You May Be FORCED to Buy SpaceX

Dear Reader,

This is Dylan Jovine with Behind the Markets.

Happy Friday. Today is Friday, May 8th — the Friday before Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers watching, and to anyone who appreciates the difference a great mother makes.

Mine was wonderful. Nurturing, strong, endlessly supportive — and honestly, everything I've accomplished traces back to how she raised me.

Here’s something I think you should know…

You May Be Forced to Buy SpaceX.

Today I want to talk about SpaceX again, because there is a development most people have missed.

A writer named Ken Brown at the Information — one of the sharpest analysts I follow — put out a piece this week making a fascinating argument.

You may end up owning SpaceX whether you want to or not.

Here's why.

The S&P 500 Roadshow

SpaceX is doing a roadshow right now, and it is unlike anything I've ever seen.

A normal roadshow is the CEO and CFO flying around the country with their bankers, pitching institutional investors, ginning up interest before the IPO.

Elon being Elon, he's doing it at a completely different level — he has his own distribution, his own audience, his own megaphone.

But behind the scenes, what I've been hearing — and I want to be clear this is anecdotal — is that Musk's people have been quietly pressuring the major index providers to fast-track SpaceX into the S&P 500.

Last week, S&P Dow Jones Indexes asked for public comments on a plan to loosen the criteria for companies to join the S&P 500.

They don't name SpaceX, OpenAI, or Anthropic.

But they don't need to.

What the Current Rules Actually Say

The current S&P 500 requirements aren't unreasonable.

Companies must be profitable.

Enough of the stock must be freely traded so that forced buying from index funds doesn't artificially spike the price.

And there's a seasoning period — companies have to be public for a while before they can join.

These rules exist for a reason.

Now there are rumblings that all three could be loosened.

Why This Matters to Your Retirement

The S&P 500 is not just a stock index.

It is the foundation of roughly $20 trillion in index funds and retirement portfolios.

When you put money in a 401k or IRA and choose an S&P 500 fund, you are choosing it specifically because it represents established, profitable American businesses.

If they lower the profitability requirement — if they allow companies losing enormous amounts of money to join — they are fundamentally changing what the S&P 500 is.

They are turning a retirement vehicle into something considerably more speculative.

SpaceX before the xAI merger was a wonderful, profitable business.

After the merger, it is losing money.

Post-merger SpaceX losing money could end up inside your retirement account — not because you chose it, but because the rules were changed.

The NASDAQ Already Caved

This isn't hypothetical.

Musk's team already pressured the Nasdaq, and Nasdaq already made it easier for large companies to join its Nasdaq-100 — the QQQ index with $444 billion in assets.

Funds tracking that index will end up buying SpaceX.

The S&P 500 could be next.

The Long-Term Risk

If SpaceX joins the S&P 500 with a limited float — a small percentage of shares actually trading freely — index fund buying will send the price higher, attracting more buyers, pushing it higher still.

That is a dangerous feedback loop for people who just want their retirement money to grow steadily and safely.

Julius Caesar said it best: "All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures."

I'm not saying this is bad for SpaceX investors.

If you own it and this happens, good for you.

I'm saying this is potentially bad for the millions of retirees who own S&P 500 index funds without knowing what might end up inside them.

These sort of tactics are a big reason why I’ve been such a fan of gold lately.

When the rules get changed to benefit insiders… when retirement accounts get loaded up with speculative bets disguised as index funds… hard assets become the only real way to protect yourself..

There’s a reason why central banks have been buying gold at the fastest pace in 58 years.

They know something most retail investors don't.

Anyway, that's all I have.

Have a good weekend.

I will see you Monday.

“The Buck Stops Here,”