I do agree that the optics of this aren’t great, and it’s rather easy to be cynical about motives.
I'm not an expert but it looks to my like 80% of my allocation won't be tracking spacex, because it's mid cap or small cap etc, and the 20% that's in the vanguard growth index might? I assume whoever sets the rules for the fund could change the rules to say companies must be listed for X months if they want to avoid this, right?
And I can change my allocation.
edit: Actually wait, isn't it only nasdaq 100 that's tracking it early, after 15 days rather than 3 months of trading? So 0% of my 401k is exposed to buying it quickly after IPO already, I think.
They removed it largely because investors wanted higher returns, and the tech companies that had such dual classes (1) were doing really well, and the S&P ended up caving on that rule.
1: Perennial hot button around here Palantir did this in a more extreme fashion than most. The three founders F class shares will always be at 49.9999% of the votes and the early investors B class shares have 10 votes each as compared to the publicly traded A class shares 1 votes.
S&P 500 includes companies from multiple exchanges. Like Nvidia, which lists on Nasdaq.