brikym 1 hour ago

I really want a QQQ/VOO replacement that excludes these new rushed IPOs that are just exit liquidity. There are ETFs that exclude harmful industries like gambling, weapons and tobacco. How about an ETF that doesn't include IPOs for six months or until insider lock ups periods are over.

  • lain98 56 minutes ago

    VTI avoids these issues. It's float adjusted market cap weighted. More float allows better price discovery. So a company like spacex has negligible weight.

    • u1hcw9nx 47 minutes ago

      So are other major index funds. That's not the problem.

      The problem is that the NASDAQ 100 and most likely also S&P 500, change their rules to permit SpaceX to be added early without traditional time for price discovery. It happens jsut five trading days before the major index rebalance.

      After float adjustment SpaceX could be 1% of NASDAQ and 0.7% of SP500, but after full tranche escalation that takes over 130 days, SpaceX weight can be over 3% of NASDAQ and almost 2% of SP500 if the market cap stays near $1.5T.

      (I think the price will decrease, so the weight will be smaller)

      This is just a ploy to get exit liqudity as brikym, said. SpaceX collects enough capital to pay Twitter acquisition loans and then some, but the IPO not major boost for SpaceX finances. The coming merger with Tesla is clearly in the plans (C stocks).

      • brikym 16 minutes ago

        > five trading days before the major index rebalance.

        I didn't realize this. That's really scammy.

  • wjnc 37 minutes ago

    A long and a short cancel out. So you could construe this yourselves. (Recognise that this has a long tradition on HN ;)

    • 542458 16 minutes ago

      Except you still have to pay short interest, and I suspect the spacex short interest will be substantial.

    • brikym 8 minutes ago

      Besides laziness being a tradition among programmers (in a good way), that kind of complex activity is going to generate tax in a lot of jurisdictions.

  • KerrickStaley 34 minutes ago

    I think VGT is a good QQQ replacement. It is based [1] on the MSCI US Investable Market Information Technology 25/50 Index which is free-float adjusted [2] [3], meaning that SpaceX will have a lower weight due to its lower free float. Also, VGT has a substantially lower expense ratio (9 bps / year [4]) than QQQ (18 bps / year [5]). You can compare VGT and QQQ's holdings on these pages [6] [7].

    [1] https://fund-docs.vanguard.com/F0958.pdf

    [2] https://www.msci.com/indexes/documents/methodology/2_MSCI_25...

    [3] https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/6bafd9e3-0474-f03b-16bd...

    [4] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi...

    [5] https://www.invesco.com/qqq-etf/en/about.html

    [6] https://stockanalysis.com/etf/vgt/holdings/

    [7] https://stockanalysis.com/etf/qqq/holdings/

    • brikym 11 minutes ago

      That's fantastic. Thanks! I actually use QQQM which has lower fees. Seems like Invesco pulled a trick from marketing and segmented the market to have it both ways. I also need to find leveraged ETFs that have float adjusted weights which is a bit trickier. I might just pull out of TQQQ until the dust settles.

  • momocowcow 23 minutes ago

    RSP or anything equal weighted

  • bko 8 minutes ago

    The point of these broad ETFs is that they include everything. Let the market decide. Of course they should own one of the largest public companies in the world. They're changing the rules on inclusion because the ipo is unprecedented and not owning it because [reasons] would be a dereliction of their duties.

    You want an ESG fund

    Also I dont see how weapons companies are harmful. Unless you're so naive to think defense is not a thing any person or country has to worry about in 2026

swingboy 32 minutes ago

Apologies for the naivety, but, why is SpaceX valued so high? Starlink? Are rockets really a lucrative business? Don’t get me wrong, being able to send objects up into orbit is cool, but is it $1.8T cool?

  • Hendrikto 24 minutes ago

    Because of the Musk reality distortion field. The claim is that all data centers will move into space, and that SpaceX will completely own that market.

    • Izmaki 19 minutes ago

      This sounds amazing until something needs replacement. Until data centers on earth has a 99.99% (or higher) level of autonomous operation with very minimal requirements to maintenance and part replacements, they're not sending anything into orbit...

      • eigenspace 17 minutes ago

        I also sounds amazing until you remember how hard it is to cool something when your only option is radiative cooling.

      • raincole 15 minutes ago

        It sounds amazing for 14yo boys who are not specifically into hard sci-fi.

