I really want a QQQ/VOO replacement that excludes these new rushed IPOs that are just exit liquidity. There are ETFs that exclude harmful industries like gambling, weapons and tobacco. How about an ETF that doesn't include IPOs for six months or until insider lock ups periods are over.
VTI avoids these issues.
It's float adjusted market cap weighted.
More float allows better price discovery.
So a company like spacex has negligible weight.
I wanted to see how well Akademikerpension has done wrt. returns. This graph shows average yearly return from the financial crisis 2009 until 2021 and they are actually the best performing among other Danish pension funds [1].
I've recently been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have. I really don't want my investments to be in SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.
With the new Nasdaq 100 fast track rule, I'd certainly get out of any index that tracks it, or any funds that are invested in it. I don't know if any other indexes have had similar policy changes...but, if it works this time, and insiders are able to steal a few billion dollars from retirement funds without people even realizing it, I'm sure it'll become more commonplace until we have a functional government that regulates this kind of crime.
Apparently my US index fund is based on MSCI, which is even worse: eligible after 10 trading days. Although the float-adjusted market cap calculation should lessen the blow.
Google being one of the most profitable companies on the planet might contribute? OpenAI and Anthropic don't seem to be profitable while SpaceX is weighed down by heavy losses on grok.
> been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have
What’s holding you back? And what alternative investments are you considering?
I recently did homework to decide whether to double down on VOO (S&P 500 index) or to diversify via VXUS (ex-US index), and concluded VOO is better for my risk-adjusted ROI outlook and time horizon.
Momentum, really. I usually just buy more of a given fund and don't really take any out. My small portfolio is split across different funds, so I'd probably just split around the money I'd withdraw from the US-based ones into the other ones.
Why not Anthropic? They’re a very rare company capable of charging $200 per month per seat level fee across the corporate workforce.
Yes their compute costs are astronomical, but that can be managed down over time by more efficiency or mild enshittification that doesn’t create too much churn.
And they "only" need about 100 million recurring subscribers at $200 per month to make the profits that will justify their nearly $1 trillion valuation with almost no room for growth whatsoever, so who wouldn't want a chunk of that pie. (numbers calculated on back of imaginary envelope)
You would think you’re investing in a software technology company, but after reading a bit of news stories, you realize you’re quite literally funding war crimes. If I invested in an arms company, I’d have reasonable expectations about what I invest in. Investing in Anthropic looks at surface level looks like investing in software for hobbies and business.
It’s pretty depressing to be honest. I don’t know how I could work in any of these military industry companies.
Normally Danish pension companies and banks will refuse to invest your money in weapons manufactures (unless you have a lot of money, then they apparently don't care). But as long as your money is invested as a pool, they won't do weapons.
I think you're right that e.g. Anthropic wouldn't be on the block list, because: It's an IT company, and I suspect that even Palantir might make the cut. It is fairly annoying, because my pension fund won't invest in Rheinmetall, SAAB or Kongberg, which I think they should, but they will probably invest in Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, which I don't really like.
All major indices have always included defense contractors.
Also, when you buy into an index fund, you are not funding the companies that the index tracks. That’s a misunderstanding of how the markets and index funds work.
Because I don't really trust any of them, and I don't believe that the business is self-sustainable. At the moment we're in a phase where CTOs are able to withdraw money from the corporate bank accounts to be "on the cutting edge", but I don't think that's going to last. I'd rather have my money in something else.
Index funds adjust based on performance of the underlying stocks, so it doesn’t really matter if one of them does poorly. The index fund will adjust. When you buy an index fund like the S&P 500, you’re taking a position that the mega-caps it comprises as a whole will give you outsized returns over extended periods of time.
The criticism seems politically motivated. Considering what happened to Blue Origin, SpaceX's success is commendable. Although I agree $1.8T seems crazy.
It doesn't matter if it's successful or not. Their space business is worth virtually nothing on paper and the funding structures and profit/loss accounts are scary.
