HN Gopher Feed (2017-08-01) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
S&P 500 to exclude Snap after voting rights debate
97 points by dvt
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-snap-s-p-idUSKBN1AH2RV___________________________________________________________________
chollida1 - 2 hours ago
I think this is a perfect free market reaction to companies not
having voting stock.Last week the FTSE Russell index announced the
same thing.As a minor point, dual/triple class shares are still
allowed so FB, GOOG and BRK are still ok.If you really want to own
a stock that gives you no profits, no income from dividends, no
voice in how its run, and actually no value what so ever other than
the greater fool theory then go ahead.I mean, Google could come
right now and offer to buy SNAP for 10x what its currently valued
at and Evan Spiegel could say no, even though its almost a
certainty that the company will never be worth that much.On the
other hand if you don't like the fact that a company goes public
and declares that its ownership is in for life no matter what, then
you'll probably view this as a positive measure.All this means is
that ETF funds will have some recourse to hold management
accountable.One thing is for sure now ETF investing got a bit less
passive.As a side note on SNAP in particular, Even though the first
Lockup has just expired, most employee's, are in lock up due to
earnings coming out on August 10th and a subsequent lock up at the
end of the month.By mid September we should have a clear picture on
just how the markets value SNAP.EDITTo give an example of what
companies like SNAP are foregoing by not allowing voting rights is
access to, of the 7 largest owners of google stock, 2 are the
founders, the other 5 are mutual funds/ETF fund firms.
dvt - 2 hours ago
> If you really want to own a stock that gives you no profits, no
income from dividends, no voice in how its run, and actually no
value what so ever other than the greater fool theory then go
ahead.Totally agree. You can have this kind of dismissive
attitude with naive early employees that don't know any better
(equity low on the vesting rung, expensive equity buy-outs,
unfair vesting schedules, etc.), but this shit won't fly on Wall
Street.
jonknee - 1 hours ago
> One thing is for sure now ETF investing got a bit less
passive.Sort of. SPY still invests in the S&P like it always has.
Getting entry into the S&P 500 always had some rules [1], this is
just one more.[1]
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/090414/sp-500...
TAForObvReasons - 46 minutes ago
The indices should have given a grace period rather than a
blanket grandfathering of existing multi-class-structured
companies. It arguably discourages further participation in the
public markets if a massive amount of control has to be ceded,
and it implicitly gives the grandfathered companies a massive
advantage (in particular Facebook, wherein one founder has
majority voting control despite not having majority ownership)
kgwgk - 38 minutes ago
Why does it give an advantage (and a massive one!) to Facebook?
I see how it gives a massive advantage to MZ. But MZ!=Facebook.
TAForObvReasons - 23 minutes ago
When the owners don't control the vote, it's difficult to
pass up on short-term opportunities without facing pressure
from activist investors and the like. And being able to stay
the course is a massive advantage to those companies that can
do so without facing corporate attacks. That's a concrete
advantage for the long-term prospects of Facebook, assuming
of course that the owners' interests are aligned with the
long-term value of the company.And obviously having innate
demand in the form of index funds is a great advantage that
boosts the market cap (as you see time and time again when
stock prices pop upon entrance and drop upon exit of indices)
kgwgk - 9 minutes ago
When the owners don't control the vote, you have situations
like Facebook or Google. It may not be necessarily bad, but
the idea of those who have control being the owners is an
indication of why it can be bad.
dragonwriter - 1 hours ago
> If you really want to own a stock that gives you no profits, no
income from dividends, no voice in how its run, and actually no
value what so ever other than the greater fool theory then go
ahead.The fundamental value of a stock is in the claim on the
assets at dissolution (dividends are just partial dissolution,
and voting rights are just a way for you to have a?very small,
for most investors?protected role in having a voice in
determining whether the company increases or decreased the value
to which you would be entitled if it dissolved.)
martin_bech - 1 hours ago
Nope.. thats bullshit. If a company dissolves, creditors are
first in line and stockholders are last in line. The nuts and
bolts or even cash holdings, are often not even factored into
stock price. If you did that with apple, its value should be
much, much higher. What you buy, when you buy a stock, is
earnings (sometimes paid out in dividends) and voting rights.
