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Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

theguardian.com

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Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#141

Post by lesuorac »

ozozozd wrote: post #133
lesuorac wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well don't know your life but I suspect for a lot of people then it would've been more advantageous to not max out the 401k and retire pre-55 and spend the non-401k funds until 55. This largely being my gripe about the Trump accounts in that you're allocating funds into them that can't be touched without penalties until like 50 years later. And for most people this probably isn't even a benefit because you can lifeti…

I don’t follow why retiring pre-55 is a good idea. Can you elaborate?

When you retire is a personal decision (and also a financial one but I think for most people on this forum it's mostly a personal one).

That said, if somebody is say counting the days until 55 so that they can retire then it's likely they also wanted to retire pre-55. If the money is "stuck" in a 401k and so they are unwilling to retired beforehand then it probably would've been better for them to have stuck some portion of their 401k contributions into a taxable brokerage account and then retired pre-55.

But in this specific example, the guy I responded to was self-employed I'm kinda guessing their "hobby" is their job and so they kept working despite not needing to.

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#142

Post by lesuorac »

drsalt wrote: post #89
breatheoften wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely insane -- how the hell did anyone think that was a good idea under these circumstances ... This is an absolute scam -- why does it make sense for an index's buying volume requirement to be based on the implied value of shares that can't even be bought or sold ...?

it's not a scam if no one gets hurt

Honestly, I'm not sure most people get "hurt" in scams.

Think of the generic which cup has the ball scam? Like no American sailor falling for that overseas is going homeless from that event.

But I mean do you want to live in a neighborhood with only broken windows?

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#143

Post by tim333 »

aftbit wrote: post #113
jcranmer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX's S-1 listed its expected TAM and did break it out by segment. $26.5 trillion to AI, $1.6 trillion to connectivity (Starlink), $0.370 trillion to space launch. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026...

$26.5 trillion dollars. That's more than $3,000/yr from every single man woman and child on the planet. Another way to put it - more than 10x as much as all of the US spends on food every year. For Grok/xAI. That's bonkers.

It's not for Grok/xAI. It's an estimate for the total market for AI at some future time. As one datapoint:

>Morgan Stanley projects a $25 trillion market for AI-powered robots alone by 2050,

It's about 10x current AI spend.

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#144

Post by nradov »

keernan wrote: post #131
nradov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be confused about how index funds work. Hypothetically even if $SPCX was added to the S&P500, funds that track that index wouldn't be legally required to purchase it at the IPO price. Have you ever even read a fund prospectus or do you believe the uninformed nonsense you read online? The way it actually works is that when a stock is added to an index the index funds gradually build a position using a seri…

Mutual funds and ETFs set forth a prospectus that is a legal document binding them by law to comply with how they operate. While an etf is free to create its own index, that is not the way the market works. Vanguard, Fidelity, iShares, BlackRock and the other major players, state in their prospectus what index the ETF will follow - such as the CRSP US Total Market Index to use one example from Vanguard's VTI etf. Tha…

It's always disappointing to see that level of aggressive ignorance on HN. You completely missed the point. The fund is legally bound to make a good faith effort to track a target index, not to immediately buy every stock the day it's added to the index.

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#145

Post by Retric »

mattmaroon wrote: post #138
Retric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s numbers looked vastly more reasonable. “In 2025, SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue, with its Starlink satellite internet service accounting for $11.39 billion, or 61% of total sales.” Tesla had higher revenue number in at the start of 2019, when it had a market cap of ~0.06 trillion. Further Tesla was highly volatile in 2021 despite huge earnings growth with some people bank when it fell from 1.2T to…

Tesla’s P/E ratio is currently 365. They have less than 1% market share, and declining, weak profits, products that seem to be suffering from weak updates and brand harm due to Elon’s politics, and competitors outpacing them from all sides. Toyota’s P/E is under ten. They’ll make more money selling cars this quarter than TSLA will in ten years. TSLA prices have never been within an order of magnitude of reasonable. T…

I agree Tesla’s stock is horribly overvalued, it’s the poster child for the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

My point is as a benchmark it still makes SpaceX look like a bad investment.

