Tag: spacex

a person is holding a package with their hands

What companies are in my retirement portfolio?

RobH1 Comment

I cover what I hold in my retirement portfolio every month (latest update is here), but as you can see, I only hold ETFs. What’s underneath the ETFs? Let’s take a look!

Calculating this is straightforward:

  1. Use the percentages I have of each ETF from the June update
  2. Look at the “Holdings” section of ETF or in the case of AOA/XGRO/XEQT, “Aggregate Underlying Holdings”1 and write down the percentages of each stock. I stopped when I accounted for 20% of each ETF.
  3. Multiply (1) by (2) and add them all up.

By doing this exercise, I can now account for the 20 companies that make up 20% of my retirement portfolio:

These 20 companies are really the tip of my personal investment iceberg — my aggregate retirement portfolio has at least 32,000 holdings, since that’s what’s actually inside AOA, the one ETF I own with the most holdings2. But the fate of these 20 companies will have an outsized influence on the overall performance of the portfolio. The only surprise for me is that there is only one company outside North America in the list. I would have expected one or two more.

It will be interesting to see what kind of differences I see once I complete kicking USD out of my retirement portfolio and go back to a list of only seven magnificent ETFs. I’m not sure there will be big changes, given that I’m keeping my asset allocations constant throughout, but I’m expecting some differences3. We’ll see come January 2027, I guess.

Just for fun, and given my recent article on the SpaceX IPO, I wanted to know how much I held of that particular company. AOA hasn’t included it yet4, but XGRO and XEQT have already. As of June 30, 0.02% of my portfolio is invested in SpaceX.

  1. In most cases, as of June 30. VFV only shows to May 30. ↩︎
  2. XGRO has 22000, for reference. I think the extras in AOA come mostly from fixed income (bond) products since they have broader geographic coverage. ↩︎
  3. The biggest changes won’t be visible since they occur in the bond side of my holdings. AOA and XGRO have very different approaches to this part of the market, but as it’s only 15% of my retirement holdings, they don’t show up as a “top” holding in my retirement portfolio . ↩︎
  4. And won’t until SpaceX is profitable. AOA includes IVV, which is an S&P 500 index fund, and the S&P 500 requires companies to be profitable before inclusion in that index. ↩︎

rocket launch space discovery

SpaceX and index investing

RobHLeave a comment

This Friday (June 12, 2026) SpaceX (which, as it turns out, doesn’t just make rockets — it also encompasses Starlink and Twitter — er, X) will launch its mega-IPO. It’s expected to immediately become a top 10 company in terms of market capitalization, putting it in the same stratosphere as Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft.

There’s a lot of chatter over how (and even if) this will impact the boring old index investor. It might help to review what the major US Indices are. The major US indices1 that show up again and again in ETFs are

  • S&P 500 — this is the index used by ETFs like VFV, XSP, ZSP and HXS
  • S&P Total — this is used by XEQT/XGRO2 and AOA3
  • Nasdaq 100… includes ETFs like XQQ, ZQQ, HXQ4
  • The Solactive US Large Cap Index5: TPU aka TEQT
  • CRSP US Total Market Index — VUN, VUS and VEQT for example

The ETFs that track indices don’t have discretion over when or if to include a stock in their ETF. When the index changes, so does the ETF. It’s totally mechanical. The indices also have published rules on how and when to include stocks, but because SpaceX is anticipated to be so exceptionally large, there was pressure on the index providers to tweak their rules to make sure SpaceX was included. If you’re keeping score, only Nasdaq made changes to accommodate SpaceX. S&P did not.

After much anticipation, here’s the state of play as of June 9, 2026:

IndexSpaceX included when?How much?
S&P 500 (VFV, XSP, ZSP, HXS)>1 year from now6Float-adjusted, as usual
S&P Total (XEQT/XGRO, AOA)Once 10% float achieved…a quarter or two?Float-adjusted, as usual7
Nasdaq 100 (XQQ, ZQQ, HXQ, QQQ)Shortly after IPO…15 trading daysBased on full market cap, as usual
Solactive US Large Cap (TPU, TEQT)Next quarterly reviewFloat-adjusted
CRSP (VUN, VUS, VEQT)Shortly after IPO…5 trading daysFloat-adjusted

Many of the indices use the float-adjusted amounts; this means a lower weighting for SpaceX than its full market-cap, which means a lower weight in any index that uses float. In the coming months, I’ll take a peek at how much SpaceX I hold, and how it’s changing, just for my own education.

So, for me, it looks like I’ll be owning some SpaceX in the not-too-distant future since the vast majority of my US holdings are in XEQT/XGRO/AOA. And, the odds are, it will lose value post IPO. That kinda sucks.

Of course, as BMO correctly points out, nobody will be immune from this kind of market movement — why, you may ask? Given SpaceX is going to be included in the popular Nasdaq 100, funds that mirror this index are going to have to make room for the new arrival, selling off shares of things they already hold, like Nvidia, and Microsoft. This will create downward pressure on the prices of these tech stocks, and hence it will also create downward pressure on any ETF that also holds Nvidia, and Microsoft. The S&P 500 holds many of the Nasdaq 100 companies, so you can expect some price erosion of ETFs mirroring the S&P indices as the Nasdaq ETFs do their rebalancing act.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think I really care. I don’t love SpaceX, or any other stock for that matter. The S&P indices have historically rewarded the patient investor, and I see no reason to change my strategy based on one IPO, no matter how splashy. It won’t be the last — both Anthropic and OpenAI are probably close behind with their IPOs.

  1. The small cap Russell 2000 is also popular, but I don’t mention it in the main list since SpaceX is too big to be a small cap ↩︎
  2. This is a CAD ETF and holds things beyond “just” the S&P index. See more here. ↩︎
  3. This is a USD ETF, and holds things beyond just the S&P index. See more here. ↩︎
  4. The most famous Nasdaq 100 ETF trades in USD and is QQQ. This would explain the not-very-original names chosen by the Canadian management companies. ↩︎
  5. I think only TD uses this one, but since I’ve written about TEQT in the past, I figured I’d include it. ↩︎
  6. and likely longer, since there is a profitability screen imposed as well for inclusion in the S&P 500 ↩︎
  7. Over time, the size of the SpaceX float is expected to increase as insiders unload their shares; the timing of this is not known. I’d expect the SpaceX % to increase over the first year of inclusion on the S&P Total index. ↩︎