Millions of Americans invest in S&P 500 index funds as their primary retirement vehicle. But they are now watching from the sidelines as SpaceX becomes one of the fastest stocks ever to land inside one of Wall Street‘s most powerful benchmarks, and it is not the one they own.
The split is clear: Nasdaq moved fast, while the S&P 500 did not. And for everyday investors, the gap between the two decisions could matter more than most people realize.
SpaceX earned its Nasdaq-100 spot in record time
SpaceX (SPCX) made its Nasdaq debut on June 12, 2026.
Two weeks later, Nasdaq confirmed that the company qualifies for inclusion in the Nasdaq-100, with index funds set to begin buying shares after the market closes on July 6, according to CNBC. SpaceX will officially join the index before trading begins on July 7.
Historically, newly listed companies faced a lengthy wait before being considered for inclusion in major indices.
Related: Former Nasdaq CEO reveals SpaceX biggest make-or-break test
Nasdaq changed that earlier this year, adopting a fast-track framework that makes large initial public offerings eligible after just 15 trading days.
SpaceX is now one of the first real beneficiaries of that new rule.
According to the CNBC report:
- More than $800 billion tracks the Nasdaq-100, including Invesco’s QQQ (QQQ), one of the most actively traded securities.
- SpaceX is expected to enter the index with a weighting below one percent.
- But because its publicly tradable float remains small relative to its overall market capitalization, even a modest weighting could require meaningful share purchases from passive funds.
J.P. Morgan estimated that SpaceX’s inclusion could draw roughly $4.3 billion in passive inflows, according to Reuters.
S&P 500 investors will have to wait for the SPCX index inclusion
The S&P 500 index committee made a different call.
It declined to create a fast-track process and reaffirmed its existing rules, which require companies to meet both a 12-month seasoning period and a profitability test before being considered, according to CNBC.
SpaceX reported a net loss of $4.9 billion last year, which means S&P 500 investors will not gain any exposure to SpaceX until at least mid-2027.
The wait could be even longer if the profitability requirement becomes an additional hurdle.
More Elon Musk:
- Elon Musk has a radical fix for an AI-dominated economy
- Mark Cuban doubles down on the stock market and Elon Musk
- Elon Musk reveals his grand ambitions for SpaceX ahead of IPO
The decision has frustrated some market observers. TD Securities head of index and market structure research Peter Haynes told CNBC’s ETF Edge:
“Personally, I didn’t agree with the decision.”
Haynes noted that when Saudi Aramco went public in 2019 as the then-largest initial public offering in history, both FTSE and MSCI created fast-track models within five to 10 days.
He argued that U.S. benchmarks should have followed the same logic for a company of SpaceX’s scale.
Morningstar chief equity market strategist Michael Field told Reuters that while demand for the stock is clearly high, the firm believes SpaceX is currently overvalued.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Getty Images)
SpaceX is an unprofitable growth stock
SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen laid out the company’s financial picture at a recent investor presentation.
- Revenue grew more than 30% year over year in 2025 to $19 billion.
- The company generated approximately $7 billion in positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA).
- The connectivity segment, powered by Starlink, grew by about 50% in 2025 and contributed nearly $3 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
- Capital expenditure came in at roughly $21 billion last year, with a large share going toward artificial intelligence infrastructure, including the Colossus-2 data center.
The company has already begun monetizing that spend, signing a hosting agreement with Anthropic to run its model on SpaceX’s compute resources.
Longer term, management projects gross margins of around 70% and GAAP net income margins of roughly 45%.
For most investors, the core takeaway is straightforward.
“If you want SpaceX, you’re not buying the S&P 500. You’re going to buy the Nasdaq-100 or the Russell 1000,” Strategas Securities chief ETF strategist Todd Sohn told CNBC.
Some thematic funds already hold SpaceX. Tema ETFs’ Space Innovators ETF (NASA), which launched May 30, had already gathered $2.6 billion in assets with pre-IPO access to SpaceX, per CNBC.
Related: SpaceX volatility just entered ordinary 401(k)s