  • bazodedo 21 minutes ago

    The earth is finite, and space, for all intents and purposes, is not, and expansion into it would thus be required to sustain any super linear growth of the economy. Well, and rockets are cool. Perhaps people would much rather invest in something with the veneer of furthering space exploration (and the promise of infinite riches) than buy into some crypto blockchain startup. And, its not as if other current valuations are sane.

    • Geezus_42 11 minutes ago

      SpaceX isn't opening space to everyone. They're are preparing for the select few to be able to escape once the earth is no longer sustainable due to their own efforts.

  • expedition32 19 minutes ago

    As long as you can offload your bag to the next sucker the value will be high.

    Most shareholders don't really care about the company they have shares in.

  • Tepix 4 minutes ago

    We know that xAI (with X) is struggling.

    SpaceX is growing quite slowly. You could argue that Starship is likely to somewhat accelerate growth.

    Starlink is doing well but also growing somewhat slow.

    A more rational valuation would be 900b-1000b.

    The rest is Musk and FOMO.

hparadiz 20 minutes ago

Oh this duplicate post again. SpaceX stock may as well be bonds on space flight. I'd buy them at a loss.

  • Geezus_42 15 minutes ago

    That sounds dumb.

    • lucketone 4 minutes ago

      But it good illustration of why valuation is so high

ksimukka 53 minutes ago

(Apologies for the bad grammar, my son was born a little over 24 hours ago. I’m choosing not to use a LLM, so you are getting the real me)

Even sovereign funds (example Norway) are invested in American tech, funds, and indexes.

It is interesting to think about (from the perspective of an immigrant to Norway) how I moved my life’s savings from the US to Norway.

I’m now fully invested into Norway (real estate, savings, and retirement).

My understand is that Norwegians (and the nordics) have historically looked up to the US as a world leader.

I think that is no longer true and maybe this decision by Denmark is a data point of how the Nordics are changing?

It kind of feels like we all have been caught holding the bag (US reserve currency) and now we have to carefully unwind our position.

I’ve lost my point. Maybe my goal here is to just contribute to this discussion to distract from the exhaustion.

  • l23k4 51 minutes ago

    >I think that is no longer true and maybe this decision by Denmark is a data point of how the Nordics are changing?

    No, this is just standard pension fund governance.

    • ksimukka 9 minutes ago

      Right, that makes sense. I assume it happens often as part of the governance process. my original statement could have be better phrased as a question.

      What are your thoughts on the general consensus of Nordics views and opinions about the US?

  • shivpat 49 minutes ago

    Get off your phone and enjoy the time lol - journal instead if you must write something

    • yokoprime 4 minutes ago

      Gatekeeping is never a good look.

  • pimeys 45 minutes ago

    As a Nordic (Finland), I think this is true. In the history, US has been always admired and we've loved to travel there and cherish the culture. Damn, I was there when Conan O'Brien traveled to Helsinki, and greeting him with this massive crowd of people who really love him. I married an American, I've traveled through the country multiple times with my partner. Love the food, people, the nature, the cities.

    But this has definitely changed for me now. The idea of crossing the border and having to flip a coin is the border control guy a nice guy or not is not appealing as a diabetic who needs his phone to be with him untampered and who doesn't want to sit in a cell somewhere for days/weeks because they posted a funny meme of a person you can't joke about. Or who just witnesses this absolute inequality happening, and who witnesses the leaders of this country coming to my country and giving their support for parties who want me to not marry and who doesn't want to see me existing.

    I am just tired. And sad. I wish I could get our relationship back with the US but I don't know... Even if we backtrack from here, get back to the "olden times", it will take a moment until I can enjoy US again.

    P.S. Conan is still a treasure!

    • ksimukka 14 minutes ago

      Conan is great!

  • simonjgreen 45 minutes ago

    Congratulations, and enjoy your time :)

  • pseudony 44 minutes ago

    Congratulations :)

    As a Dane, I would say yes. Especially among boomers there was always a genuine appreciation of the US and its role as guardian of a rules-based international order and western civilization more generally.

    I think that sentiment has gone, even as younger generations have increasingly incorporated English words, music, TV and more into their own, but you seldom hear the same genuine trust in the US as a force for good.

throw672 12 minutes ago

American gov is gonna invade Greenland for sure for not cooperating with american conmen

beardyw 59 minutes ago

Presumably Musk will sue them.

  • tomaskafka 43 minutes ago

    Or tell Trump to start a war with them.

