Don’t Want To Invest In Elon Musk? Two New ETFs Explicitly Exclude Him - 3wks ago

For years, investors who believed in Elon Musk’s vision have been rewarded with soaring valuations in Tesla and the privately held SpaceX. Now a new set of funds is targeting people who want the opposite exposure: a portfolio that deliberately avoids Musk and the companies most closely tied to him.

Subversive Capital, through a series of funds registered under Tidal Trust I and branded as Subversive Markets Lab, has created two exchange-traded funds that screen out Musk-linked enterprises from major U.S. stock indexes. The products are called the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF and the S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF, with planned tickers QQNE and SPNE.

ETFs function like mutual funds but trade on exchanges throughout the day like individual stocks. Most index-based funds simply mirror benchmarks such as the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100, which now include Tesla and, via index providers like FTSE Russell and MSCI, exposure to SpaceX. That makes it difficult for investors who want broad market exposure but prefer not to back Musk.

The Ex-Elon funds attempt to solve that problem. According to their regulatory filings, they aim “to provide capital appreciation through exposure to a broad universe of large-capitalization U.S. equity securities, while excluding the equity securities of companies that are founded, controlled, or led by Elon Musk, or with which Mr. Musk is otherwise primarily associated.”

As defined in the prospectus, the initial exclusions are Tesla, trading under the ticker TSLA, and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX and referenced in the filing as SPCX. Musk’s other ventures, including Neuralink and The Boring Company, are privately held and therefore not part of the ETF universe, but the language leaves room to bar additional Musk-linked firms if they become publicly traded or closely associated with him.

The strategy taps into a growing niche of values-based and thematic investing, where portfolios are built not only around sectors or factors but also around political, ethical, or personal preferences. Subversive has already made a name for itself with funds that track stocks traded by members of Congress and their spouses, pitched as a way for retail investors to “invest like the oligarchy.”

Whether investors will embrace an anti-Musk tilt is unclear. The Ex-Elon ETFs will be judged on performance as much as principle, but their very existence underscores how polarizing Musk has become in financial markets and how far some investors are willing to go to keep him out of their portfolios.

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