Benjamin Felix

We won't get too much into that, but the issue is that index funds buy these stocks if they get included in the index.

One of the issues with IPO inclusion, and we've done episodes at least tangentially related to this, although in some cases directly related to this in the past, is that IPOs tend to be pretty terrible investments.

And these ones in particular, these big SpaceX and OpenAI, raise some, I think, pretty interesting questions.

We'll talk through in this episode how stock indices and the index funds tracking them include IPOs, which is a whole interesting thing in itself.

How do the different indices include them?

How that might affect index fund returns and what investors can do about it.

We'll also cover whether index fund investors are missing out on private market returns, which I think is a really interesting topic and a common perception

based on companies like the ones we're talking about staying private longer and getting bigger in private markets.

That's the setup.

Do you guys have any comments before I keep going?

sure.

People want to find the problem with index funds.

There are problems with index funds.

We've talked about them on this podcast in the past.

In general though, they're great investments because they just deliver the returns that the stock market has to offer.

That doesn't mean that they're perfect and the pieces where they're not perfect are always interesting to talk about, but I think index funds are still great investments.

But people love to find that thing like,

This is a thing.

This is finally the thing.

This is the thing that breaks index funds.