Aren't we, though? Like it's hard not to argue that there's one or more groups of people that get together at lunches and dinners and galas and have ongoing projects to do things like institute rule changes at NASDAQ that effectively require index funds to take on outsize risk from a known-overvalued IPO just in time for that IPO to happen.

To understand why this isn't a conspiracy of a sort by some "elite" group of people to take money from 401ks and IRAs, you'd have to argue that there's a good reason to shorten the window that outweighs the reason the window exists. The fact remains that many many IPOs crater within a few months. The rule change seems to exist to leave small low-effort investors holding the bag.

Just because we're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get us.