SpaceX, arguably the most legitimate of Elon Musk’s businesses, is set to have the largest initial public offering ever.
But even if you’re not someone whose heart goes aflutter at the prospect of a multibazillion-dollar tech deal, and even if you’re not some day-trader wannabe, you apparently get to care about SpaceX. A lot.
Why? Because if you’re a normie with a 401(k), you’re probably going to own SpaceX—even if you never buy a share.
A lot of retirement investing is done via nice, safe index funds, which track various stock indexes. Those big, fancy indexes—like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq—have rules for who’s included to keep your index fund largely free of meme stonks and fly-by-night garbage.
But those rules would have kept SpaceX out of the trading, and we can’t have that.
So Musk trundled up to the major stock indexes and said that he really, really wants to be included, even though the rules don’t allow it. Typically, companies must be public for at least a year before being included in index funds, precisely to protect those funds.