Don’t forget when Rome was collapsing emperors would use Gladiator fights to distract the people from the Corruption of the State at that time! This is all starting to make sense now. Who agrees?
Imagine you spent 40 years doing the boring, responsible thing.
You opened a 401k at 23. You contributed every paycheck. You ignored the noise. You bought the index because Bogle told you to, because Buffett told you to, because every honest piece of financial advice for 30 years told you the index was the safest, most diversified, most rules-based way to own America.
The whole point was the rules.
The rules said: a company must trade for 12 months before joining the S&P 500. The rules said: it must show four consecutive quarters of GAAP profitability. The rules existed because in 1999 the index quietly bought a lot of stocks at the top, and pensioners paid the bill.
After the dot-com crash, S&P tightened the rules. Nasdaq tightened the rules. FTSE Russell tightened the rules.
For 23 years, those rules held.
Then SpaceX filed for IPO.
And the rules changed.
The S&P 500 waived the profitability requirement. Nasdaq cut its trading-history window from 90 days to 15. FTSE Russell cut its to 5.
Bloomberg Intelligence estimates the major index funds will absorb between 19% and 24% of SpaceX's float within six months. That's over $30 trillion of passive 401k and retirement money, mechanically buying a single newly public company at IPO valuations, because the rules said they had to.
Except the rules used to say they didn't.
Here's the thought exercise:
If you spend 40 years building a system designed to protect ordinary savers from buying overpriced stocks, and then you waive the protections the moment a sufficiently large stock asks you to, what was the system actually protecting?
Most of investing is about understanding what's a rule and what's a guideline.
A rule binds the rule-maker.
A guideline binds the saver.
You're allowed to find out which is which only after the fact.
Just spoke to a 58 year old in Phoenix.
He has:
- $410,000 in a 401k he can't touch without penalty
- A house worth $390,000 with $180,000 left on the mortgage
- A job he physically cannot do much longer
- Seven years until Medicare
He is not poor.
He is not rich.
He is trapped between the assets he built and the healthcare system that won't let him stop until he's 65.
Millions of Americans are working jobs that are killing them because they cannot afford to retire at 58.
We call this a personal problem.
It is a policy failure
THE MAGA AGENDA: protect the fetus, starve the child, honor the soldier, abandon the veteran, enrich the corporations, and fleece the worker, quote the Bible but ignore every single fucking verse.
We don’t have to live like this. Republicans are dragging us down.
Bottom 5 murder rate: All Republican
Bottom 5 poverty: All Republican
Bottom 5 in life expectancy: All Republican
Bottom 5 education: All Republican
Bottom 5 healthcare: All Republican
Bottom 5 obesity rates: All Republican
Bottom 5 infant mortality: All Republican
Bottom 5 in air quality: All Republican
Bottom 5 in GDP: All Republican
Bottom 5 in GDP per capita: All Republican
Bottom 5 in income: All Republican
Bottom 5 in quality of life: All Republican
Bottom 5 federal dependency:All Republican
Tucker Carlson: “I’ll be tormented for a long time by the fact that I played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. And I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.”
BREAKING: Tulsi Gabbard just referred the whistleblower who triggered Trump’s first impeachment for criminal prosecution.
Also referred: the Inspector General who called the complaint credible.
Let that sink in.
The government is now prosecuting people for telling the truth about the President.
This is not normal. This is a purge.
1/6 Look at the absolute disaster unfolding right now, and remember exactly who told you to vote for Trump in 2024.
The people who sold you this catastrophe should be discredited forever, and you should never listen to their political advice again🧵