dragonwriter - 1 hours ago
> Nope.. thats bullshit.No, it's the fundamental meaning of
stock.> If a company dissolves, creditors are first in line
and stockholders are last in line.Yes, that priority is
accurate, and part of what sets (and limits) the value of
stock, as is the priority between different classes of stock,
where they exist.> What you buy, when you buy a stock, is
earnings (sometimes paid out in dividends) and voting
rights.Earnings are just increase in dissolution value, and
dividends are just a partial dissolution.
kgwgk - 1 hours ago
And having a voice on the act of dissolution itself. Without
vote your claim is always dependent on decisions out of your
control.
chatmasta - 1 hours ago
Do you mean dissolution due to bankruptcy (i.e. value = the sum
value of all assets, like hardware, real estate, etc.) or sale
(value = the sale price)?I know very little about finance, but
surely it must be important to distinguish the type of
dissolution when using it to calculate the present value of a
stock. There needs to be some consideration of probability of
bankruptcy versus probability of sale (versus probability of no
dissolution at all), right?
dragonwriter - 1 hours ago
> Do you mean dissolution due to bankruptcy (i.e. value = the
sum value of all assets, like hardware, real estate, etc.) or
sale (value = the sale price)?Any dissolution, in principle,
though in a dissolution forced by bankruptcy, there are
unlikely to be net assets to distribute to shareholders.> I
know very little about finance, but surely it must be
important to distinguish the type of dissolution when using
it to calculate the present value of a stock.Technically, you
have to consider all possible dissolutions along with their
relative probabilities, since stock isn't a claim on assets
restricted to any particular dissolution.
dmurray - 2 hours ago
> As a minor point, dual/triple class shares are still allowed so
FB, GOOG and BRK are still ok.No, they are also disallowed from
being added to the index, but are being grandfathered in.
kgwgk - 1 hours ago
And in fact S&P had to change its methodology for the S&P 500 a
few years ago to allow for the two publicly traded Google share
classes (A and C) to be included in the index.
secabeen - 1 hours ago
> I mean, Google could come right now and offer to buy SNAP for
10x what its currently valued at and Evan Spiegel could say no,
even though its almost a certainty that the company will never be
worth that much.Even worse, Google could offer to buy SNAP by
only purchasing the shares that Evan Spiegel holds. If the Class
A shares have no voting rights, and you want to buy the company,
why even tender to buy the Class A shares? Just buy Evan's
shares, at whatever price you and he agree to, and the Class A
shares come along for the ride.Are there SEC regulations
preventing a purchaser from doing that? It seems like the SNAP
stock classification system is really setup nicely for a hostile
takeover that completely screws the Non-Voting shareholders.
bradleyjg - 1 hours ago
Not SEC regulations, but Delaware corporate law rules. I don't
remember all the details because law school was too long ago.
Something to do with the Revlon doctrine, probably.
ThrustVectoring - 1 hours ago
How is this a perfect free market reaction? It's explicitly a
reaction not by market participants, but by the relatively minor
players who make up part of the rules of the game.The "free
market reaction" is that if these capital structures suck, active
investors don't buy them or short them, and the stock price goes
down. That is, if shareholder control was actually valuable, it'd
command enough of a premium to discourage SNAP's behavior.
hueving - 21 minutes ago
SNAP doesn't need to be in the S&P 500. That's not the market,
that's just a list of stocks.One of the value propositions of
these lists is some sort of vetting, so it's their prerogative
to drop stocks that don't meet their requirements.
awkwarddaturtle - moments ago
It's not just a list of stocks. It's also a basis for the
purchasing of stocks by ETFs, Mutual Funds, etc. Being in the
S&P provides a lot of "depth" to a company's stock.I agree
that a company like SNAP doesn't need to be in the S&P since
it's pretty much a tech gamble. It's either gonna grow into a
juggernaut or it's gonna fizzle. We'll find out soon enough.
macspoofing - 1 hours ago
>How is this a perfect free market reaction?Because it's a
private organization making a free choice, a choice which you
can ignore.
pishpash - 1 hours ago
Why don't you just buy SNAP directly? S&P 500 is just an index,
like a phonebook. They can list or not list whatever they want,
and ETF's can follow or not follow those indexes.
aeorgnoieang - 1 hours ago
> a stock that gives you no profitsWhat stocks 'gives you
profits'?> actually no value what so ever other than the greater
fool theoryStock gives you partial (and qualified) ownership of
the company, i.e. a claim on the company's assets. If Snap owns
valuable assets then owning their stock is (indirect) ownership
of those assets. No greater fool is required to give them
value.Most companies are run as 'going concerns' so a liquidation
disbursement[0] to shareholders is probably (?) very unlikely,
but its possibility must be the 'base value' of any stock.
