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New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

reuters.com

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Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#111

Post by RhysU »

rjmunro wrote: post #108
bell-cot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they have discretion... True. But doing so would be a fair amount (by index standards) of overhead and hassle. Plus they'd get endless complaints any time the S&P500 was outperforming the "S&P 499" that they were using. Plus they'd put themselves in the crosshairs of a whole range of activists who wanted them to switch to an "S&P 498", or ...497, or ... - by excluding various other companies the activists didn't…

I'd like to be able to invest in an "index minus certain companies which I choose" fund so that people can exclude companies that they don't like for whatever reason.

You can. A bunch of companies offer SMAs like this. It's a retail product, usually labeled as some smart tax loss harvesting atop the indices where you can denylist particular stocks.

Fidelity offers one: https://www.fidelity.com/managed-accounts/separately-managed...

It'd probably take you an afternoon worth of time to research then enact it.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#112

Post by Ajedi32 »

compsciphd wrote: post #110
Ajedi32 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1600% higher returns can cover a lot of eventualities.

it doesn't cover you getting disabled so you can't work anymore at the age of 30 after working 8 years. 1600% higher return is great when you work from yours 20s to your 50s/60s and can essentially self insure yourself at that point with it, but as the person you are responding to you is (I believe) trying to say, that's not everyone.

Fair, but given that we're talking about a hypothetical government program, "index-based retirement fund" doesn't imply you're the only one contributing to said fund.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#113

Post by rjmunro »

According to Gemini, index funds in total own about 20% of the value on the Nasdaq 100 index. So if you list a new company in Nasdaq, typically they have to buy 20% of it. But only about 5% of SpaceX will floated, which means there won't be enough shares to go round.

They are doing a bunch of changes to rules to try and make this not completely break, but even if it doesn't, it feels like index funds are going to have to buy a lot of the SpaceX float, which is going to make it look like a successful IPO even if hardly any real investors buy it.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#114

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #87
snek_case wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is pretty shady. The S&P 500 in particular has fairly strict criteria (e.g. 4 consecutive quarters of profitability) and those criteria exist for a reason. They made me more comfortable buying the S&P 500 knowing I'm not buying pre-revenue companies. This is a bad precedent to set just to please Elon.

I'm a bit out of the loop, but has SpaceX not been profitable for the last 4 quarters? I understand they're investing a lot into R&D for Starship but I was under the impression they've been making a killing on Starlink.

Past performance as a company is like 20% of the concern here.

The concern is ~80% that a brand new stock enters the market & immediately has to be bought by everyone. The market has no time to adjust & settle.

This is fleecing everyone & it's entirely unclear under what madness this would ever have been considered.

There's so many irregularities and abnormalities being considered here, and all of them seem like pretty straightforward safeguards. It feels like nothing short of a conspiracy that so many norms would be pushed aside to consider listing spacex so quickly in so many indexes. "The proposal could also remove the minimum Investable Weight Factor requirement for megacap companies." For fuck sake! https://x.com/Benzinga/status/2050244492335206911

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#115

Post by jauntywundrkind »

ralfd wrote: post #39
khriss wrote: post #21

> Elon has control and optimizes for cool shit and going to Mars This trope needs to die. SpaceX has no plans to go to Mars. Elon meanwhile regularly says forward looking stuff to attempt to justify the lofty valuations of his companies. Let's just say there is a ... mixed track record on these proclamations (Full self driving, Hyperloop anyone?)

This trope has to die. SpaceX Starship design is optimized for Mars (instead of Blue Origin NG) and the gigantic Starship Factory and multiple launch pads under construction in Texas, Florida and Louisiana (plus potentially foreign countries) only make sense with Mars.

Or the attempt to Kessler Syndrome and Neuromancer it up as fast as possible by trying to send up 1m satellites. https://spacenews.com/spacex-files-plans-for-million-satelli...

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#116

Post by _aavaa_ »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #87
snek_case wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is pretty shady. The S&P 500 in particular has fairly strict criteria (e.g. 4 consecutive quarters of profitability) and those criteria exist for a reason. They made me more comfortable buying the S&P 500 knowing I'm not buying pre-revenue companies. This is a bad precedent to set just to please Elon.

I'm a bit out of the loop, but has SpaceX not been profitable for the last 4 quarters? I understand they're investing a lot into R&D for Starship but I was under the impression they've been making a killing on Starlink.

Maybe, but since then it has absorbed xAI and Twitter, neither of which are known for producing money.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#117

Post by John23832 »

randerson wrote: post #86
funimpoded wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet agreeing to only get paid when he does go to Mars. He already owns hundreds of billions of dollars worth of SpaceX. He "gets paid" whether or not these goals are achieved (a million people on mars definitely won't be achieved this century, as the place is fucking awful; one thousand is vanishingly unlikely, one million is flat-out not happening). In fact, hyping the company up ahead of IPO gets him paid, to the…

> a million people on mars definitely won't be achieved this century, as the place is fucking awful Mars could make for an interesting prison, though. Like the Australia of two centuries ago. If nobody volunteers to live there I wouldn't put it past Musk to meet his target that way.

People already lived in Australia before Britain shipped its prisoners there. It was habitable.

Nobody is spending trillions to build a prison on another planet.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#118

Post by trunkiedozer »

altcognito wrote: post #24
jmuguy wrote: post #18

I'm more worried about the early inclusion into the Nasdaq 100 index and if other indexes will follow. I don't want my retirement to be passively buying Elon's latest shell game.

This is why he (and other billionaires) are pining to get Social Security replaced with an indexed based retirement fund?

Way better returns when you take charge of your investments rather than bitching about the government, anyone can be a millionaire with minimal effort, just being smart.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#119

Post by trunkiedozer »

funimpoded wrote: post #50
altcognito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why he (and other billionaires) are pining to get Social Security replaced with an indexed based retirement fund?

Absolutely, that's the main reason there's been a push for that for decades. It's a giant pile of poor people's money that rich people can't easily skim from, and they'd really, really like to. Once it's "in the market" they gain all kinds of options for turning some of that money into their money, some immediately, some with tweaks to laws or policy.

That’s literally not how it works. You buy a share of stock and participate in their gains. For example, I owned a bunch of Tesla stock since around 2017. Now I have a ton in the stock as well as a new house and a model s plaid thanks to their greatness. Did the same with Apple, that is my retirement and travel fund. it ain’t hard.

Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure

#120

Post by trunkiedozer »

elevation wrote: post #73
altcognito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why he (and other billionaires) are pining to get Social Security replaced with an indexed based retirement fund?

> Social Security replaced with an index Yes please! I learned just how bad of a deal Social Security is when an employer (a bootstrapped startup) offered a predatory 401k plan. It was free for my employer to setup but the employees were stuck with extremely high fees. It was so bad that John Oliver made an episode[0] about it! Yet, even for the worst 401K plan in America, the projected retirement returns were 1600%…

Absolutely!
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