Don’t want to invest in Elon Musk? There are two new ETFs that explicitly exclude it

In the run-up to SpaceX’s IPO, there were dozens of stories about employees and early investors who were able to make millions of dollars betting on or working with Elon Musk.

But thanks to Musk’s work with DOGE, his public comments on

The aptly named ETF builder Subversive Capital has found a way to capitalize on that negative sentiment with two new anti-Elon ETFs.

ETFs, which are similar to mutual funds, except that they trade like common stocks, are legally registered by Tidal Trust I and associated with a trademark called Subversive Markets Lab LLC. (Bloomberg was the first to discover this filing.)

Avoiding the world’s richest person could be difficult for the average investor, who likely puts his money in mutual funds tied to indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100. SpaceX, which is listed on the FTSE Russell and MSCI indexes, was recently added to the Nasdaq 100. That means it’s included in funds that track those indexes. Another publicly traded company, Tesla is a long-time favorite of mutual funds, especially large-cap and growth varieties.

Two newly registered ETFs, the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF and the S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF, are designed to block these companies. As of the prospectus date, the excluded companies are Tesla (TSLA) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX), as stated in the filing. Musk’s other companies, including Neuralink and The Boring Company, are not publicly traded.

It’s possible that Ex-Elon’s funds will exclude other companies that have become closely linked to the billionaire relative as well. The X-Elon Funds seek “to leverage capital appreciation through exposure to a broad universe of large-capitalization U.S. equity securities, excluding securities of companies founded, controlled or led by Elon Musk, or with which Mr. Musk is primarily associated,” the document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission states.

While these funds are legitimate and investors will soon be able to trade them, there is also more to them than just lip service. Before Ex-Elon’s funds, Subversive made headlines for its other ETFs that promised to let ordinary people “invest like an oligarch.” One of these funds holds stocks that Democratic members of Congress and their spouses are known to trade, while the other reflects those held by the Republican side of the aisle.

It’s too early to say whether investors will pile into the Ex-Elon ETFs, which carry the tickers QQNE and SPNE, or whether they will perform better than funds that include Musk’s companies. But it reflects a growing appetite for finding ways to avoid Musk, and given his famous hostility toward traders who have shorted Tesla, it might bother him a little.