While the Starship project may be struggling, Falcon 9 is still a massive success, with a successful launch every couple of weeks, making up most of humanity's access to space/LEO right now.
And Starlink is a pretty big deal, particularly in a time of conflict where undersea cables are very vulnerable.
If Elon hadn't shifted so far to the right, these threads would be near-universally praising SpaceX despite Starship's struggles.
Interesting definition of "struggling", as in "managed to catch the largest booster rocket ever built with by snatching it mid air, and land the largest space ship in the ocean using a belly flop maneuver that everyone said was crazy and would never work".
A symptom of his fickle nature and erratic behavior, as well as general poor impulse control, all of which rightfully make people skittish with their money and question his judgment.
I dont think he was fickle with this one. He was remarkably consistent.
He had period where he though he can become hero for the democrats due to green cars. It did not worked, neither democrats nor left accepted him as unconditional hero.
The racism, the villingness to cause harm to get more power for himself were there whole time. He was far right the whole time, just became more extreme and open when it stopped being disadvantage.
But it’s at the whim of someone who I think nobody can describe as stable or trustworthy. Starlink the technology is great, Starlink the company has a massive weight attached to it.
Most of the 1.8T hype is not at all related to the rocketry business. Well, I suppose if you buy the "AI DCs in space" pitch they could be somewhat related.
What's political is a policy change to "fast track" companies into the Nasdaq 100. Spacex is the first to benefit from this loophole that allows them to be added to indexes almost immediately after listing, which likely is a license to steal a bunch of regular folks retirement money. Elon Musk doesn't need more ways to steal people's money.
The unfortunate thing is, a lot of people have no idea this rule change has gone into effect, and that they're about to get fleeced by a bunch of professional investors.
It's legalized theft, and the victims are people least able to defend themselves from it. Most people have no idea what's in their retirement accounts, or track very closely what's being tracked by the index funds they've been told for decades was the safest way to invest in the stock market for non-pros.
>Akademikerpension also said the governance structure of SpaceX was "extremely deficient", adding that Elon Musk is expected to control more than 80% of the voting rights while simultaneously serving as chief executive officer, chief technology officer and chair of the board.
Zuck was in roughly the same position and they didn’t put out a statement skipping that IPO. The valuation criticism is more valid but this line belies political motivation.
More than 10times higher (possible valuation), 10+ years of Musk showing what kind of liability he is and at that time Zuck didn't have all the main CxO positions.
Google too, and this was in the long term best interests of shareholders.
Imagine in 2010 if investors had real transparency into how much money YouTube or Maps was losing, along with the governance structures to enforce their concerns.
The political motivation is on Musks part. There's no unpolitical view of a man who ransacked the US government and is propping up far-right movements all over Europe.
Musk appears far less predictibile, more volatile than Zuck. Musk also got directly involved in US politics aligned with of a man who singlehandedly butchered US relations with almost everyone in the world. A man who threatened Denmark with taking their territory by force.
You’re calling it “political motivation” as some sort of blind hate or vendetta out of principle, cutting off the nose to spite the face. But you can no longer separate Musk from politics and aggression towards Denmark.
The pension fund’s assessment looks entirely valid, objective and justifiable to me. But for anyone who personally favors Musk and his political views any dismissal will look politically motivated. It’s easy to cry foul. In this light your shallow dismissal might be just as politically motivated.
I really want a QQQ/VOO replacement that excludes these new rushed IPOs that are just exit liquidity. There are ETFs that exclude harmful industries like gambling, weapons and tobacco. How about an ETF that doesn't include IPOs for six months or until insider lock ups periods are over.
VTI avoids these issues. It's float adjusted market cap weighted. More float allows better price discovery. So a company like spacex has negligible weight.
I wanted to see how well Akademikerpension has done wrt. returns. This graph shows average yearly return from the financial crisis 2009 until 2021 and they are actually the best performing among other Danish pension funds [1].
[1] https://www.finanshus.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Pensions...
Presumably Musk will sue them.
hope my Danish pension fund PFA doesn't do the same
I've recently been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have. I really don't want my investments to be in SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.
