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S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

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291–300 of 524 posts

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#291

Stocks and money. It's so boring. I will go drive my old German car now, and get a bit drunk in a bottle of Nebbiolo while listening to some French lunatic with a piano. Enjoy your trip to Mars and your self driving toy cars. The world is off its rails. Bit time.

Yeah yeah we're all above such gauche matters, it's only the entire reason SWEs have high paying jobs, paper wealth, and all the comforts that come with both, including the freedom to earn enough to walk away and act like you're above it all.

(I obviously don't know your circumstances but am commenting about a general phenomenon I see parroted by many professionally successful SWEs who seem to take glee in being ignorant of economics/finance while enjoying the spoils.)

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#292

Yep!! Respect to them. I was planning to move to an equal weight index but this gives me a little more time to evaluate options.

They weight by free float so it would been something like 0.3%. Hardly the end of the world

Can I have 0.3% of your portfolio for a startup? It’s such a small percentage you won’t notice.

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect actual human professional accountants to be involved somewhere in the due diligence stage of those approving the IPO. Then again, I know nothing of the IPO process, and am definitely thinking of mergers and acquisitions due diligence and hoping something exists for IPOs.

The software that most accountants use is leaning into AI as hard as it can and unlike coders, accountants are being sold the benefits but can’t directly see the shortcomings and don’t have the programming know how to engage with the technical nuance. Like many other sectors quality is gradually turning to slops as people “let the AI do it”.

Beautiful - I can’t wait for the lawsuits/criminal prosecutions and finger pointing.

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#295
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll eventually get exposure to it when it gets added in 12 months. Unless there are better profitability criteria. Ultimately it's all about market returns. If other indexes add it and outperform then eventually money will shift to those funds that do better.

What do you mean "better profitability criteria"? I don't want an index to exclude companies on the basis of profitability. I want it to hold the market. (I also don't want them to create special exceptions. The S&P 500 has pre-existing inclusion criteria, and I'm glad they're sticking to their rules.)

Every index has criteria, usually somewhat unique, or there would be no marketable difference between them?

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#296
post #272
post #30

Big relief for me. As a passive investor, I want the indices to follow the same passive strategy they always have, and specifically not make exceptions for specific companies like SpaceX wanted. Plenty of ways to get exposure to that stock without it going into the indices it is not qualified for.

You'll eventually get exposure to it when it gets added in 12 months. Unless there are better profitability criteria. Ultimately it's all about market returns. If other indexes add it and outperform then eventually money will shift to those funds that do better.

After 12 months the market will have sorted it out. They can’t fake it with investment banker tricks for that long.

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#297

Stocks and money. It's so boring. I will go drive my old German car now, and get a bit drunk in a bottle of Nebbiolo while listening to some French lunatic with a piano. Enjoy your trip to Mars and your self driving toy cars. The world is off its rails. Bit time.

Stocks and money should be boring for most people. I'm not a financial adviser and this isn't financial advice but I believe no one with a net worth less than $2m should ever buy an individual stock. Invest in a target date retirement fund for your 401k. Same for Roth Ira. If you have more money to invest after that, invest in an index that aligns with you values (for example I invest in an ESG index for environmenta…

It’s because you just lived through a 10 year period of the best growth for passive, and there is a tremendous amount of marketing online for passive.

I don’t disagree with your basic idea, but not being able to articulate alternatives so that you know when they make sense is going to hurt you.

We are possibly seeing a major failure mode for passive for the first time.

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#298
post #30

Big relief for me. As a passive investor, I want the indices to follow the same passive strategy they always have, and specifically not make exceptions for specific companies like SpaceX wanted. Plenty of ways to get exposure to that stock without it going into the indices it is not qualified for.

Agreed. S&P 500 needs to be seriously gatekeeped. We need safer boring companies in there thatbhave been peoven over a long period of time. Nothing against these companies but they are not proven and ready for S&P 500.

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#299
post #30

Big relief for me. As a passive investor, I want the indices to follow the same passive strategy they always have, and specifically not make exceptions for specific companies like SpaceX wanted. Plenty of ways to get exposure to that stock without it going into the indices it is not qualified for.

I get what you're saying, but I think there's a contradiction between wanting to be a passive index-fund investor and having opinions like that. The core tenet of index investing is that the market knows better than you.

The S&P 500 has had these requirements for decades and the approach has worked. This is really a statement that they aren’t going to change what worked so that a few billionaires can manipulate it.

Re: S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic

#300

Letting new stocks marinate in the market and get 4 quarters of SEC filings along with following all the GAAP accounting practices will definitely help evaluate them before inclusion. The last large boom/bust cycle had a couple of companies, at least, that were doing illegal things. I'm not stating that these three are, just that nobody knows and the process should play out. I do wonder if any of these three companie…

Reading the Spacex S-1, there’s a notable footnote (notable in that it’s a unique disclosure amongst all filers in the context it’s presented and is not required by any FASB standard). It calls out that land is not a depreciable asset.

That really didn’t need to be said and it seems to be sourced from memes from Reddit. It is the kind of infantile patronizing feedback you would get if you asked for comments on financial statements from chatGPT.

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