this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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Her FA is conservative (as many are) and strongly advised her that she was making an emotional mistake. She told him that she is not interested in being a shareholder in anything that is involved with Elon Musk, and that she wishes to demonstrate to her children and grandchildren what kind of world she wants to live in. She made her FA sell off mutual funds he had chosen that include musk properties.

This is a small but financially brave act, and I know that many people, especially older people have a lot to lose in the market right now. But your dollar has huge sway. Divestment from maga affiliated tech is one of the biggest ways we can leverage our money to matter.

Is anyone else’s family talking about their market practices or divesting as well? I’m proud of her for standing her ethical ground financially.


Originally Posted By u/PM_ME_UR_SNARES At 2025-03-29 06:38:58 PM | Source


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[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Probably not, because 401Ks often only offer a limited selection of mutual funds, and it's unlikely that something like a "total stock market ex-Musk" fund exists at all, let alone is available to choose.

You could invest only in asset classes other than US stocks (e.g. international stocks, bonds, REITs, etc.) and divest from Musk that way, but that would severely screw up the usually-recommended portfolio balance.


You could also have a qualifying event (like changing jobs) and roll your 401k into an IRA where you'd have more control. But even then it would be complicated to divest from Musk companies because you'd need to either forego mutual funds and buy hundreds of individual stocks, or short Musk's stocks to cancel out the holdings within the funds (and that's got some "gotchas" to it because short and long positions aren't as equivalently opposite as they seem).

And finally, even if somebody did make a "total stock market ex-Musk" mutual fund, it would probably have an expense ratio a lot higher than something like VTSAX and thus be a drag on your portfolio returns that way, even disregarding any effect of Musk companies' performance.


Full disclosure: I recently reallocated my portfolio to more heavily favor international stocks because of sovereign risk associated with Trump, but I did not attempt to divest from Musk in my remaining US index fund holdings despite the fact that, ideally, I'd like to.