The Sneaky Way SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI Can Destroy the Trump Bull Market

Statistically, outsize stock market returns and President Donald Trump in the White House have gone hand in hand. During Trump's first, non-consecutive term, the iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI), benchmark S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC), and growth-fueled Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) rallied 57%, 70%, and 142%, respectively.

Several catalysts have propelled the Trump bull market, including the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), record S&P 500 share buybacks in 2025, and initial public offering (IPO) euphoria, courtesy of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)(NASDAQ: SPCX) and well-known large language model (LLM) developers, Anthropic and OpenAI.

President Trump delivering remarks. Image source: Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks, courtesy of the National Archives.

Elon Musk's SpaceX went public on June 12, dethroning overseas energy goliath Saudi Aramco as the largest IPO in Wall Street's storied history. SpaceX raised $75 billion, nearly tripling Saudi Aramco's December 2019 IPO, and briefly surged to a valuation of almost $3 trillion before paring its post-IPO gains.

Meanwhile, Anthropic and OpenAI both confidentially filed for their respective IPOs with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1 and June 8. As of June 18, Anthropic and OpenAI were commanding estimated valuations of $965 billion and $909 billion, respectively, on secondary markets.

While IPO hype is currently thick enough to cut with a knife, newly implemented rules can very easily turn the tables and upend the Trump bull market.

Fast-entry index inclusion rules are a pending disaster for the Trump bull market

In addition to SpaceX rewriting the record books with its June 12 IPO, several committees amended the rules for index inclusion prior to its debut.

In a presumed effort to court the world's largest IPO to list its shares on the Nasdaq (NASDAQ: NDAQ) stock exchange, Nasdaq Global Indexes announced sweeping index inclusion reforms for the Nasdaq-100 that became effective on May 1.

To be clear, this means only the S&P 500 will exclude SpaceX shortly after its IPO.

FTSE Russell adds eligible megacap IPOs after the close of the 5th trading day.

Nasdaq adds them about 15 trading days after listing.

The S&P 500 kept its rules, so SpaceX waits the full...

-- Hedgeye (@Hedgeye) June 4, 2026

Among the changes, Nasdaq Global Indexes shelved the low-float requirement and meaningfully shortened the time it takes for megacap companies to be added to the Nasdaq-100. If a newly public, non-financial company ranks in the top 40 market cap within the Nasdaq-100, it's now eligible for inclusion after only 15 trading days. Previously, eligible companies had to wait at least three months before being added to the Nasdaq-100.

On May 27, the U.S. Russell Indexes followed suit with unique index inclusion adjustments. Whereas large-cap IPOs have historically been added to the Russell 1000 and/or Russell 3000 on a quarterly basis, the new criteria allow large-scale IPOs to be added to these indexes after just five trading sessions.

In other words, SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI have a path to fast entry into the Nasdaq-100, Russell 1000, and Russell 3000. While this might sound intriguing on paper, given the off-the-charts buzz for these AI superstars, it's actually a historical nightmare for Wall Street.

Moral of the story-do NOT chase hot IPOs

Year-1 average drawdown = 55%
Year-1 median drawdown = 54%

Table: Truist pic.twitter.com/xt864JD4Xh

-- Puru Saxena (@saxena_puru) June 3, 2026

Before SpaceX's debut, Truist Financial released an analysis that detailed the performance of 30 of the largest tech-based IPOs since Facebook (now Meta Platforms) went public in May 2012. Just 43% of these 30 hyped IPOs were positive six months after their debuts.

Even more notable, Truist found the average year-one drawdown for the hottest tech-driven IPOs is 55% over the previous 14 years. History has repeatedly shown that buying into hyped IPOs is often a terrible idea.

With SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI eligible for fast-track inclusion into key indexes where they'll presumably have significant weighting, an average drawdown of 55% could pull the rug out from beneath the Trump bull market.

Image source: Getty Images.

But wait -- there's more

On top of high-profile IPOs typically tumbling after their debuts, next-big-thing technologies have a checkered past.

Dating back to the advent and proliferation of the internet in the mid-1990s, every game-changing innovation has navigated an early innings bubble-bursting event. The reason these bubbles form and eventually burst is that investors consistently overestimate the adoption and/or optimization of an innovation.

Artificial intelligence has shown no signs of an adoption issue. Graphics processing unit kingpin Nvidia, and memory/storage companies, can't keep their AI data center products on the proverbial shelves long enough to blink. But it's a completely different story from an optimization standpoint.

When the internet went mainstream, businesses welcomed this new marketing and sales channel with open arms. However, it took companies more than half a decade before they understood how to optimize this technology to maximize sales and profits.

Even though AI hardware sales are through the roof, it'll likely take years for businesses to optimize AI solutions, including LLMs. The otherworldly growth expectations built in for SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, and a laundry list of prominent AI-driven companies are unlikely to be met, based on what history tells us.

This combination of reshuffled index inclusion criteria, the historically abysmal performance of high-profile IPOs, and the propensity for bubbles to form with game-changing technologies bodes poorly for the Trump bull market.

Sean Williams has positions in Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms, Nvidia, and Truist Financial. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.