I'm going to assume this question was in good faith, and ignore that you are seemingly spamming it as a 'gotcha' all over this discussion.

If I'm already invested, and they change the rules on me in a way I don't like, I have to sell, and that's a taxable event.

So if I have invested in a Nasdaq index, and I don't want a massive exposure to SpaceX prematurely, I am forced to close my position and immediately pay taxes on the profits. I pay the taxes, and now my investing capital is reduced because Elon wanted to force index funds to buy SpaceX stock, which indirectly forces all current owners to buy SpaceX.

It's not future buyers so much as people that are already exposed, and were probably not counting on getting rug pulled by the Nasdaq.

So no, you are correct that no one new to investing is forced to own SpaceX stock, but millions of existing fund holders are now exposed to a stock in a way that simply wasn't possible when they put their money in, and will be penalized if they don't want that.

People already own them, and have owned them for months or years before the rules were changed for SpaceX.

There's a cost to selling, the brokerage fee plus in many countries there's then taxes due on any profits. Many people would prefer to have unrealized gains where they can pay the tax years ahead, when they need the money.

(Also please don't make the same comment 4+ times.)

leaving the word 'forced' aside (purposefully), pension funds, 401k holders, and many passive investors end up buying these things. you're right that no one is "forcing" them, but people who try to invest responsibly with little control over the day-to-day which is most people place trust in the institutions who do that investing for them.

I don't think that the claim of "the Nasdaq is misusing their institutional trust" is a controversial claim. Moreover, one of the things that people choose when they (401k, pension funds, passive investors) is institutional mechanisms that prevent potentially mispriced items from entering their portfolios.

The problem is a lot of passive investors own large quantities of that ETF, and to take their money out now they have to pay a tax penalty, so they are forced to invest in SPCX due to the rule change.

Its also a matter of principle. They had a seasoning period to allow for market price discovery over time, and they created a process to waive it for one company. Its not unreasonable to say that that is a bad thing.

Correct. Index funds are owned by people. For example, I have invested a large chunk of my retirement savings in an S&P 500 indexed fund (as many, many other people do). Whatever stocks the S&P 500 list, are what I end up owning; if I don't want to own one of those, I have to either roll that money into a different fund (which IIRC has limits, can't do that too often without tax consequences) or take the money out (and pay a tax penalty for withdrawing it before retirement).

So whether the index funds do or don't buy a certain stock has direct implications for real, non-millionaire, people.

No, they're just owned by people. Most of whom aren't billionaires.

Okay? Just because you don't have access to that investment vehicle doesn't mean others aren't using it. What type of reasoning is this? "I, personally, am not too badly effected, therefore it's not a problem"

And guess what, your VTI which does track NASDAQ as part of it's index is effected by this inclusion rule.

>QQQ and /NQ or /MNQ futures are the most popular instruments for getting exposure.

QQQ tracks the Nasdaq 100. It's an index fund. If the index includes a new ticker, then QQQ has to buy it.

Buying QQQ doesn't seem like going out of one's way. I don't understand your comment. "ETFs and chill" is a very common investment strategy.

Literally the index. If you track the NASDAQ as part of your index you must obey it's inclusion rules.

Funds often have institutional investors. Many of them Pension Funds (i.e. ordinary every day people) and when the institutional investors signed up, they didn't do so expecting Nasdaq rule change.

that is the whole point of an index fund - they buy whatever is in the index so you can get exposure to the total market. The scandalous thing is that an IPO'd company is going to have a lot of volatility for weeks to months after it goes public, so they typically do not allow any newly listed company to be included in the index for up to one year. This is for the benefit of retail. People have put their entire life savings into these funds because they are viewed as the optimal tradeoff between risk and return. Those people are now contractually obligated to either sell everything or expose themselves to spacex's IPO price movements.