Nasdaq changed its rules in March 2026. New stocks used to need three months of trading history before entering the Nasdaq-100. They cut it to 15 trading days. SpaceX filed its IPO weeks later and listed today at $135 a share.
The consequence is automatic. Every fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 becomes a forced buyer within two weeks of listing regardless of valuation. That includes most 401k index funds. Estimated forced purchases for SpaceX alone are $22-27 billion. The company lost $4.9 billion last year and is priced at 94x annual sales.
OpenAI and Anthropic file later this year under the same rules. The rule change is public record. The timing is public record. The forced buying is mechanical, not optional. When the institutions that set the rules are the same ones that benefit from them, the market stops being a market.