Mailbag, incl: Housing security or financial security? July 12, 2026

**Scott** (0:10)
Welcome to Motley Fool Money. It is Wednesday afternoon. It's not very snow. I'm kidding. It's Sunday morning. Of course it is. And of course it is special. Of course it's our mailbag. And of course it wouldn't be Motley Fool Money unless I was joined by my mate and entrepreneur extraordinaire, the man who puts man in strawman and.com and strawman.com and things. Anyway, turns out it's Australia's premier online investment club. It is strawman.com. He is Andrew Ram Page. How are you, buddy?

**Andrew Ram Page** (0:37)
Good, mate.

**Matt** (0:37)
It's also derriere extraordinaire as well.

**Andrew Ram Page** (0:40)
Can I just quietly put in there?

**Scott** (0:43)
If you want to big up your backside, mate, feel free. If that's what you were trying to suggest on this podcast, who am I to say that's not true? I can't say I've noticed, mate, but I'm sure you wouldn't lie to our listeners.

**Andrew Ram Page** (0:52)
So if you say you've got a nice backside, I'm sorry, I watched Zillander again the other day and I was reminded of that when you said extraordinaire. Uh-huh.

**Scott** (1:03)
I like to try to make a pop culture reference rather than referencing your own backside.
If that makes you feel better, if you ever get out of it, go for it, go for it, go for it.
Mate, let's kick in to questions right off the bat, mate, rather than getting distracted. And we've talked, in fact, we recorded this before, SpaceX IPOs, but you will hear this after it hit the market. So, fair to say, we don't know what happened next, but this is not really about the, we talked about it a few months or a month and a half ago, a month ago. So yeah, you heard us talk about it, but this is a different question from Lewis. He says, hi gents, I'm a long time listener, first time questioner. I've enjoyed the rants, Bitcoin chats, and constant bashing of fractional reserve banking and the RBA. Thanks for dumbing down concepts for us, quote, retail investors, end quote, and calling BS on industry practices. Lewis, you didn't use the full word, I'll just clean it up a little bit and keep it PG. My question, says Lewis, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all reportedly heading to public listings this year. NASDAQ's new quote, fast entry, unquote, rule means mega cap IPOs join the NASDAQ 100 after just 15 trading days, down from up to 12 months.
The S&P Dow Jones and the FTSE Russell are consulting on similar changes. Combined, these IPOs could raise $240 billion plus at valuations of around 1.75 to 2 trillion for SpaceX, and about a trillion each for OpenAI and Anthropic. So, he asks, as ETF holders, are we forced buyers being scammed into picking up three of the most expensive IPOs in the history at peak valuations? Or if we're holding for the long term, is it nothing to worry about? Appreciate the not so personal advice. Thanks, Lewis. Absolutely not so personal. What do you think, Matt? Is this a scam being perpetrated on ETF holders?

**Matt** (2:56)
It's not a scam, but you're absolutely being forced to buy it.
But that's what you signed up for. And I'm not saying, ha, ha, ha, you've made your bed, you have to sleep in them. I'm not saying it in a bad way. I'm saying, that's the point. The point is, I'm not picking stocks. Just give me the biggest stocks market-weighted average, market-weighted on the index in the same proportion. That's the strategy.
And it's a tough strategy, because it requires you to hold things that you don't like. I've got, I think, in a super thing. So I've probably got a little bit of an ETF for the Aussie market. So I'm holding the banks, and I hate them.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:37)
I don't want anything to do with them, but I'm holding them.

**Matt** (3:40)
But I can't have it both ways. This is where people, I mean, they wrestle with it and they rightly do, right? It's like I, it turns out that passive investing, so far at least, over very long stretches of time, tends to beat most professionals, and short of some very, very low fees, I pretty much get the market average, and the market average is good. So I'm going to do that.
And as soon as you go, but I don't like this or I don't like that, it's kind of like, that's cool. You're absolutely entitled to those opinions. And yes, it does force you into things that you might not otherwise want. But it's kind of like, you're throwing the whole philosophy out the window, which you're free to do. Again, I'm trying very hard not to put any judgment or even pretend that I've got some hidden judgment that I'm just holding back. It's not, I'm just trying to point out the obvious that it's kind of like, that's what you're signing up for. And if you sign up for it, you've kind of got to roll with the punches because that's kind of, that's the point. The point is not to pick stocks. The point is just to throw your lot in with the biggest, and just because it's worked in the past, by the way, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to always work in the future. I don't be surprised if you did terribly out of it, honestly.