This Substack article exercises and advocates freedom of expression (Article 19) by publishing satirical critique of alleged financial market manipulation by a billionaire. The content operates within an open-access digital architecture that removes barriers to information distribution, supporting both the author's right to impart critical opinion and readers' right to access financial analysis. The author frames the piece as entertainment/satire while implicitly addressing institutional power asymmetry and opacity in financial governance.
Rights Tensions1 pair
Art 19 ↔ Art 21 —Content exercises freedom of expression to critique financial institutional governance, but the satire format and lack of constructive solutions limit readers' agency to participate in democratic reform of those institutions.
Uh, can someone explain this to me like I’m 5, but somehow still have money invested in index funds? It makes me sound like my invested-in-vanguard-total-market-indexes-and-fidelity-target-date-funds money is going to be mechanically dumped into Elon Stock because of FinanceWord FinanceWord FinanceWord gobbledgook FinanceWord but is that the correct reading?
Does this only affect money invested after June 15th, or does this also devalues money invested before this date?
If you don't invest anymore money in the index during the interim rebalancing period refered to by the author, then one should be alright. Right?
It's really expensive to get all your marbles out, I'd rather not do it if I don't have to.
Transparent enough, just trade it based on the new weightings and price direction of the underlying SpaceX
The index will have cheaper options contracts than SpaceX while disproportionately subject to the same volatility
That’s the biggest and most egalitarian wealth creation engine in history, aside from some government moves this administration with the currency and commodities
This is only controversial because
A) you’re too married to indexing and told too many people to do it
B) you consider indexing to be sacrosanct for some reason, and consider inclusion to be a reward when it means nothing. this is a symptom of prosperity preaching
I’m trying to understand the mechanics here. I get that SpaceX and Nasdaq are in cahoots to get SpaceX bundled with a bunch of other stocks (and that bundle is called QQQ?)
But why must retail investors hold this bundle? If I’m holding now, I can sell it and buy a different bundle right? And if I’m not holding it now, I can just continue not to buy it after SpaceX gets included.
Suppose you had a index of 100 companys each with a market cap of 1 G$ for a total of 100 G$.
You have passive investors owning 20 G$ of that index, amounting to 20% of the total, 20% of each company, and 200 M$ per company.
You then rotate out a company for a new one also worth 1 G$. The index is still 100 G$, but to match the index you are contractually required to sell your 20% ownership of the old company and are contractually required to buy 20% ownership of the new company.
However, the newly added company only released 5% of its shares to the public and the founder kept hold of the remaining 95%. Those fund managers are contractually obligated to buy 20% of the newly added company, but only 5% is available. Like a short squeeze, where the squeezer buys and holds supply so there are not enough purchasable shares to cover the shorts (obligated ownership), this is a financial divide by zero.
To get the remaining 15%, which they are contractually obligated to acquire, they must purchase from the founder. As they are in violation of their contract if they fail to acquire the remaining 15%, the founder now has complete control to dictate any price they want.
That is the scheme described: how to short squeeze retirement funds who do not even have shorts for fun and profit.
It's so bad. I could write a series of books about all the problems with the current system. There are so many.
These index funds are a mechanism for monopolization of 'the market' and it affects real people and it suppresses other markets through the perverse incentive structures it creates.
For example, I launched a crypto project back in 2019 which had its own decentralized exchange but ran into all sorts of hurdles with US regulations and also, the leaders of the community I was involved in were actively suppressing and slandering my project and propping up their biggest competitor's tech instead! All under the nose of regulators who approved all of it! I couldn't believe my eyes and neither could the community. But eventually it's like everyone started assuming that corruption and suppression was normal.
It's insane but it's like everyone is working to satisfy the big money and nothing else matters. Truth is suppressed, companies collaborate with their competitors and with regulators to deliver inferior goods and services to people while limiting their opportunities and dialing up surveillance and control.
At this stage, if I ever get the option to vote for a communist government, I would definitely take it.
Unofficially, we already have the worst form of communism now except the proceeds of the loot are distributed unequally and with a massive constant psyop running to convince people that what they get or don't get is a result of their own actions.
At least if we make communism official, we can shut down that psyop, acknowledge that the system is a controlled monopoly money machine and essentially just handing out money selectively and that the current criteria are arbitrary.
