[ashdksnndck]

I believe the (apparently AGI-pilled?) folks running the indices are more afraid of the public’s pitchforks in the scenario where the AI stocks go public at $3T value, then increase to $30T before the index rules dictate they buy in. Hence the rule change to prevent that from happening.

[Eisenstein]

Changing the rules for a speculative investment is the type of things to get pitchforks, not sticking by them.

[ashdksnndck]

For a moment step into the theory of mind of the AI believer. That’s the common mindset in finance today. You believe that AI is displacing white collar work, and soon with robots it will displace physical work. Your personal job is to help set the rules for stocks to be included in the index. You believe that the point of indices is for passive investors to automatically be invested in the diversified set of top public companies (weighted by market cap). During previous economic shifts, where companies went public early and were already in the index during their growth phase, passive investors broadly benefited from that growth. These new AI companies have stayed private much longer, meaning that the index has missed the opportunity to “buy low” and build up a stake so far.

You believe that the owners of the leading AI companies stand to become owners of most wealth. Furthermore, that we are at an inflection point where the value of these companies rises so rapidly that delays in index investment will set in stone a permanent inequality, where early tech VC and other private funds own a huge portion of the economy. The few-$T downside risk of AI bubble popping this year feels to you like a minor concern compared to index funds being shut out of this wealth due to some arbitrary rules, which have been changed before and can be changed again. Delaying investment in these huge public companies feels like a more dangerous decision than buying in when they become public.

In short, there are two possible stories here:

1) Wall Street is AGI-pilled and thinks AI companies will be worth many trillions of dollars

2) Wall Street expects the AI bubble to pop and is trying to make the public into bag holders by selling a few hundreds of billions of dollars in the IPO

I think the second story actually doesn’t hold together, because Wall Street is making a bunch of correlated bets. The IPO cash is just one more source of capital, and much of it going to be used to make investments which are also correlated bets.

[Eisenstein]

It doesn't matter what individuals believe. The rules exist to prevent people from doing dumb things that destabilize the market and when those rules are bypasses for belief reasons then the market will take that into account and discount the rules and the market loses its integrity. At that point you have signaled that the rules exist in order to facilitate corruption not oppose it, and you end up who knows where, but it certainly isn't better.

[ashdksnndck]

My predictions:

1) If the AI companies do end up running half the economy, we will have discussion for the rest of the human history about how the public got scammed by not being able buy in earlier at a lower price and how the late IPOs set in stone the oligarchy.

2) If the AI companies crash and burn, we will have discussion for several years about how everyone involved in running and financing them is a scoundrel who needs to go to jail for scamming us by selling us stock.

[intended]

Picking winners in the stock market is a fools errand on a long enough time scale.

This has been proven time and time again. That’s the whole reason we diversify risk.

So, we will not have conversation 1, because that is not what index funds are meant to do.

[ashdksnndck]

Index inclusion rules have changed repeatedly over the years. The current rules are not some fundamental law of nature.