[didibus]

> the whole point of these ETFs is to make sure I don’t get a say in the matter, since I’m a terrible stock picker

When you IPO, the company basically can set its own price. Then investors can buy it or not at that price. If you set the price so high it makes your company one of the biggest, it means automatically index funds will buy you at the price you set for yourself, no questions asked.

To prevent abuse from this, index funds that track "biggest stocks" have a waiting period, it was often 1 year. That way, by the time the index buys the stock, the price should be reflective of what the market think it's worth, not what the company decided it was worth when they IPOed.

These ETFs have always done this, because you want to hold the biggest company the market chooses as biggest, and not that the company decided.