Hamuko 1 hour ago

I've recently been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have. I really don't want my investments to be in SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.

  • andsoitis 1 hour ago

    > been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have

    What’s holding you back? And what alternative investments are you considering?

    I recently did homework to decide whether to double down on VOO (S&P 500 index) or to diversify via VXUS (ex-US index), and concluded VOO is better for my risk-adjusted ROI outlook and time horizon.

    • Hamuko 1 hour ago

      Momentum, really. I usually just buy more of a given fund and don't really take any out. My small portfolio is split across different funds, so I'd probably just split around the money I'd withdraw from the US-based ones into the other ones.

    • gigatexal 1 hour ago

      Same. Though I’m 85%+ VOOG

  • spacebanana7 1 hour ago

    Why not Anthropic? They’re a very rare company capable of charging $200 per month per seat level fee across the corporate workforce.

    Yes their compute costs are astronomical, but that can be managed down over time by more efficiency or mild enshittification that doesn’t create too much churn.

    • Hamuko 1 hour ago

      Because I don't really trust any of them, and I don't believe that the business is self-sustainable. At the moment we're in a phase where CTOs are able to withdraw money from the corporate bank accounts to be "on the cutting edge", but I don't think that's going to last. I'd rather have my money in something else.

      • andsoitis 1 hour ago

        Index funds adjust based on performance of the underlying stocks, so it doesn’t really matter if one of them does poorly. The index fund will adjust. When you buy an index fund like the S&P 500, you’re taking a position that the mega-caps it comprises as a whole will give you outsized returns over extended periods of time.

    • 100ms 1 hour ago

      Chinese hardware and energy headwinds aren't going to be great for Anthropic, apparently not even over a 1 year time horizon.

    • originalvichy 1 hour ago

      You would think you’re investing in a software technology company, but after reading a bit of news stories, you realize you’re quite literally funding war crimes. If I invested in an arms company, I’d have reasonable expectations about what I invest in. Investing in Anthropic at surface level looks like investing in software for hobbies and business.

      It’s pretty depressing to be honest. I don’t know how I could work in any of these military industry companies.

      • ekianjo 1 hour ago

        > you’re quite literally funding war crimes

        What difference with Microsoft, amazon and google? They all heavily support the military.

        • bestouff 1 hour ago

          (S)he said: "pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have".

          Edit: OK, no the same person.

        • originalvichy 39 minutes ago

          There is none. That’s why I wouldn’t invest in them either.

      • andsoitis 1 hour ago

        All major indices have always included defense contractors.

        Also, when you buy into an index fund, you are not funding the companies that the index tracks. That’s a misunderstanding of how the markets and index funds work.

        • 0123456789ABCDE 57 minutes ago

          you seem to be implying that, secondary markets have no effect on primary market prices, and i just want to make sure that's what you meant.

      • mrweasel 55 minutes ago

        Normally Danish pension companies and banks will refuse to invest your money in weapons manufactures (unless you have a lot of money, then they apparently don't care). But as long as your money is invested as a pool, they won't do weapons.

        I think you're right that e.g. Anthropic wouldn't be on the block list, because: It's an IT company, and I suspect that even Palantir might make the cut. It is fairly annoying, because my pension fund won't invest in Rheinmetall, SAAB or Kongberg, which I think they should, but they will probably invest in Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, which I don't really like.

        • originalvichy 27 minutes ago

          It’s probably quite similar here in Finland. I’m interested to see what the current fund(s) contain.

      • bauerd 49 minutes ago

        >I don’t know how I could work in any of these military industry companies.

        You'd sing a different song quite quickly once the threat stops being abstract as you don't get to free-ride on the security a defense industry provides.

        • originalvichy 41 minutes ago

          I wouldn’t, but thanks for the reply. I’ve gone through conscription and we are neighbours with Russia. I’ve not lived a day in my life without existential military threat.

        • RobotToaster 22 minutes ago

          The defence industry that would be required to prevent an invasion of the US mainland is at least an order of magnitude smaller than what currently exists to sustain the US empire.

