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Comment by zzleeper | Hacker News Reader

I wish there would be a way to just buy sp500 minus a list of firms, so I could invest in a diversified way without going into Uber and friends (or any other firms that make profits on paper without the cash flow to back it)

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> firms that make profits on paper without the cash flow to back it

Uber is cash-flow positive [1].

Due to stock-based compensation, many profitable tech firms hit this metric before GAAP. Put another way, if you owned the entire business, you could sustainably extract those profits.

[1] https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_earnings/2023/q3/e...

Fractional shares would work, if you don't want the expense and unreliability of shorting.

Simplest thing would be to find an actively-managed mutual fund that focuses on what you want. (Warning: What you want is probably to lose money compared to the rest of the market.)

Be careful. The indexers might hear this and reassure you that the S&P is only optimal with Uber included at exactly the date it did and the fund will fail otherwise.

So buy SPY and short Uber?

Can you do this easily? Without paying $$ in transaction costs due to shorting (plus margin)

Most trading APIs are fairly simple, TD for example is very easy to use and very accessible. IBKR is a bit weirder in both protocol and access, but, works very well.

You can pretty trivially DIY that.

https://pebble.finance/

(Disclosure: The CEO is an acquaintance, but I have no financial interest.)

You can do this with most direct indexing solutions.

There's at least one ETF that tracks the top 50.

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