(Right?)[0]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Liquidating_distribution
codemac - 1 hours ago
Literally dividends.There was a period of time during which
many thought it was the best way to get value out of your
investments.
sidlls - 38 minutes ago
I think it's a fantastic way to get value. Short of having
significant influence over a company (Buffet) or very good
intelligence about a company (e.g. to speculate that the
value of a stock will change dramatically and use that
information to make a trade) I consider it just about the
best way to get value out of equities. The cash from
dividends can be reinvested (the yield acts something like an
interest rate on a savings account, although obviously the
risk is higher and it isn't exactly the same thing) or pooled
with cash from other dividends to diversify, etc.I also like
to issue covered calls/puts against assets/cash in my
brokerage account for cash flow, although that's a tad more
speculative than taking dividends.
komali2 - 1 hours ago
I still think it is...
EliRivers - 55 minutes ago
Apart from selling my stock, it's the only way I could get
any value out, but selling off the good dividend stocks just
seems silly. Some of them have paid for themselves over the
last decade; unspectacular, but very welcome.Seguing off
topic, a surprising number of companies are really bad at
expanding; I'd much rather they gave the profits to me than
waste them on failing ventures.
EliRivers - 34 minutes ago
Most companies are run as 'going concerns' so a liquidation
disbursement[0] to shareholders is probably (?) very unlikely,
but its possibility must be the 'base value' of any stock.
(Right?)Of ANY stock? Wrong.How much would you give me today if
I gave you back 3% of that amount every year forever and at any
time you could call it off and get back the original amount you
gave me (and you get to keep those payments)? Okay, that's just
a savings account.Okay, how about if I had a solid plan such
that I could give you back 3% of that amount next year, 4% the
year after that, 5% the year after that, then 6.5%, then 8.5%,
onwards and upwards until in a few years it plateaus at you
being given 25% (and then rising with inflation) of your
original stake each year (which, by the way, you can now cash
in for a lot more than you originally paid for it). Is that
worth something to you, even if you're not buying any physical
assets? The plan is pretty solid, but not foolproof; there's a
risk here than it won't work out, but it might.I have dividend
bearing stocks that have done this.Dividends. A share of the
company profits. The value of good dividend bearing shares can
be based heavily on how much money they expect to give the
shareholders now and into the future, and have very little to
do with what physical assets the company actually has.
maxerickson - 1 hours ago
Any stock that pays dividends using profits pays profits to
stockholders.It used to be kind of a big deal.
Dobbs - 2 hours ago
This title, "S&P 500 to exclude Snap after voting rights debate" is
wrong. S&P 500 is moving to bar all stocks with multiple classes
with different voting rights. Existing stocks in the S&P 500 are
grandfathered.Personally I'm a fan of this. Multiple voting classes
seem to be abused. Take the recent Ford case where the Ford family
owned a very small percentage of shares, but had an overwhelming
share of the voting power. If I understood it correctly it took
basically unanimous voting from all other shareholders to remove
this imbalance.
dsjoerg - 2 hours ago
I tried to rewrite the headline to address your criticism, here's
my first attempt: "S&P 500 to exclude stocks without voting
rights, starting with Snap." However it's longer and headlines
need to be short. And it needs to have Snap in the headline or
to attract interest.
gregshap - 2 hours ago
SNAP is not an existing member of the S&P 500They were already
unqualified until now, because they lack positive earnings.[https
://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies]
kgwgk - 1 hours ago
Good point, because the chances of arriving to profitability
are not much higher than the chances of non-voting shares being
granted voting rights.
c3534l - 17 minutes ago
This is so strange. Multiple classes of stock are commonplace.
Nonvoting stock is for people who want to invest in the company,
but not be real owners of it. That sounds like why most people buy
stock. Was there a lead up to this that I missed?
rajacombinator - 17 minutes ago
Surprising, but excellent news for America's 401ks. Bad news for
Uber shareholders.
malchow - 1 hours ago
Good rulemaking, but any thought as to why it isn't retroactive?
kgwgk - 1 hours ago
Because then it would be bad rule making.