    • adammarples 55 minutes ago

      And they "only" need about 100 million recurring subscribers at $200 per month to make the profits that will justify their nearly $1 trillion valuation with almost no room for growth whatsoever, so who wouldn't want a chunk of that pie. (numbers calculated on back of imaginary envelope)

  • SwellJoe 1 hour ago

    With the new Nasdaq 100 fast track rule, I'd certainly get out of any index that tracks it, or any funds that are invested in it. I don't know if any other indexes have had similar policy changes...but, if it works this time, and insiders are able to steal a few billion dollars from retirement funds without people even realizing it, I'm sure it'll become more commonplace until we have a functional government that regulates this kind of crime.

    https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/what-the-nasdaqs-new-fas...

    • gigatexal 1 hour ago

      I’m going to be selling out of my Nasdaq ETF too. Such a shame.

      Buuut if Anthropic does the same and lists on the Nasdaq then I might reconsider.

      • jurgenburgen 17 minutes ago

        Just buy Anthropic directly, why dilute your money through an ETF?

    • Hamuko 1 hour ago

      Apparently my US index fund is based on MSCI, which is even worse: eligible after 10 trading days. Although the float-adjusted market cap calculation should lessen the blow.

  • jstummbillig 1 hour ago

    > I really don't want my investments to be in SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.

    This just being an incomplete list or is there another reason you name the last two but not Google?

    • nixon_why69 55 minutes ago

      Google being one of the most profitable companies on the planet might contribute? OpenAI and Anthropic don't seem to be profitable while SpaceX is weighed down by heavy losses on grok.

jonasf1337 1 hour ago

hope my Danish pension fund PFA doesn't do the same

seydor 1 hour ago

I mean it isn't like it was automatically included.

throwfaraway135 2 hours ago

The criticism seems politically motivated. Considering what happened to Blue Origin, SpaceX's success is commendable. Although I agree $1.8T seems crazy.

  • gbil 1 hour ago

    >Akademikerpension also said the governance structure of SpaceX was "extremely deficient", adding that Elon Musk is expected to control more than 80% of the voting rights while simultaneously serving as chief executive officer, chief technology officer and chair of the board.

    Their skepticism seems pretty valid to me

    • adamiscool8 1 hour ago

      Zuck was in roughly the same position and they didn’t put out a statement skipping that IPO. The valuation criticism is more valid but this line belies political motivation.

      • close04 1 hour ago

        Musk appears far less predictibile, more volatile than Zuck. Musk also got directly involved in US politics aligned with of a man who singlehandedly butchered US relations with almost everyone in the world. A man who threatened Denmark with taking their territory by force.

        You’re calling it “political motivation” as some sort of blind hate or vendetta out of principle, cutting off the nose to spite the face. But you can no longer separate Musk from politics and aggression towards Denmark.

        The pension fund’s assessment looks entirely valid, objective and justifiable to me. But for anyone who personally favors Musk and his political views any dismissal will look politically motivated. It’s easy to cry foul. In this light your shallow dismissal might be just as politically motivated.

      • spacebanana7 1 hour ago

        Google too, and this was in the long term best interests of shareholders.

        Imagine in 2010 if investors had real transparency into how much money YouTube or Maps was losing, along with the governance structures to enforce their concerns.

      • gbil 1 hour ago

        More than 10times higher (possible valuation), 10+ years of Musk showing what kind of liability he is and at that time Zuck didn't have all the main CxO positions.

        I don't think it is similar therefore.

      • vrganj 1 hour ago

        The political motivation is on Musks part. There's no unpolitical view of a man who ransacked the US government and is propping up far-right movements all over Europe.

    • SwellJoe 1 hour ago

      The company is wildly overvalued. It'd be funny if Musk wasn't about to walk away with a bunch of money stolen from retirement accounts.

      • spwa4 36 minutes ago

        I think you'll find the whole valuation of the S&P500 is built upon retirement accounts. Yours. Mine.

        In other words, look one level deeper and you'll see it's not the S&P500 that's overvalued. It's you and me and 100 million other people desperately attempting to make sure young people pay for them for 20-30 years when they're old.

        And then you calculate it out ... and see it's not happening. No matter what the number on the account says.

        • SwellJoe 30 minutes ago

          There's the normal level of... optimism. And, then there's SpaceX, a scam on a scale the world has never seen.

  • zamadatix 1 hour ago

    Most of the 1.8T hype is not at all related to the rocketry business. Well, I suppose if you buy the "AI DCs in space" pitch they could be somewhat related.

  • SwellJoe 1 hour ago

    What's political is a policy change to "fast track" companies into the Nasdaq 100. Spacex is the first to benefit from this loophole that allows them to be added to indexes almost immediately after listing, which likely is a license to steal a bunch of regular folks retirement money. Elon Musk doesn't need more ways to steal people's money.

