do not have these multipliers, and are much larger. The exposure for e.g. VTI is far, far less.

  • Recent changes:

    > CRSP indexes were also recently changed to better accommodate fast entry. New IPOs are eligible for CRSP's suite of indexes after five trading days, provided they pass the index's eligibility and investability screens. Previously, these screens included having at least 10% of shares qualifying as freely tradeable (known as float shares outstanding, or FSO). However, in April the methodology changed to allow stocks with either 10% FSO or approximately $3.3 billion in float-adjusted market capitalization to be eligible for index inclusion. The weighting of stocks in CRSP indexes is also based on free float, which should help address the investability challenges associated with thinly traded stocks.

    * https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/some-indexes-accelerate-e...

Total market indexes and target date funds will include this and SpaceX on float adjusted basis I believe. The blast radius is much larger than funds that track the NASDAQ directly.

  • But isn't that what "total market" means? I don't see how if you invest in a total market fund you could declare "except for SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI". Why is it so bad for these accounts to be invested in these companies anyway? Seems pretty typical, i bet all kinds of companies are added to total market indexes each year.

    • Until recently companies that IPOed weren’t immediately added to the major indexes so there was a longer period for price discovery. This year that changed; so you have retirement funds that typically are more conservative acting as exit liquidity for these massive IPOs.

      I would have less of an issue if the inclusion in major indexes was delayed 6-12months but we are looking at inclusion within like 5 days for some of these indexes.

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