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Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

I am upset that I am forced to either rebalance out of NASDAQ and incur significant tax consequences, or bet that SpaceX is about to become nearly 10 percent of GDP and keep exceptional margins while doing it.

I would not voluntarily take that bet, but we have regulatory and financial engineering nearly forcing me to do so.

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I am upset that I am forced to either rebalance out of NASDAQ and incur significant tax consequences

Just to quantify, "The projected SpaceX weighting is around 0.6% of QQQ."

So if you have $100,000 invested in QQQ and SpaceX winds up say 4x overvalued, it may eventually wind up costing you as much as $450 (i.e. 1/5th as large a loss you experienced today in QQQ).

You are arguing I should be fine losing $500 so Elon can cash out? Because - and I hope this doesn't seem uncharitable - some sci-fi fantasy about space colonies?

You could maintain a short SpaceX portion in the approximately same percentage as your NASDAQ ETF. You'd have more slight tax events as you increased or closed out that short position to maintain the percentage, but significantly less than your NASDAQ position's taxes. Then when you sell your ETF you could close out the short to effectively remove SpaceX from the equation.

So you’re upset at the broader system that has allowed that change.

I am upset that it is not a great bet and that retail investors and pensions are being forced to take it. Let’s not pretend that this is not regulatory capture and financial engineering by techbros.

I’m not pretending anything.

You are upset the system is weak and can be captured/manipulated by the rich.

It is always good to accurately identify what you are upset at so you know where to direct your energy.

Plenty of places to direct it. I can be upset both at those cheating -and- the referees.

If SpaceX is such a great business, it should be able to win legitimately.

I'm upset that we allow people like you to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, possibly indefinitely, so anything that makes that harder even "accidentally" is ok by me.

I would rather capital gains be taxed at income rates but indexed to inflation. I am fine with that being a fair bit more.

But ripping off pension funds so you can tax me more, as a side effect of enriching people that engage in these shennanigans, doesn’t seem like a great move.

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