With the new Nasdaq 100 fast track rule, I'd certainly get out of any index that tracks it, or any funds that are invested in it. I don't know if any other indexes have had similar policy changes...but, if it works this time, and insiders are able to steal a few billion dollars from retirement funds without people even realizing it, I'm sure it'll become more commonplace until we have a functional government that regulates this kind of crime.
https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/what-the-nasdaqs-new-fas...
Apparently my US index fund is based on MSCI, which is even worse: eligible after 10 trading days. Although the float-adjusted market cap calculation should lessen the blow.
I’m going to be selling out of my Nasdaq ETF too. Such a shame.
Buuut if Anthropic does the same and lists on the Nasdaq then I might reconsider.
> I really don't want my investments to be in SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.
This just being an incomplete list or is there another reason you name the last two but not Google?
Google being one of the most profitable companies on the planet might contribute? OpenAI and Anthropic don't seem to be profitable while SpaceX is weighed down by heavy losses on grok.
> been thinking about pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have
What’s holding you back? And what alternative investments are you considering?
I recently did homework to decide whether to double down on VOO (S&P 500 index) or to diversify via VXUS (ex-US index), and concluded VOO is better for my risk-adjusted ROI outlook and time horizon.
Same. Though I’m 85%+ VOOG
Momentum, really. I usually just buy more of a given fund and don't really take any out. My small portfolio is split across different funds, so I'd probably just split around the money I'd withdraw from the US-based ones into the other ones.
Why not Anthropic? They’re a very rare company capable of charging $200 per month per seat level fee across the corporate workforce.
Yes their compute costs are astronomical, but that can be managed down over time by more efficiency or mild enshittification that doesn’t create too much churn.
And they "only" need about 100 million recurring subscribers at $200 per month to make the profits that will justify their nearly $1 trillion valuation with almost no room for growth whatsoever, so who wouldn't want a chunk of that pie. (numbers calculated on back of imaginary envelope)
You would think you’re investing in a software technology company, but after reading a bit of news stories, you realize you’re quite literally funding war crimes. If I invested in an arms company, I’d have reasonable expectations about what I invest in. Investing in Anthropic looks at surface level looks like investing in software for hobbies and business.
It’s pretty depressing to be honest. I don’t know how I could work in any of these military industry companies.
Normally Danish pension companies and banks will refuse to invest your money in weapons manufactures (unless you have a lot of money, then they apparently don't care). But as long as your money is invested as a pool, they won't do weapons.
I think you're right that e.g. Anthropic wouldn't be on the block list, because: It's an IT company, and I suspect that even Palantir might make the cut. It is fairly annoying, because my pension fund won't invest in Rheinmetall, SAAB or Kongberg, which I think they should, but they will probably invest in Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, which I don't really like.
All major indices have always included defense contractors.
Also, when you buy into an index fund, you are not funding the companies that the index tracks. That’s a misunderstanding of how the markets and index funds work.
you seem to be implying that, secondary markets have no effect on primary market prices, and i just want to make sure that's what you meant.
> you’re quite literally funding war crimes
What difference with Microsoft, amazon and google? They all heavily support the military.
(S)he said: "pulling my money from all of the US funds that I currently have".
Edit: OK, no the same person.
Chinese hardware and energy headwinds aren't going to be great for Anthropic, apparently not even over a 1 year time horizon.
Because I don't really trust any of them, and I don't believe that the business is self-sustainable. At the moment we're in a phase where CTOs are able to withdraw money from the corporate bank accounts to be "on the cutting edge", but I don't think that's going to last. I'd rather have my money in something else.
Index funds adjust based on performance of the underlying stocks, so it doesn’t really matter if one of them does poorly. The index fund will adjust. When you buy an index fund like the S&P 500, you’re taking a position that the mega-caps it comprises as a whole will give you outsized returns over extended periods of time.
I mean it isn't like it was automatically included.