[deleted]
cbhl - 40 minutes ago
If you actually believe in passive index investing, this seems like
a bad thing. You want lots of little pieces of various companies,
especially ones that protect from distractions/meddling by activist
investors.
hendzen - 1 hours ago
Now to see if the next big startup to IPO (AirBnB, Uber, etc)
learns their lesson about issuing these bullshit shares to the
public.$SPY alone is a significant chunk of total equities ADV -
and there are other SP500 ETFs that hold significant assets. By not
being eligible to be part of these indices pre-IPO shareholders are
ignoring a huge and growing segment of the market.
kristopolous - 1 hours ago
So there's going to be a time where Snap gets snatched up for real
- I don't care about the current promises from the founders,
reality has a way of making itself happen.The real problem is to
get in a bit before the snatch up because there's usually a stock
boost then. It'd be a quick, low-yield safe return.The risk there
is sometimes the captains do go down with the ship and you're going
to just have to write things off when things get bought for peanuts
(aka my SUN holdings) so I don't know if it's a farm-betting
strategy.And finally, this strategy has some weird consequences,
like when I bought Apple stock in the late 90s after Jobs publicly
said they had a couple month runway. I thought Compaq or Gateway
would come by and get them (and no, I sold it off at a reasonable
double digit percentage profit and am damn happy about not being
greedy). Crystal balls are very cloudy.This is not financial
advice.
njarboe - 38 minutes ago
"The real problem is to get in a bit before the snatch up because
there's usually a stock boost then. It'd be a quick, low-yield
safe return."If you know the future, one can certainly get quick,
safe returns. Until you get kidnapped.
SilasX - 4 minutes ago
>"Companies with multiple share class structures tend to have
corporate governance structures that treat different shareholder
classes unequally with respect to voting rights and other
governance issues," the index provider said in a statement.Good.
Reminds me of the thing with Zenefits where they basically screwed
the (loose cannon, fired) CEO out of his shares by offering heavily
discounted new shares to everyone but him.[1] I know, not quite the
same thing here, but a good measure to hold the line against
dilution trickery that might get that far.[1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12013321
woopwoop - 1 hours ago
I have a probably naive question. I just learned about the concept
of non-voting stock today. Is there typically some contractual
obligation for companies that, if they do a stock buyback, some
fraction of the shares bought must be non-voting shares?If not,
what is the value of a non-voting share? Particularly for a company
that doesn't pay dividends and doesn't have substantial material
assets to sell in the event of liquidation (my impression is that
this describes many or even most modern publicly traded companies)?
dragonwriter - 57 minutes ago
> If not, what is the value of a non-voting share? Particularly
for a company that doesn't pay dividends and doesn't have
substantial material assets to sell in the event of liquidation
(my impression is that this describes many or even most modern
publicly traded companies)?Why would a voting share in a firm
without dividends or with no assets be worth anything? Voting
just gives you input into a future course which will hopefully
give the firm assets (from which it may or may not issue
dividends), but the voting shareholders will presumably pursue
that anyway, and if you don't have better ideas than they do on
how to do that, your vote isn't actually netting you any
additional value.All stock is based on the (possibly expected
future) value of a share of the net assets of the company. There
is nothing else that could provide it value. Voting rights are
just a way to have input on how the company will try to realize
value and how and when it will distribute it to those entitled to
it.
woopwoop - 45 minutes ago
My impression is that modern firms "pay dividends" by doing
share buybacks, which are equivalent to dividends but taxed
less (I'm nowhere near an expert here, if that isn't clear). If
you don't have a voting share or some kind of contractual
guarantee, though, what's to stop the voting shareholders from
deciding to just buy only voting stock in the event of a
buyback?
thirtyseven - 55 minutes ago
The value of a company like Alphabet if it's sold isn't the value
of the material assets, it's the value of the actual business,
i.e. for Google the ability to essentially print money via
AdWords.
woopwoop - 37 minutes ago
Right, but a voting stock is a contract that provides some
fraction of those Adwords to you. If they accumulate a lot of
those AdWords dollars, shareholders will eventually demand that
money back to spend for themselves. In the past, this was done
via paying dividends, but my impression is that nowadays it is
done via stock buybacks. But if stock buybacks don't have to
include non-voting shareholders, what's to stop voting
shareholders from just excluding them from the buyback
completely and keeping the payout for themselves?
