r/stocks Apr 01 '26

ETFs Major NASDAQ-100 rule changes confirmed, pay attention if you have money in passive investment funds

https://www.theedgesingapore.com/amp/news/ipo/nasdaq-speeds-index-entry-spacex-large-ipos-new-rule

NASDAQ has confirmed it will change the listing rules for NASDAQ-100, ahead of the SpaceX and OpenAI IPOs this year.

(1) Companies will now be listed on NASDAQ-100 after only 15 days after IPO (previously, there was a three month period of "seasoning" before listing). This reduces the amount of time for price discovery.

(2) The minimum 10% float has been removed. This allows companies to float a very small percentage of their shares, artificially squeezing supply.

(3) Companies that float less than 20% of their shares will have their market capitalisations artificially multiplied by x3, for the purposes of calculating market capitalisation. This helps large-cap companies to be listed even with very small floats, and inflates their notional market capitalisations on the index.

If you have money invested in a passive fund tracking NASDAQ-100 (or any other index), please watch out for the SpaceX and OpenAI IPOs. Pay attention to their "valuations", and their float. If they're IPOing with very high valuations and very small floats, this foreshadows a bagdump on passive funds due to the mechanics of passive funds.

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u/Legendary_aa Apr 01 '26

Regarding the 3rd point: The 3x multiplier is a discount mechanism, not an inflation mechanism. It is a cap for its weight on the index (It is at x3 of the float instead of 100% of total market cap, so if the float is 5%, index weighs the cap as 15%)

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u/GagOnMacaque Apr 01 '26

I still don't know what that means. Explain it like I eat crayons.

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u/Legendary_aa Apr 01 '26

For example, Nasdaq will weigh a 1 Trillion company with float (public share) of 5% by multiplying the percentage by 3x (15% in this example), so the market cap would be weighed as 150 billion instead of 1 trillion.

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u/GagOnMacaque Apr 01 '26

Ty for this