Dave Nadig, the longtime ETF analyst, went on Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: At The Money podcast and described the upcoming SpaceX IPO as “one of those get-the-popcorn moments in markets.” The reason centers on index plumbing that most passive investors never think about.
NASDAQ is reportedly waiving its standard six-month seasoning period so SpaceX can enter the index almost immediately after going public
Nadig estimates that decision will force NASDAQ-tracking funds to buy roughly “$7-ish billion” of SpaceX stock on a single day. How the Forced Buying Works Every dollar in a NASDAQ-100 ETF is already invested. To make room for a new mega-cap, the fund must sell every other holding proportionally.
Nadig described it as “guaranteeing that existing money that is tracking that index will have to sell a whole bunch of other things in order to buy this new slug of SpaceX.” The scale matters. Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) alone holds $385 billion in net assets as of May 1, 2026, and that is one product among many tracking the same index. QQQ is up 16% year to date and 39% over the past year, so inclusion day will land in a strong tape with the VIX at 17.99, calm conditions for a large rebalance.