Nasdaq rewrote the playbook for SpaceX.
The world’s largest IPO is entering the Nasdaq-100 (^NDX) only 15 trading days after it started trading, pulling SpaceX (SPCX) into one of the market’s biggest passive-investing machines before most of its shares are even available to trade
That creates a stock-price setup investors do not usually see at this scale. Index funds are rule followers. If a fund tracks the Nasdaq-100, it has to own the Nasdaq-100 component stocks.
When SpaceX goes in, funds tied to the index need to buy SpaceX and trim other holdings so the portfolio still matches the benchmark. That process is called rebalancing, and for SpaceX it could mean billions of dollars of forced buying. JPMorgan has estimated about $4.3 billion of passive demand tied to Nasdaq-100 inclusion, while BNP Paribas put the potential buying across Nasdaq-100 trackers closer to $8 billion.