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by kybernetikos 21 days ago
Ultimately it was inevitable that as passive investing got more and more popular, people would seek to game it. Not that I'm happy about it, but if this works, it is probably just the beginning of sneaky ways being found to trick passive money into taking on way more risk than it intended to. And of course passive investors are passive, so they may not even notice, and probably won't fight back until the inevitable crash.
1 comments

I think there's going to be blowback from this because this is "every other horse can only use three of their legs" levels of fixing.

I looked into the how the rule-changing works. NASDAQ is what's called a Self-Regulating Organization ("SRO") in the legislation so it has a lot of power. Were it a government agency, it would be more difficult. Technically, the SEC has to approve all rule changes by SROs but in this administration in particular, that's just going to be a rubber stamp. By the way here's a speech the head of the SEC previously gave about deregulation of capital markets [1].

I was also curious if Loper Bright had changed anything here but it appears not. The sstatuory language here is clear rather than intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous.

So the funds can technically challenge any such rules. They have standing. But the bar is difficult and I don't see it happening.

But if this goes badly, what I think you'll see is changes in governance by pension funds that'll be reflected by Vanguard and Blackrock, which is "index-like" funds that have stricter governance with rules closer to what was the case before these rule changes were rammed through. I could be wrong. I hope I'm not.

[1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/22/speech-by-chair-a...

> But if this goes badly,

I think the most likely scenario is that there eventually will be the changes you describe, but if not enough people squeal now, then it won't be until after a bunch of people lose their savings either because of this or some follow on scam that finds a way to take advantage of passive money.