The criticism seems politically motivated. Considering what happened to Blue Origin, SpaceX's success is commendable. Although I agree $1.8T seems crazy.
Elon achived this valuation by merging xAI into SpaceX. The future of xAI is questionable, and without it SpaceX is very overvalued.
Not even remotely politically motivated.
It doesn't matter if it's successful or not. Their space business is worth virtually nothing on paper and the funding structures and profit/loss accounts are scary.
While the Starship project may be struggling, Falcon 9 is still a massive success, with a successful launch every couple of weeks, making up most of humanity's access to space/LEO right now.
And Starlink is a pretty big deal, particularly in a time of conflict where undersea cables are very vulnerable.
If Elon hadn't shifted so far to the right, these threads would be near-universally praising SpaceX despite Starship's struggles.
Interesting definition of "struggling", as in "managed to catch the largest booster rocket ever built with by snatching it mid air, and land the largest space ship in the ocean using a belly flop maneuver that everyone said was crazy and would never work".
> If Elon hadn't shifted so far to the right
A symptom of his fickle nature and erratic behavior, as well as general poor impulse control, all of which rightfully make people skittish with their money and question his judgment.
I dont think he was fickle with this one. He was remarkably consistent.
He had period where he though he can become hero for the democrats due to green cars. It did not worked, neither democrats nor left accepted him as unconditional hero.
The racism, the villingness to cause harm to get more power for himself were there whole time. He was far right the whole time, just became more extreme and open when it stopped being disadvantage.
But it’s at the whim of someone who I think nobody can describe as stable or trustworthy. Starlink the technology is great, Starlink the company has a massive weight attached to it.
Most of the 1.8T hype is not at all related to the rocketry business. Well, I suppose if you buy the "AI DCs in space" pitch they could be somewhat related.
What's political is a policy change to "fast track" companies into the Nasdaq 100. Spacex is the first to benefit from this loophole that allows them to be added to indexes almost immediately after listing, which likely is a license to steal a bunch of regular folks retirement money. Elon Musk doesn't need more ways to steal people's money.
The unfortunate thing is, a lot of people have no idea this rule change has gone into effect, and that they're about to get fleeced by a bunch of professional investors.
https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/what-the-nasdaqs-new-fas...
It's legalized theft, and the victims are people least able to defend themselves from it. Most people have no idea what's in their retirement accounts, or track very closely what's being tracked by the index funds they've been told for decades was the safest way to invest in the stock market for non-pros.
>Akademikerpension also said the governance structure of SpaceX was "extremely deficient", adding that Elon Musk is expected to control more than 80% of the voting rights while simultaneously serving as chief executive officer, chief technology officer and chair of the board.
Their skepticism seems pretty valid to me
The company is wildly overvalued. It'd be funny if Musk wasn't about to walk away with a bunch of money stolen from retirement accounts.
Zuck was in roughly the same position and they didn’t put out a statement skipping that IPO. The valuation criticism is more valid but this line belies political motivation.
More than 10times higher (possible valuation), 10+ years of Musk showing what kind of liability he is and at that time Zuck didn't have all the main CxO positions.
I don't think it is similar therefore.
Google too, and this was in the long term best interests of shareholders.
Imagine in 2010 if investors had real transparency into how much money YouTube or Maps was losing, along with the governance structures to enforce their concerns.
The political motivation is on Musks part. There's no unpolitical view of a man who ransacked the US government and is propping up far-right movements all over Europe.
Musk appears far less predictibile, more volatile than Zuck. Musk also got directly involved in US politics aligned with of a man who singlehandedly butchered US relations with almost everyone in the world. A man who threatened Denmark with taking their territory by force.
You’re calling it “political motivation” as some sort of blind hate or vendetta out of principle, cutting off the nose to spite the face. But you can no longer separate Musk from politics and aggression towards Denmark.
The pension fund’s assessment looks entirely valid, objective and justifiable to me. But for anyone who personally favors Musk and his political views any dismissal will look politically motivated. It’s easy to cry foul. In this light your shallow dismissal might be just as politically motivated.