    The unfortunate thing is, a lot of people have no idea this rule change has gone into effect, and that they're about to get fleeced by a bunch of professional investors.

    https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/what-the-nasdaqs-new-fas...

    It's legalized theft, and the victims are people least able to defend themselves from it. Most people have no idea what's in their retirement accounts, or track very closely what's being tracked by the index funds they've been told for decades was the safest way to invest in the stock market for non-pros.

  • cryo32 1 hour ago

    Not even remotely politically motivated.

    It doesn't matter if it's successful or not. Their space business is worth virtually nothing on paper and the funding structures and profit/loss accounts are scary.

  • bluescrn 1 hour ago

    While the Starship project may be struggling, Falcon 9 is still a massive success, with a successful launch every couple of weeks, making up most of humanity's access to space/LEO right now.

    And Starlink is a pretty big deal, particularly in a time of conflict where undersea cables are very vulnerable.

    If Elon hadn't shifted so far to the right, these threads would be near-universally praising SpaceX despite Starship's struggles.

    • techpression 1 hour ago

      But it’s at the whim of someone who I think nobody can describe as stable or trustworthy. Starlink the technology is great, Starlink the company has a massive weight attached to it.

    • Forgeties79 1 hour ago

      > If Elon hadn't shifted so far to the right

      A symptom of his fickle nature and erratic behavior, as well as general poor impulse control, all of which rightfully make people skittish with their money and question his judgment.

      • watwut 57 minutes ago

        I dont think he was fickle with this one. He was remarkably consistent.

        He had period where he though he can become hero for the democrats due to green cars. It did not worked, neither democrats nor left accepted him as unconditional hero.

        The racism, the villingness to cause harm to get more power for himself were there whole time. He was far right the whole time, just became more extreme and open when it stopped being disadvantage.

    • pendenthistory 1 hour ago

      Interesting definition of "struggling", as in "managed to catch the largest booster rocket ever built with by snatching it mid air, and land the largest space ship in the ocean using a belly flop maneuver that everyone said was crazy and would never work".

  • whatevaa 1 hour ago

    Elon achived this valuation by merging xAI into SpaceX. The future of xAI is questionable, and without it SpaceX is very overvalued.

    • MrBuddyCasino 33 minutes ago

      SpaceX has the potential to be the most valuable company ever if the space economy expands. Starlink will be a tiny puzzle piece by then.

      How is this even debatable.

      • jiggawatts 19 minutes ago

        The "space economy" is not yet a certainty, other than in the mind of science fiction fans. (Unsurprisingly, hard to reach irradiated rocks of undifferentiated boring minerals in a cold vacuum are of negligible value to humans here on Earth.)

        Even if the Star Trek utopian future materialises, it is very likely to be a long time from now.

        1. SpaceX has competitors. Most are making reusable rockets.

        2. SpaceX has no moat.

        3. The concept of money itself might change dramatical by the time SpaceX becomes a multi-planetary mega corporation. Investing now may not return returns in any meaningful sense.

      • jpkw 14 minutes ago

        If the space economy expands + if spacex continue to hold market share + if it can do so while increasing profitably against increasing competition in the future. And considering the argument is for "the most valuable company", if spacex can do all of the above while other non-space related companies that are hugely profitable slow down their paces of innovation, spacex could be the most valuable company ever.

      • expedition32 11 minutes ago

        What space economy? Aside from satellites- which have been a known quantity for a long time- I'm not seeing it.

      • BLanen 8 minutes ago

        The SpaceX S-1 contradicts your claim by including an optimistic "TAA" (total addressable market) figure for "the space industry". Which falls heavily short of your claim. While the SpaceX claimed total TTA is mostly (like 80%) AI-powered "enterprise applications" which don't exist and are not related to space data centers or whatever.

        How is this even debatable.

  • YawningAngel 45 minutes ago

    I don't think it's politically motivated at all. My impression of this IPO is that it's designed to inflate SpaceX's perceived value by offering very limited float and aggressively seeking to capture passive money by bargaining for inclusion in indices it would not otherwise be eligible for. Speaking as a passive investor myself, I want my money nowhere near this company until it meets the old eligibility criteria.

  • turzmo 24 minutes ago

    Has anybody noticed a marked increase in simping here on HN?