- Nasdaq-100 index fund holders became involuntary SpaceX shareholders on July 6.
- The development aligns with Nasdaq’s new rebalancing methodology for megacap assets.
- Critics think the new methodology adopted by Nasdaq will lead to structural manipulation.
Nasdaq completed mandatory rebalancing executions for SpaceX at the market close on Monday, July 6. It is a mechanical alignment that prepares the stock to officially open as a component of the Nasdaq-100 index on Tuesday, July 7, 2026.
$4.3 Billion in Forced SPCX Buying
The reported exercise involves executing approximately $4.3 billion in forced buying of SPCX shares. It represents the fastest major index inclusion in history, occurring just 15 days after SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO on June 12. The event was enabled by a new Nasdaq rule change enacted on May 1, 2026, for megacap listings ranking in the top 40 by market value.
It is worth noting that Nasdaq did not remove any existing company from the benchmark to accommodate SpaceX because this is an intra-quarter fast-track addition. As it stands, the index will temporarily hold more than 100 names until the standard reconstitution in December.
Nasdaq’s New Rebalancing Methodology
The rebalancing execution comes with a non-negotiable structuring for the index holders. For instance, every fund benchmarked in the index will have roughly 0.5% to 0.7% in SpaceX, whether its holders choose that exposure or not.
Related: SpaceX Joins the Nasdaq 100 on July 7: What It Means for the Market
Notably, newly public companies waited at least three months before becoming eligible for inclusion under the previous Nasdaq-100 methodology. Such companies were required to maintain at least 10% of their shares in public hands. However, these two conditions no longer hold, particularly for mega-cap newcomers.
For context, Nasdaq’s new rule states that any company with a full market cap ranking among the top 40 existing Nasdaq-100 members is eligible after trading publicly for 15 days. The notice period for such companies can be as few as five days.
In a consultation document it released last February, the Nasdaq stock exchange acknowledged that the change reflects the reality of companies staying private longer and listing “at a larger scale” with “more complex ownership and share structures.”
Related: SpaceX Stock Surges Over 2% as Trump Expects Elon Musk to Back Trump Accounts
What Critics Say About Nasdaq’s New Rule
Some Nasdaq critics, including Acadian Asset Management’s Senior Vice President, Owen Lamot, disagree with this pattern. According to Lamot, it is a bad idea with a timeframe that is too short for price discovery to occur.
Meanwhile, George Noble, a global equity hedge fund manager, describes Nasdaq’s latest move as the most shameless structural manipulation of a major index he has ever seen, while Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig called it an arbitrary rule that is unfair and potentially risky.
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