Palantir tops S&P 500, aims for Nasdaq 100
That would mean it would be added to the heavily traded QQQ, one of the largest ETFs in the world with over $300 billion in AUM.
Another good day for data, surveillance, and defense contracting giant Palantir Technologies on Friday, as the shares continue their recent tear to become top performer in the S&P 500 for the year in early trading, overtaking Vistra after having passed Nvidia earlier this month.
The company announced today that it was moving its stock listing — the ticker will remain PLTR — from the NYSE to the Nasdaq on November 26, noting that “upon transferring, Palantir anticipates meeting the eligibility requirements of the Nasdaq-100 Index.”
Company management seems to have come to appreciate the benefits of index inclusion this year. It matters a lot, as once you’re in the index, the myriad of so called “passive” investing products — ETFs, mutual funds, etc. — that merely mirror the official benchmark simply have to buy the stock, regardless of what they think of its prospects or governance. What’s more, they can’t sell it, unless it’s delisted or thrown out of the index.
It was only included in September in the S&P 500, which has more than $16 trillion in investment products like ETFs, mutual funds, or portfolios run by institutional investors such as pension funds pegged to it. (That doesn’t include the untold amount of money that’s unofficially mirroring the index by so-called closet indexers.)
Inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 could open up another — though admittedly smaller — group of performance-agnostic buyers, as it is the basis for several giant ETFs like Invesco QQQ Trust, which has more than $300 billion in assets under management. But that’s another layer of steady demand from Wall Street institutions that can balance out the somewhat excitable retail shareholder base that the company has built.
