Comment by JumpCrisscross

17 hours ago

> How can you possibly know that?

I know folks who have been on these. They don’t have tenure. But they’re basically emeritus. If S&P wanted to do something that would cause chaos, it would be fucking with those folks because they made a decision that looks bad.

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JumpCrisscross

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lovich  17 hours ago

It’s a public benchmark fund that has much of its value based on its decisions being publicly stable and publicly consistent.

Who would want to invest in a benchmark fund with arcane(the literal term as opposed to mundane) rules that were privately decided? If your statement is accurate it sounds like moving out of such a fund would be prudent. I feel like it’s not accurate since they are sticking to their guns and not changing the rules to benefit oligarchs like Musk such as Nasdaq is doing.

  • JumpCrisscross  17 hours ago

    > Who would want to invest in a benchmark fund with arcane(the literal term as opposed to mundane) rules that were privately decided?

    There are lots of rules-based funds. S&P is transparently committee based. It’s why dual-class new entrants are banned, but Google and Berkshire are grandfathered in.

    There is a genuine debate on rules versus committees in the index world. But S&P has stuck to its guns as a bastion of the latter. And it works. Everyone picking the S&P 500 over its competitors chooses that.

    • maest  16 hours ago

      > Everyone picking the S&P 500 over its competitors chooses that.

      I'm fairly confident most people deciding to allocate to s&p trackers have no idea about rules-based vs committee-based governance. They just pick the default. And that default can quickly change if the S&P starts making weird/unpopular decisions in a highly publicized situation.

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