Trillions depend on whos in and whos out of updated S&P 500 Nasdaq-100 [Video]

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 indexes get new members added and old ones kicked out on Friday in a quarterly rebalancing mostly based on companies’ adjusted market capitalization. 

Years ago, these index reconstitutions had very little impact on trading. 

Not anymore. 

The explosion of index-based ETFs has changed all that. 

Today, roughly $16 trillion is indexed to the S&P 500. 

The largest Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ), has $321 billion in assets, and the Invesco Nasdaq-100 Index mutual fund (IVNQX) has about $100 billion in assets, so we are talking well north of $400 billion in additional assets pegged to the Nasdaq-100. 

Bottom line: what stocks are added to or deleted from these large indexes matters a lot. 

Palantir gets its wish

If you doubt that being included in a large index matters, just ask Palantir Technologies…