thirtyseven - 21 minutes ago
The market value of the non-voting shares should
theoretically be the value of the voting shares minus what
the market believes the value of voting to be. If a stock
buyback only buys voting shares and the price of shares in
that class rises, such that the difference in prices of the
share classes is greater than the value of voting rights,
then an arbitrage opportunity exists. Thus the market will
bring the price of the non-voting shares up, and the
shareholders of that class will benefit too.
skrause - 2 hours ago
Are multiple classes of shares really that bad? Here in Germany a
possible concept is the Vorzugsaktie
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock#Germany) where you
have no voting rights in exchange for a higher dividend than the
normal stocks. If you're just a small investor with no desire to
exercise voting rights anyway it's actually the better deal.
rb808 - 1 hours ago
Preference shares can be good investments, in reality they're
more like bonds and aren't included in any of the main stock
indices either.
jon_richards - 1 hours ago
That sounds fine. I think the problem is with the relatively
recent trend of not paying out any dividends at all. If you have
no voting rights to change that, there isn't really any value
inherent in the shares other than the trust you and everyone else
places in the company. It especially throws a wrench in the
notion that the value of a security is the net present value of
all future cash flows.It's similar to when the US government
stopped allowing trades of bills for silver. In both cases, you
stop being able to get "real money" from the financial instrument
and have to just trust that the rest of the world will treat the
financial instrument as real money.
pm90 - 1 hours ago
Similar but not the same. You are obligated by law to accept US
dollar bills (any denomination) for the satisfaction of debt.
Whereas you're not obligated to do so in the case of these non-
voting shares. In a certain sense, by buying these shares, you
are assuming there will exist other people who want them too (a
market) whereas US securities guarantee a market (300 mil + US
citizens).
jon_richards - 39 minutes ago
It is true that the US guarantees liquidity for US dollar
bills, but liquidity is hardly an issue for a public stock
large enough to be listed on the S&P 500...
maxerickson - 1 hours ago
They aren't inherently bad.These shares are often structured such
that the enhanced voting rights expire when the original holder
sells the stock though. So the classes aren't equally available
to the market.
debt - 1 hours ago
I guess SNAP doesn't want easy money.
JumpCrisscross - 1 hours ago
"What happened here was not that the pickiest and most careful
investors scrutinized Snap closely and made the bold decision not
to buy its stock. Instead, the very least picky possible investors
-- the index funds, whose mandate is to buy all the stocks in the
market -- are the ones who won't be buying Snap. It makes no sense:
In a reasonable world, you'd expect the passive funds to be passive
buyers of whatever the market provides, while active funds would
make active decisions about what the market should provide. In our
actual world, though, the passive funds have all the power, and the
active funds are constrained to follow their lead" (Matt Levine,
[1]).[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-27/the-
end-o...
QML - 12 minutes ago
The majority of capital investment is held by active investors
though. So how does passive funds have all the power?
jon_richards - 1 hours ago
This misses a key distinction: A passive fund has a mandate to
buy stocks in proportion to the stock's market cap.Do you rank a
company's market cap by the market cap of each class of shares?
If not, you can essentially trick passive investors into buying a
large proportion of worse stock.
shoo - 1 hours ago
On the other hand, it'd be helpful if a passive fund screened
stocks to exclude ones that didn't meet criteria for being
investible. E.g. if a stock is obviously a scam, it would be
rational to not invest in it.Passive funds tend to track
indices, so the responsibility of deciding what stocks are
investible seems to be done by the folks who maintain the
index.This is what appears to be happening here: index
maintainers are unimpressed with stock, stock is excluded from
index, passive funds that track index won't invest in stock
JumpCrisscross - 1 hours ago
Indices have been handling e.g. Berkshire Hathaway's two
classes of listed stock for decades.Some buy proportionately
(i.e. if Berkshire Hathaway is 10% of a market and 15% of its
value is in Class B and 85% in Class A--making up numbers for
illustrative purposes--then the index puts 1.5% into B and 8.5%
into A) and others defer to a single class based on judgement
and rules (e.g. 10% into A). But it's a trivial problem of
index construction.
jon_richards - 48 minutes ago
Ah, I stand corrected.I tried to look more into the decision.
