SpaceX Nasdaq-100 forced buy thesis may be way smaller than people think because of the float cap

People are saying SpaceX is going to rip because Nasdaq-100 / QQQ index funds will be “forced to buy” after inclusion. I get the mechanical demand argument, but I think the actual required buying may be way smaller than the hype implies.

The part I think people are missing is the low float treatment.

If SpaceX is valued around $2.5T but only has \~4% public float, Nasdaq does not necessarily weight it as if the whole $2.5T company is investable. My understanding is the new rule effectively allows low-float companies to be counted at up to 3x float for weighting purposes.

So if the float is 4%, then the index-weighting value is not 100% of SpaceX’s market cap. It is more like:

4% float × 3 = 12% counted

So instead of Nasdaq treating SpaceX like a $2.5T company for index weighting, it would treat it more like:

$2.5T × 12% = \~$300B

For comparison, Nvidia is over $5T and has one of the biggest weights in QQQ / Nasdaq-100. If SpaceX were fully counted, it might be a huge top holding. But if only \~$300B of “effective market cap” counts for index weighting, then the actual weight could be less than 1%, or maybe around 1% depending on the final numbers.

That still creates forced demand. I’m not saying there is zero index effect. But the “every index fund has to buy this massive $2.5T company immediately” narrative seems misleading if the float cap means only a small fraction of the market cap is used for weighting.

Am I thinking about this correctly? The bull case would be that the float is so tiny that even a sub-1% index weight creates a supply shortage. But the bear case is that people are overestimating the size of the required buy because they are assuming full market-cap weighting when Nasdaq may only count 3x the float.