Nasdaq quietly rewrote its rules so index funds will be forced to buy huge new IPOs — good for SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, riskier for retirement savers.

• Nasdaq's new "fast entry" rule lets a new company join the index in 15 trading days instead of waiting up to a year.
• It also dropped the rule that a company must have at least 10% of its shares freely tradable — SpaceX plans to list with only 4–5%.
• A hidden multiplier triple-counts these tiny share pools, so index funds must buy far more stock than is actually available.
• SpaceX is first in line, with OpenAI and Anthropic close behind.
• Together these listings could funnel as much as $4 trillion of new stock into passive retirement accounts within months.

Outlook: Expect these mega-IPOs to flood 401(k)-style funds with forced buying, pushing prices up regardless of real demand.