These seem to be the two relevant quotes:>Companies with
multiple share class structures tend to have corporate
governance structures that treat different shareholder
classes unequally with respect to voting rights and other
governance issues>S&P Dow Jones Indices also said that the
S&P Composite 1500 indexes, like the S&P 500, follow ?more
restrictive eligibility rules,? such as positive earnings
based on accepted accounting rules whereas its other index
groups were ?intended to represent the investment
universe.?So I suppose they aren't really "the very least
picky possible investors". Their mandate seems to include
actively curating the S&P 500, despite its tendency to be
used by "passive" investors.
guelo - 2 hours ago
It's just an index. I'm sure there will be many index funds with
SNAP in them if you want to buy them.
tryitnow - 2 hours ago
Not really. It's one of the, if not the top index. A lot of
passive investors (myself included) put a large chunk of their
investment funds in ETFs and/or index funds that just track the
S&P500. Not being included means a massive reduction in the
number of people indirectly holding their shares.Index
inclusion/exclusion is something that must have been studied by
some academic - I wonder what their conclusion is. My hypothesis
is that the stock price would be lower given the significant
reduction in quantity demanded.
gabbo - 2 hours ago
And not just S&P, also FTSE Russell:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-27/index-
pla...This is a big deal (in a good way, IMO). Companies have a
very real disincentive to go public with a shareholder-rights-
unfriendly listing now, since a large portion of the passive
investment universe will be prohibited from ever buying.I see
this as a case where everybody wins: the default option ends up
being friendly to shareholder rights, but if you really want to
and are in an advantageous position you still have the option
to list go public with non-voting/less-voting shares if you
want to gamble.
pm90 - 55 minutes ago
Well...kinda. I don't know if they were invented for this
specific purpose, but preferential shares do prevent activist
shareholders from imposing their will on public companies,
forcing them to take actions that are very short term.
Preferential shares actually prevent that from happening,
which is great.This is a new dimension in that struggle. I
don't know how this will pan out...One thing I don't
understand is why don't index funds take preferential shares
into account when deciding which ones to buy/sell? Couldn't
that be factored into the decision engine's rules/algorithms?
[deleted]
bluGill - 1 hours ago
Most index funds do not actually hold the index. They look at
the index as a guide of the types of stocks to buy, but the
fund manager still makes buy/sell decisions on any stock they
want including those not in the index.Index funds are actively
managed. They difference from traditional funds in that they
hold their stocks much longer. A traditional active fund is
always asking the question "what stocks will go up the most in
the short term" - when they get this right they do very well,
but when they get it wrong they pay a lot more transaction fees
which cuts their gains significantly. Because an index fund is
asking "which stocks are worth holding for a long time" they
don't have the pressures to find the best short term performing
stocks and so their transaction fees are much less.
hendzen - 1 hours ago
This is completely wrong - not how ETFs work at all. If you
have a large block of SPY you can redeem it for the index
constituents. If you have a large block of the index
constituents, you can redeem it for SPY.When the SPY price
rises above the price of the constituents, arbitrageurs
(firms like Jane Street) will go and buy the constituents and
create some SPY shares (and sell them for a profit). Similar
for if the SPY price falls below the corresponding weighted
sum of the constituents.
JumpCrisscross - 1 hours ago
You're both right. There are two broad classes of exchange-
traded products (ETPs): exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and
exchange-traded notes (ETNs).ETFs have a creation-
redemption mechanism [1]. This keeps tracking error [2]
low. It also forces ETFs to actually hold their component
stocks.Some clever financial engineers noticed they could
approximate most of an index's performance with a few names
and some clever trading. They issue ETNs. These are notes
issued and backed by usually an investment bank that
promise to pay interest in a way linked to an index. They
have no requirement to hold the index's constituents.[1]
http://www.etf.com/etf-education-center/7540-what-is-the-
etf...[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_error
jonknee - 2 hours ago
Just an index that you really really want to be in... It's the
mother of all indexes.Facebook gained 4.3% when it was announced
they were getting included in the S&P 500 (a $5b market cap gain
at the time):http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sp500-facebook-
idUSBRE9BA1...
loceng - 1 hours ago
And Mark still has full control I believe because of their
shares structure?
jonknee - 1 hours ago
Yes, this only affects new entries to the index.