> It's a major scandal and definitely not being talked enough about

It’s being extensively talked about and debated. It hasn’t entered the mainstream discourse because it’s too technical.

There are enough Elon haters that you can rest assured there will be an inverse ETF so that you can easily hedge away your index exposure if you really want to.

Just call it what it is: SpaceTwitter

Well, we elected a bunch of criminals, and Elon fired everyone who regulates this. The SEC was gutted like a fish, and contract terminations resulted in a large percentage of FINRA staff being laid off.

> It's a major scandal and definitely not being talked enough about.

You mean pension savings accounts? You're right these are major scandals not being talked enough about.

And it's only just a tiny less bad than how the system works in socialist europe: in socialist europe the various states' public debt is the pension "savings". Those mandatory contribution have been long spent already by the states with the IOU promise that, once you'll retire, the state shall keep paying you a monthly pension. It's totally unsustainable.

It's nearly as if thieves voted, worldwide, a system allowing them to part their taxpayers from their hard-earned money.

Pension funds, private or public, are the scandal.

In order to be incredulous at xAI, you'd have to be incredulous of the AI business in general, which is fair.

But then you'd also be basically betting against the entire tech sector, and really the entire US economy and against the value add of AI. That kind of bet is much more difficult to swallow.

I think you have to temper the skepticism a bit though.

SpaceX has dramatically lowered the cost of launching things into space. They are still the leader here. They can put a kg into orbit cheaper than anyone, even heavily subsidized state operations (EU and China).

Their order book continues to be full. Every single launch vehicle they roll off the line was pre-sold years ago, including its re-use flights.

I agree that Elon is their biggest potential problem and a big risk but their launch business is sound and wildly successful. If you believe access to space will be a growing segment of the economy in the future it isn't exactly a bad investment.

I remember all the people putting Tesla down when they IPO'd. I bought $4k of stock (all I could afford at that time). Sold $100k of it a few years ago, still have the other half worth near $220k. Their numbers at IPO time were garbage and it wasn't clear they would even survive. Then they started shipping hundreds of thousands then a million cars.

YMMV, consider all sides and make your own judgement. Just be careful about trusting the anti-SpaceX case. Even if everyone is technically correct about them it can still be a huge miss not to invest! The future is not static and if they can put the raised capital to productive use the IPO could end up being a fantastic deal. And FWIW I also agree the largest immediate risk is they are over-valued. Only time will tell on that front.

>There is a good chance this one becomes the Wework of this decade.

It's very different from WeWork which was basically just subletting office space with beer taps. At least SpaceX had done significant stuff with the rockets and Starlink.

> excellent salesman of vision when fundamentals are weak

Wow that was a polite way to say that

Didn’t Sp500 drag their feet for a long time before adding Tesla?

Also, would individual funds that track the S&P have left themselves some wiggle room to delay this if they wanted?

Cave? That’s the boring company, this is the space company.

"The secret of greath wealths with unknown causes is a forgotten crime, because it was properly done" for those who don't speak french.

If you have $100k, you can do it with direct indexing at Schwab. The management fee is 0.40%.

I looked into it, but there are gotchas with wash sale rules and taxes. You really need $500k-$1M to avoid tracking errors. End of the day, the overhead seemed more problematic than the problem, so I ended up increasing my global allocation instead.

Yes, kinda. Goldman Sachs launched that under the symbol SPXXAI last month. I'm not totally sure how to actually invest in it yet though.

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/ai-goldman-sachs-stocks-ind...

The cheapest option might be to buy the index and sell short the appropriate amount of Musk companies.

If you have a big enough portfolio, direct indexing (using something like Frec or Wealthfront) could be an interesting option, and weighting the companies that you don't want at 0.

There is XMAG, but beware the expense ratio is much higher than the mainstream indices.

Direct indexing is pretty easy these days.

Based on the list of businesses at the top, the stock market seems like it rewards profit margin and profits, by businesses that sell meaningful products and services.

https://companiesmarketcap.com

Can you provide an example of any of the businesses on that are on that list due to "mass stupidity"? They all seem to operate factories, employ many highly qualified people, and make a material difference in many or even most people's lives around the world.

Meanwhile, SNAP has returned -14.98% per year to its shareholders since it IPO'd (Jun 3 2017), and at an $8.27B market cap, it makes up a negligible portion of any broad market index fund, so not sure how SNAP's shareholders have been rewarded by mass stupidity, especially given that the founders still own half of the business. They would have been far better off liquidating their shares and investing in SP500.

https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/?ticker=SNAP

if they weighted (fully) by float (perhaps the average float from the trailing 90 days to the re-balance) it would not be as easy to game. The Nasdaq is accounting for float, but not completely.

They do, but one performance metric for these ETFs is tracking error. So they want to try to match the index closely.

The operators of the fund are allowed to do whatever they outlined in the prospectus to track the index, some funds allow futures, options, and swaps along with equity shares to maintain parity with the index.

There are ways to gain exposure to a single stock without directly purchasing shares, options and swaps being the most common. Owning the actual shares makes things easy for the fund operators, but there are other ways.

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of course they do. read any prospectus for a FUND and funds track INDEXES using rules. inclusion in some index doesn't hamstring anyone.

blind purchases are not going to happen. people assume passive indexing is brainless, but it isnt.

But a low stock float. I once had a meeting with a guy who said his company was worth $100m. How did he get that valuation? He sold 0.4 % of stock to friends and family at $400k.

The SpaceX profit is EBITDA, not real. And presumably includes massive starlink depreciation and stock based comp.

Most serious index do float, nasdaq has somewhat different rules (but it's a weird index...)

It does when you look at it with a few less zeros… it’s like a broke person floating checks for payday loans.

My dude(ette):

This place discusses SpaceX technical things all the time. But SpaceX is not a research lab. It's a company. That does business. And is going public. Taking a little time off from arguing about thrust and payload to talk about their business paratices, lobbying and late-stage capitalism is not only appropriate here...

Look around you. This may be called "Hacker News," but it is run by and for the benefit of a business, YCombinator. Speaking bluntly, if you come here only to talk tech, you're only getting half of the HN value proposition. The value of HN is that it mixes business with pleasure, so to speak. Many people here will either work for a tech business or found one. You can find technical discussions everywhere. Business discussions tailored for tech? That's actually very, very valuable.