Simplicity in no hurry to buy SpaceX shares
The Simplicity KiwiSaver Scheme won’t have to immediately buy shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX within days of its float on Friday because the index it follows has decided against fast-tracking the stock entry.
Friday, June 12th 2026, 11:49AM
by Jenny Ruth
The Simplicity scheme, which is a passive investor in shares, tracks the Bloomberg Developed Markets Index and Bloomberg has decided against any fast track for SpaceX into its index.
Bloomberg requires at least three months of trading before it even considers inclusion.
The benchmark US index, the S&P500 Index is imposing even stricter rules – S&P Dow Jones Indicies has officially announced it will maintain its standard requirements for entry into the index when it comes to SpaceX.
That means the stock will have to trade for at least 12 months and have a minimum public free float of at least 10% - Musk is selling only about 4% of SpaceX in the float to raise US$75 billion, making it the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history and is nearly three times the size of the previous record-holder, Saudi Aramco, which raised US$25.6 billion in 2019.
S&P also requires companies in the index to meet strict financial viability criteria, including being profitable. SpaceX lost US$4.28 billion on US$4.69 billion in revenue in the March quarter after losing US$ 4.94 billion in calendar 2025.
The Bloomberg and S&P stance contrasts with decisions by those who control other major indices to fast-track SpaceX’s entry.
The MSCI World Index and the Nasdaq 100 Index are both going to fast-track SpaceX’s inclusion after 10 trading days and 15 trading days respectively, while the London-based FTSE Russell indices manager has decided on just a five trading day wait.
SpaceX, which owns the profitable Starlink satellite-based broadband service, Musk’s AI business and the X social media platform, formerly Twitter, as well as its satellite launching rocket ships, is just one of several AI-related floats planned in the US for this year.
‘For example, both Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to float and to achieve market capitalisations of about US$1 trillion.
Also, Alphabet, which owns Google, YouTube and Waymo, raised nearly US$85 million earlier this month and other big tech names, including Meta and Amazon, are also considering equity raisings.
Simplicity founder Sam Stubbs isn’t worried about whether such a massive amount of equity issues will cause investor indigestion.
“Whatever happens, happens,” Stubbs told GoodReturns. “As a passive investor, I don’t invest any emotional energy in this,” he said, adding that most supposedly active fund managers tend to hug indices as well.
“To me, that’s the bigger issue: how much of this is noise and how much is reality,” and there’s a significant amount of reality to AI.
Where the money to participate in these IPOs comes from is another issue: “some people will have to sell in order to buy.”
But underpinning global markets is the rising amount of funding flowing into retirement vehicles such as Simplicity and that money has to find a home somewhere, Stubbs says.
But Simplicity is also hedging its bets with its Simplicity Living, which is in the build-to-rent business, and mortgages businesses, Stubbs says, adding that they’re the only other two asset classes with the ability to absorb significant amounts of capital.
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