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TESLA JUST REPORTED financial results for its most recent quarter. For the fifth time in a row, it announced a profit. This was notable for a few reasons. Among them: Tesla’s increasingly strong performance again raises the question of why it’s been excluded from the S&P 500-stock index.
By way of background, the S&P 500 includes almost all of the 500 most valuable publicly traded companies in the U.S. But Tesla’s stock isn’t included, even though its size today would earn it a spot among the top 10—in the same neighborhood as Johnson & Johnson and Berkshire Hathaway. Still, it isn’t there and it’s worth understanding why.
Standard & Poor’s, the company that created and manages the index, is fairly specific with its criteria for inclusion:
In July, when Tesla last reported earnings, it cleared that final hurdle, delivering its fourth quarterly profit in a row. In the days following the announcement, Tesla enthusiasts fully expected the company to be admitted to the S&P 500. When S&P’s nine-person index committee next met, it did open the door to three smaller companies, including Etsy, a company that’s just 3% of Tesla’s size. But not Tesla itself. It was an odd result. One analyst called it a “headscratcher.”
What happened? The short answer is that nobody knows—or, I should say, nobody outside of S&P knows. And the folks at S&P aren’t saying. When the company issues announcements about index changes, its press releases are terse, with no explanation or commentary. In September, when a reporter asked S&P about Tesla, a spokesperson replied, “We cannot comment on individual companies and potential index changes.”
If you read through the 41-page methodology document available on S&P’s website, though, you’ll understand that Tesla’s exclusion was no mere oversight. In that document, you’ll repeatedly see the phrase, “at the discretion of the Index Committee.” In fact, the word “discretion” appears 35 times in that document. That pretty much explains what’s going on. Like a college admissions committee, S&P does have some guidelines, but ultimately its decisions are made behind closed doors for reasons that only certain employees know.
Is that the end of the story? If S&P’s posture is to be secretive, and it has no intention of changing, why even discuss this? The takeaway for me is that these quirks make it vitally important to understand the indexes underlying your investments. Index fund investing continues to grow in popularity and, overall, I believe that’s a good thing. But that has also led to a profusion of investment choices.
Today, there are at least six major index providers: In addition to S&P, there’s Dow Jones, which has a joint venture with S&P and which created the first market index, the often-cited Dow Jones Industrial Average. Then there’s MSCI, Russell, Nasdaq and CRSP, among others. Some companies, such as Fidelity Investments, have even built their own indexes. It’s estimated that there are more than 5,000 market indexes out there, along with thousands of index funds to choose from. This makes it hard, as an investor, to know what you’re buying.
To add to the confusion, many indexes have similar names but not necessarily the same strategy. Once you move beyond the most basic, broad-based indexes, things can get tricky. Here’s one example: To complement its flagship 500 index of large companies, S&P also offers an index of mid-cap stocks and an index of small-cap stocks. Put them all together, and you might think you’d end up covering the entire U.S. market. But that isn’t the case.
Because of S&P’s discretionary power, some stocks aren’t included in any of those three indexes. One such stock: Tesla, which has been left out in the cold. The index committee won’t let it into the large-cap index. But because of its size, it isn’t eligible for the mid-cap or small-cap index, either. Result: If you had owned those three basic indexes, thinking you had exposure to the entire market, you would have missed out on Tesla’s 398% gain this year. Another one you would have missed: Zoom, with its 654% gain. Zoom also isn’t included in any of those three seemingly comprehensive indexes.
S&P does include both Tesla and Zoom in other indexes, including one called the Extended Market index. But if you hadn’t been aware of that, you would have missed out on those two stocks’ dramatic gains. In fact, funds tracking those mid- and small-cap indexes have suffered losses this year, while the Extended Market index is up more than 10%. It’s differences like this that make it critically important to know what you own.
The bottom line: Before making an investment, always, always look under the hood.
Adam M. Grossman’s previous articles include Follow the Fed, Save and Give First and Don’t Play Politics. Adam is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. In his series of free e-books, Adam advocates an evidence-based approach to personal finance. Follow Adam on Twitter @AdamMGrossman.
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Is this a reason to prefer a total stock market index over an S&P 500 fund? I just checked Vanguard’s total US stock market fund (VTSAX/VTI) and both Tesla and Zoom are listed in their holdings: https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/VTI/portfolio-holdings
Although when I compare this year’s returns for VOO vs. VTI, the difference is negligible.
Yes, I’d favor total market index funds — not only for the broader diversification, but also because you won’t have the trading costs and tax inefficiencies caused by stocks leaving the index.
The most serious problem, in my view, is the fact that S&P’s three main indices — the large cap 500, the mid cap 400 and the small cap 600 — make it appear that they provide complete market coverage when, in fact, they don’t. So there are two solutions: Either use a total-market fund, as you said. That’s a great solution. Or, if you prefer to have a little more granular control, you could combine and S&P 500 fund with an Extended Market Index fund, such as Vanguard’s VXF. Why even bother with the latter option? There are two reasons you might go this route:
1. If you want to over- or under-weight different segments of the market. Many investors, for example, like to overweight small cap, based on historical outperformance.
2. If you wanted to give yourself more levers to pull when it comes to selling, whether it’s for rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting or charitable giving. Because the different segments of the market will perform differently over time, you can buy yourself a little more flexibility if you have two holdings instead of one.
All that said, if all you ever purchased to cover U.S. stocks was VTI, it’s a great solution.
Adam, Terrific article. I was looking at the SP500 components the other day and was surprised Tesla was not in there. Thanks for the explanation of how it works.
Maybe it’s just the social climate we’re currently living in, but the fact that the S&P chose not to include Tesla makes me uncomfortable that the committee, in aggregate, just have significant reservations that aren’t apparent to the casual observer. It’s been long enough for me to not buy the individual stock, and I’m pretty sure that the CEO-led volatility wouldn’t in and of itself be excluding. I plan to follow this with a passing interest, as it’s likely to be a sitcom that will be entertaining for at least a few more seasons.
“The company must have positive earnings in the most recent quarter, as well as positive earnings, in aggregate, over the past four quarters.”
That sounds to me like it makes the S&P 500 absolutely useless
as an indicator of how large stocks are doing. After all there must
be a lot of big companies that have losses in the most recent quarter.