Rudro Chakrabarti
7 min read
Elon Musk’s SpaceX began trading Friday on the Nasdaq under the ticker NASDAQ:SPCX — the largest IPO on record, priced at $135 a share for an IPO valuation near $1.77 trillion. For most Americans saving for retirement, they’re wondering if SpaceX is about to land in their 401(k) whether they want it or not.
Shares closed up about 19% at $160.95, lifting the company’s market value above $2 trillion and making Musk the world’s first trillionaire on paper.
Must Read
-
Robert Kiyosaki says this 1 asset will surge 400% in a year and begs investors not to miss this ‘explosion’
-
The ultra-rich use these 5 real estate strategies to build wealth while they sleep — you can start with just $100
-
Millionaires under 43 are reshaping investing — just 25% of their portfolios are in stocks. Here’s where their money is going
A wave of coverage has warned that passive savers are about to absorb shares of a company that lost billions in 2025 — as relaxed index rules pull SpaceX into widely held funds. Prof G Markets co-host Ed Elson reinforced the risk in his read of the S-1: “If you own the Nasdaq,” he wrote, “you’re about to own SpaceX.”
Vanguard, which runs the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (NYSEARCA:VTI) — one of the most widely held funds in American retirement accounts — says the alarm misreads one important thing.
What the SpaceX index fund warnings get right
SpaceX will enter major US stock indexes far sooner than the old rules allowed — and the funds that track those indexes don’t choose their holdings. When a company joins an index, the trackers buy it on rebalance day — the periodic reset when funds realign holdings — in proportion to its weight, regardless of price.
Part of why SpaceX qualifies at all can be attributed to a rule change this spring. Alex Poukchanski, Director of Index Analytics at Morningstar Indexes — which administers the CRSP US Market Indexes benchmark behind Vanguard’s total-market fund — confirmed the shift to Moneywise. The change gave more flexibility to mega-cap companies that, in his words, increasingly arrive at the market with “much higher relative market caps but lower relative market float.” SpaceX, listing with roughly 5% of its shares available to the public (1), is a perfect example.
The five-trading-day fast-track that lets a large IPO enter quickly has been in place since 2017. What changed this spring was the eligibility screen — the float test — not the speed. And total-market indexes like CRSP’s have never screened companies on profitability in the first place, which is why an unprofitable company can be included at all. Past fast-track names entered on the same clock. Airbnb and Coinbase were both added to the CRSP indexes within five trading days of listing.