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#146

Post by overfeed »

Gud wrote: post #140
overfeed wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Ukraine war in Ukraine's favor once starlink locked down access I think this is coincidental correlation. In the same period drone warfare was evolving until it reached some stalemate with an optic-fiber strewn killzone where none of the belligerents have an upper hand, and Ukraine's ballistic missile industry picked up pace, allowing Ukraine to hit far into Russia without relying on American long-range munitio…

Many of the long range drones use starlink terminals. The deep attacks inside Russia would be significantly more difficult without starlink.

> The deep attacks inside Russia would be significantly more difficult without starlink

This is inaccurate: Starlink was geofenced to Ukrainian territory after Musk's World War III tweet. Deep strikes inside Russia are mostly missiles, but not even the deep-strike drones can use Starlink due to geofencing.

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#147

Post by keernan »

nradov wrote: post #144
keernan wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mutual funds and ETFs set forth a prospectus that is a legal document binding them by law to comply with how they operate. While an etf is free to create its own index, that is not the way the market works. Vanguard, Fidelity, iShares, BlackRock and the other major players, state in their prospectus what index the ETF will follow - such as the CRSP US Total Market Index to use one example from Vanguard's VTI etf. Tha…

It's always disappointing to see that level of aggressive ignorance on HN. You completely missed the point. The fund is legally bound to make a good faith effort to track a target index, not to immediately buy every stock the day it's added to the index.

It would be helpful if you could provide a source supporting your thought that an ETF following a particular index would buy stock in the new company over what you describe as an extended period of time - as opposed to within a short few days.

I spent quite a lot of time before the SpaceX IPO learning how a change in Nasdaq 100 rules regarding adding a new company to its index, would impact ETFs whose prospectus tied them to the Nasdaq 100. The information I reviewed indicated the ETFs would add all of the new purchases immediately (within a matter of days following the addition of a new company to the tracking index).

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#148

Post by keernan »

nradov wrote: post #144
keernan wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mutual funds and ETFs set forth a prospectus that is a legal document binding them by law to comply with how they operate. While an etf is free to create its own index, that is not the way the market works. Vanguard, Fidelity, iShares, BlackRock and the other major players, state in their prospectus what index the ETF will follow - such as the CRSP US Total Market Index to use one example from Vanguard's VTI etf. Tha…

It's always disappointing to see that level of aggressive ignorance on HN. You completely missed the point. The fund is legally bound to make a good faith effort to track a target index, not to immediately buy every stock the day it's added to the index.

>aggressive ignorance on HN

That's rich in view of the fact you are the one who is expressing aggressive ignorance. The truth is:

1. An ETF tracking a specific passive index is legally obligated to purchase the shares of a new company added to that index with zero discretion allowed no matter how irrational the pricing might be.

2. Contrary to what you've been spewing about ETFs adding the stock gradually over time, the truth is all ETFs make their full purchases BEFORE the company is actually even added.

Doubt it? Do a quick google search: How soon do ETF's tracking a specific index buy the stock in a new company added to the index they track?

So stop being a jerk with your personal attacks - especially when you don't know what you are talking about.

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#149

Post by loeg »

mschuster91 wrote: post #37
loeg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant indices (S&P500, Vanguard) buy in proportion to available float -- i.e., its market cap is weighted by 5%. Only Nasdaq 100 ignores float, stupidly, but almost no money, especially 401(k) money, is in that.

Oh there are ETFs that track Nasdaq 100.

I believe I already addressed this in my earlier remarks ("almost no money, especially 401(k) money, is in [Nasdaq 100 tracking funds]").

Re: Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

#150

Post by keernan »

keernan wrote: post #41
loeg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant indices (S&P500, Vanguard) buy in proportion to available float -- i.e., its market cap is weighted by 5%. Only Nasdaq 100 ignores float, stupidly, but almost no money, especially 401(k) money, is in that.

Musk tried mightily to get S&P to change their 12 month rule to 15 days but they refused. Nasdaq, however, caved to Musk and agreed to change the rules of its Index - from a 12 months wait to 15 days - in exchange for Musk agreeing to list SpaceX on Nasdaq's exchange. There are ETFs that were issued tied to the Nasdaq 100 which are therefore legally bound to buy SpaceX. But the biggest immorality is the SEC allowing…

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