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Comment by l23k4 | Hacker News Reader

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It’s been covered extensively and is common knowledge. One example after a 5 second google: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/may-jobs-report-stock-marke...

> buyers decide the prices they'll buy at.

Not if they're index funds. They buy at the price it is, until they've satisfied their holdings represent the appropriate share of the market. Which, pre-IPO and early-days-after-IPO, is likely to not be accurate to the long-term price.

This, of course, is why it's wise to wait a while after an IPO for the market to figure out how it values a new stock before it joins the index.

It has been covered extensively. The change of nasdaq rules has been covered by Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT, and most others who have reporters on the Wall Street beat. Columnists at all three of those publications have called it out as a possible play on institutional indexing money. I don’t need to tell you who like it’s some big secret either. It was Elon Musk on behalf of spacex. The changes were openly part of the ipo.

I’m not going to cite sources for a major financial news story that is being extensively covered in the financial and general press.

Here's Matt Levine from Bloomberg saying something along the lines of "lol, obviously the indices have to do this, they'll look like fools if they don't because these will be the biggest companies on the market". He famously spends much of his time making fun of Musk, but seems to reject the idea of his influence here.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-26/ind...

Perhaps you can provide a single counterpoint? I can't find the columns you refer to.

That is one of the columns. The headline makes my point succinctly. Your paraphrase of the column misses the crucial point. A Nasdaq index fund doesn’t buy a company unless it is in the Nasdaq. Under the old rules SPCEX was ineligible for listing. Now Nasdaq index funds all have to buy. Index funds by nature do not selectively buy stocks, if the stock is in the index, they buy, that’s their mandate. That’s the game, to be included in as many indexes as possible that force institutional investors to buy. That’s hundreds of billions worth of funds that now have to buy in, that previously wouldn’t have had to if it wasn’t listed on the Nasdaq.

The SP500 did not waive the rules, and that made above the fold news this week, because it is a major blow to the big IPOs happening this month since they are valued so high. It will be harder for them to move stock if the massive index funds aren’t buying automatically. The big IPOs this month are asking for prices that demand hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of liquidity. Index funds are automatic liquidity, but only if you are on the index.

They didn’t ask them to change long standing rules for shits and giggles.

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