Once people accept the reality that the system has become an automated machine (since at least a decade) and that entrepreneurship and leadership has become redundant, then we can start thinking about fair distribution of the resources which the machine produces. The self-made people are not self-made, they are system-selected. Homeless people are not all lazy or incompetent; they are system-unselected. They didn't become homeless because they were crazy; they became crazy because they were made homeless. They became crazy trying to make sense of what happened to them. They couldn't figure it out because many if them did nothing wrong. They just got caught in a mental loop trying to fix stuff that they couldn't fix because it wasn't in their control. Their fate was always in the hands of the system.
I think the worst part is that some people who were given favorable treatment by the machine actually do believe that they earned their place. They don't know what it feels like to have all the algorithms suppressing their work and opportunities. They think their privileged treatment by algorithms is normal and same as everyone else.
Tsla is 1.4T market cap, so it's almost like *ELON-stock is going to double in 1 day. It will go from 4% to 8% of qqq in 1 day.
It'll happen a week or a month after IPO date though? It took fb/meta 1 year and then it entered as 1% qqq. TSLA entered 3 years after IPO so probably a small percentage.
Tsla is 2% vti (2T AUM). QQQ is 400B AUM. So add those two and you get $56B of purchasing. This seems like the amount they want to raise via IPO in total in the news, so the banks who do the IPO can sell it all guaranteed.
But people will want to buy it before it gets into the passive funds... So... Post inclusion market cap will be higher than we expect?
Funny how all this rule making happens so quickly for friends and family members and donors of the Trump administration. Just like it recently did for SpaceX when they got approval for launching 1 million satellites. The corruption is so out in the open, but it is happening all the time - and there are other controversies already like the Epstein files, ICE, Iran, etc - so these go unnoticed. Our political system is broken.
Silicon Valley is mostly made up of schemes designed to defraud investors disguised as the hottest new tech startups. Elon recognized this sometime around 2020 (likely starting with his foray into the world of the crypto pump/dump) and decided to skip the formalities and go straight to the fraud, no apologies. That's been his business model ever since. His companies are just a vehicle for this now.
My understanding: It depends on what index the fund is tracking. QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100 so QQQ is vulnerable. VT tracks the FTSE Global All Cap Index so VT is not directly affected by Nasdaq’s choices but is still exposed to some extent because spacex is likely going to be in the aforementioned FTSE index, Nasdaq’s actions impact spacex’s market cap, and thus Nasdaq’s actions impact spacex’s position in the aforementioned FTSE index which in turn affects VT’s composition (to a smaller extent than QQQ’s).
EDIT: to be clear the above are just examples with two funds (QQQ and VT)
The claim is that Nasdaq is going to artificially admit SpaceX to the Nasdaq-100, an index they control, in order to win their business away from NYSE. If the index you invest in is derived from the Nasdaq-100, that's problematic.
It seems kind of likely that SpaceX would make it into most of the major indices on the merits, relatively quickly (the S&P has a 1-year waiting period), just based on its likely size and liquidity.
If you are an index investor, it is probably not worth your time and energy to make any drastic changes because of this particular incident. Space X will comprise a small percentage of the indexes in question, and any impact on your portfolio will likely be imperceptible. And if your holdings are in a taxable account, the tax hit from selling are probably not worth it.
Longer term, folks should be aware that Wall Street has fully caught on to the normalization of index investing and have been looking at ways to use passive investors as exit liquidity. Private equity and private credit are the two recent high profile examples. There was an executive order recently that directed the federal government to consider allowing these asset classes into 401k's. And these sectors have been increasingly making there way into the public markets in various ways (which is ironic considering the name of the asset class). Same story with crypto.
In the past, most passive index investors worried about fees and portfolio composition and diversity. But moving forward it is probably worth thinking about index governance as well. For example the S&P500 has a one year waiting period before an public company can be considered.
Index funds divvy up money into stocks, in this case weighted by market cap. More market cap = bigger slice of the pie.
SpaceX wants to instantly jump near the top of the pie - capturing tons of the money in index funds for itself, and also therefore taking it away from other companies stocks.
SpaceX (and others like OpenAI, Anthropic)'s private market cap valuation is so high that if they IPO they would instantly jump to the top of the entire stock market. This has never really happened before. By the rules, funds would have to suddenly start buying a huge weight of SpaceX stock - and sell NVDA/AAPL/GOOGL/everything else - to achieve the new balance.
Normally there are rules on how fast a new company can get included in the index. You usually have to be on the market for some time, demonstrate consistently high valuation, etc etc. SpaceX wants to skirt this and jump straight onto the index (near the top).
Further, the rules also usually weight you according to how much of your stock is actually on the market. If you only sell 5% of your company, you only get weighted at 5% of your market cap. SpaceX wants a bonus multiplier so even though they'll only make 5% of their stock available for sale, they want to be weighted in the index as if it was say 15% available. Aka over-bought / boosted price.
