BUSINESS REFLECTION: Crossed Wires: The SpaceX IPO — rigging the index

As SpaceX prepares for its historic IPO, concerns mount over changes to index rules that could jeopardise investor interests and market integrity.

Even if you have been hiding under a rock, the upcoming SpaceX listing is unlikely to have escaped your notice. Massive numbers attend the deal, some as high as a valuation of $2-trillion for a company that has yet to make a profit ($2-trillion is a number that makes little sense in almost any context, never mind the value of a single company).

Arguments have erupted as to whether the shares will be worth the price — Elon Musk, the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, has birthed entirely new and successful industries from scratch (true), but he often overpromises and underdelivers (also true), he has built massive value for his investors and his innovations benefit many global citizens (true), but he is untrustworthy, mercurial and unpredictable (also true).

Okay then, we can pick our side and argue with each other about the man. But when it comes to this listing — the largest in history — all agree that it is a spectacle without precedent. And so, a discussion of the wonky subject of stock market indices seems a little pallid next to this blowout event.

I’ll start here. On 10 March 2026, Nasdaq — where the SpaceX listing is to take place on 12 June — announced that it was changing its rules to allow SpaceX to be included in the Nasdaq-100 index within just 15 trading days of listing, rather than the customary period of up to a year. This was, for anyone who was looking, hasty and ill-considered. Or, to be generous, suspiciously fast.

Indices, like the Nasdaq-100, the S&P 500, or the Dow Jones Industrial Index, are the load-bearing walls of public stock ownership. They are a basket of stocks on a particular exchange that are supposed to be representative of the entire market. Indices are diversified, carefully curated, and therefore considered low risk.

Not controversial. But massively influential. Why? Because many pension funds, index funds, ETFs and other large pools of managed money are required by law or policy to hold the equities in an index.

How carefully curated are they? Well, for a start, the components of the indices are almost always big companies — stable, well-run, dripping with gravitas and historical reliability. Widely traded, with deep liquidity. And, among other things, they must have been profitable for some extended period.

SpaceX is wildly unprofitable and, until 12 June, untraded. The company reported losses of $4.9-billion in 2025 and a further $4.3-billion in the first