It also used to require 15 railroads, but the market moved on. They held tight on the profitability requirement with TSLA and missed a huge part of the growth. They may continue to hold the line on that going forward. But, if the AI companies grow their market caps, it's going to be hard to point to the S&P 500 as representing the most significant companies in the US market when trillions in market cap end up no represented.

Of course this all becomes moot if all the companies crash out. I don't think enough people are asking what if these companies don't crash out though.

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tialaramex an hour ago | parent [-]

It becomes moot if even some of the companies crash. If you try to say it works if some of them crash because some of them didn't you actually get that XKCD "Nobody has won the US Presidential Election without..." silliness. "OK, the rule should be you have to be profitable OR have an HQ in a city with two vowels in its name".

Did it really used to require that you own "15 railroads" ?

	▲	antasvara 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The commenter is likely referring to the original S&P 90, which mandated a certain number of stocks in different sectors. At the time those numbers were 50 industrials, 20 utilities, and 15 railroads. The breakdown shifted as the economy changed until the 80's when they did away with sector quotas in favor of rules closer to today (basing allocation on market cap). Regardless, the S&P 500 also excludes a company like Microstrategy (the company that holds Bitcoin) from their index, had excluded Robinhood for a wile due to missing the profit requirements, and so on. It was never "meant" to cover the 500 largest companies by market cap, and has generally resisted pressure to change that.