This creates both mechanical forced buying and artificially constrained supply. Likely sending the price to the moon, not based on fundamentals but based on gaming the index rules.
Then, once insider lock-up periods are over in a few months, SpaceX can choose to release even more shares - say jumping the available shares from 5% to 100% - which will unleash their full market cap (now even further inflated) and thus capturing even more of the money in index funds.
Index funds being 'passive' guarantees there will be buyers for SpaceX employees and executives to sell their shares to, likely at exorbitantly over-valued prices. At which point they wash their hands of the valuation and your retirement account becomes the new bag holder who has to worry about whether SpaceX is actually worth what you just paid for it.
> The CRSP US Total Market Index, by contrast, adds all IPOs ranging from mega caps to small caps—accounting for 98% of the market—within the first five trading days of the stock’s listing.
So it sounds like SpaceX will show up in VTI sooner than in the Nasdaq100, even with their new "fast entry" rule.
Yes, when SpaceX gets added to the index, it's going to skyrocket for just that reason. The other reason why SpaceX stock is going to skyrocket is because of the "infinite potential". After all, Elon is going to be God-Emperor of Mars, and how much is a piece of that worth?
The OP knows this and wants a window to profit from this squeeze. For the general public index owners, the sooner it's added to the index the better, minimizing the time that traders can front run this squeeze ahead of them.
Perhaps better it's not added to the indices at all, but as long as it's inevitable, the sooner the better.
>That is the scheme described: how to short squeeze retirement funds who do not even have shorts for fun and profit.
How many retirement funds use the nadasq 100 as the benchmark? The only thing that's really objectionable is the 5x multiplier, and so far as I can tell that's confined to the nasdaq 100 index. If the funds use a sane index without such shenanigans, it won't be affected nearly as much, and the whole debate just turns into the perennial question on whether [company] is overvalued and whether passive investors are being taken for a ride.
Bingo. No sane investor holds QQQ because there is no academic theory behind why it should exist. Why is a stock better if it's listed on NASDAQ instead of NYSE? Can any investor answer this question? Doubt it. If you are into factor investing and you like large cap growth, you buy something like VUG. Most people should just stick with SP500 or total market.
However, QQQ had a really good last 15 years and lots of investors hold it because they are chasing returns and because the marketing worked. (The managers of QQQ are legally obligated to spend X% of the fees collected on advertising the ETF, ha ha ha.)
Right, you are trapped if you are holding QQQ in a taxable account and have substantial gains, so you should do nothing with the shares you already have. But no, ceasing to invest in it will not save you. The rebalancing discussed in the article happens internally with you already invested dollars.
But do take this moment to realize QQQ never made sense to invest in, and put your future dollars somewhere else. There are plenty of funds that overweight large cap tech but track an index that doesn't care which exchange the stock is listed on.
Either way, no, high frequency trading firms are going to beat you to the punch. And shorting elons other company, just because it's over valued by traditional metrics, didn't work out that great for most traders.
vti is free float adjusted, so not as susceptible. But:
Elon will naturally do everything in his power to pump his stock, as every CEO does, and VTI buys shares in proportion to how successful that is. That is the nature of passive, market cap weighted investing.
If you want to underweight Elon's companies, or, generally, weight companies based on something besides market cap, you have to get into active or factor investing.
It mostly doesn't matter though, because if and when one stock drops, those investible dollars will likely flow into another stock, so VTI doesn't really care.
To be fair, QQQ is not really an index fund. Unless you think that I can make up whatever arbitrary list of stocks I feel like, and call it an index, and create an ETF that tracks it, and still call that an index fund.
Vanguard is probably the most principled when it comes to passive index tracking, and they do not have an ETF that tracks the NASDAQ 100 (or any fund that focuses on a single stock exchange for some inexplicable reason).
I came here to say this, too. I remember hearing "500M market cap!" and then realizing that was because one person created a new token with 1M coins, bought one themselves for $500, and then started screaming "$500M market cap!" Technically it is true, but it really takes the "greater fool" theory to new heights.
There's trillions of dollars sitting in indexes that are quite literally 'passively' invested. Virtually everything holds this bundle in one way or another. Passive indexing has both outperformed and overtaken active investing - leading a lot of money into VOO/VTI/QQQ/etc that track the S&P500 or some other index ("the market"). For retirement funds like 401ks, retail contributes money every paycheck that gets routed into these indexes. There may not even be much of a choice - your 'plan' may only let you pick some kind of "Target Date Fund" and then the institution picks what it goes into, usually indexes.
If you fully actively managed your own money and picked mostly individual stocks (not broad indexes) then yeah you could change your allocations. But there's a lot of money already in.
They don't target something else because they wouldn't be an index fund, that's just a passive fund with their own published strategy. Those exist but aren't as popular, the appeal of index funds is that you're just getting "the market" and "the market" is measured by the index. Public indexes are supposed to be lower-cost and less manipulable, but that was before they got large enough to "wag the dog," which is the ultimate point of the article.
Article advocates freedom of opinion and expression by publishing critical analysis of financial market misconduct. Content directly exercises right to seek, receive, and impart information through public critique of powerful institution.
FW Ratio: 57%
Observable Facts
Article headline and description communicate critical opinion about Nasdaq index manipulation.
Page indicates 'isAccessibleForFree:true' with no paywall restriction.
Comment, share, and like counts visible, enabling metric-driven amplification.
Author bio self-identifies as satirical and entertainment-focused ('sarcasm, and sass only').
Inferences
Critique of market manipulation exercises right to impart information about institutional practices.
Free access and open sharing architecture operationalize freedom of expression and information distribution.
Satire framing suggests deliberate use of opinion/expression rights in non-literal form.
Content implies critique of absence of freedom of peaceful assembly and association when discussing concentrated financial power and institutional rigging. Not directly about assembly but addresses power consolidation.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Publication format supports reader association through subscriber network.
Comment and interaction statistics visible on page.
Inferences
Critique of concentrated power implicitly appeals to collective oversight and association rights.
Reader engagement metrics suggest formation of interpretive community around shared critique.
Article criticizes Nasdaq index manipulation by powerful billionaire, implying critique of freedom of movement within markets and transparent financial systems. Not directly about freedom of movement but addresses systemic opacity and power asymmetry.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Headline states 'How to rig an index to appease a billionaire,' making a claim about market manipulation.
Article published openly on Substack without paywall ('isAccessibleForFree:true').
Inferences
The critique of index rigging signals concern for transparent access to capital markets information.
Open publication structure supports circulation of critical financial information across borders.
Content implicitly addresses financial literacy and information access as educational concern. Critique of market manipulation relates to transparent information needed for informed participation in capitalist systems.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Article provides critical analysis of market mechanisms ('How to rig an index').
Content marked 'isAccessibleForFree:true' removes cost barriers to financial education.
Inferences
Critique of opaque market manipulation implies education as tool for informed participation.
Free publication model democratizes access to financial analysis typically gated behind subscriptions.
Author bio contains disclaimer ('Not investment advice. Entertainment, sarcasm, and sass only. NOT to be taken seriously') which acknowledges limitations of expression and potential harms of financial misrepresentation. Implies recognition of duty to community.
FW Ratio: 33%
Observable Facts
Author bio includes disclaimer: 'Not investment advice...Entertainment, sarcasm, and sass only.'
Inferences
Disclaimer signals author awareness of responsibility regarding financial information dissemination.
Self-labeling as satire acknowledges duty not to mislead readers despite critical framing.
Content implies critique of unequal access to governance of financial institutions ('rig an index to appease a billionaire'). Frames problem as power imbalance in institutional decision-making, but does not advocate for democratic participation mechanisms.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Article frames Nasdaq as subject to billionaire influence, implying exclusion of public voice.
Substack publication structure does not include mechanisms for readers to participate in institutional governance.
Inferences
Critique of index rigging signals concern for democratic legitimacy of financial institutions.
Satire format suggests implicit expectation of participatory fairness being absent.
Substack privacy policy applies; no domain-specific privacy disclosure visible on this page.
Terms of Service
—
Substack terms apply; author disclaimer states 'Not investment advice' and 'Entertainment, sarcasm, and sass only.'
Identity & Mission
Mission
0.00
Article 19
Author bio emphasizes editorial independence and personal expression ('Personal account'). No systematic mission alignment with human rights frameworks evident.
Editorial Code
0.00
Author self-identifies as satirical and entertainment-focused. No formal editorial standards disclosed.
Ownership
—
Individual author on Substack platform; no organizational ownership structure affecting HRCB.
Access & Distribution
Access Model
+0.10
Article 19 Article 26
Content marked 'isAccessibleForFree:true'; open access supports information dissemination rights.
Ad/Tracking
—
Substack platform tracking applies; no additional tracking visible on this URL.
Accessibility
—
Standard Substack accessibility features; no notable barriers observed.