New “Anti-Elon” ETFs Let Investors Avoid His Stocks

Subversive Capital recently filed SEC documents to launch two new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States that explicitly exclude companies led or founded by Elon Musk, targeting investors eager to distance their portfolios from his controversial public behavior and political alignments.

Why Investors Are Shunning the World’s Richest Man

While early SpaceX employees and venture capitalists have made fortunes betting on Elon Musk, a growing segment of the market is looking for a way out. Musk’s highly publicized work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), polarizing statements on X (formerly Twitter), and controversial public gestures have fueled negative sentiment. Recognizing this shift, Subversive Capital has designed a financial product to capitalize on this backlash.

These two anti-Elon ETFs operate similarly to mutual funds but trade on public exchanges like individual stocks. Legally registered by Tidal Trust I and managed under the Subversive Markets Lab LLC brand, the filings were first uncovered by Bloomberg.

The Challenge of Detangling Portfolios from Musk

For the average investor, avoiding exposure to Musk’s corporate empire is surprisingly difficult. Standard retirement and brokerage accounts heavily rely on mutual funds and ETFs that track major indexes like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. Because Tesla is a staple of large-cap growth funds, and SpaceX (represented in FTSE Russell and MSCI indexes) was recently added to the Nasdaq 100, standard index investing automatically channels capital to Musk’s ventures.

The newly registered ETFs—named the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF and the S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF—directly solve this issue. According to the prospectus, the funds specifically blacklist Tesla (TSLA) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX). Other Musk-led ventures, such as Neuralink and The Boring Company, are currently private and thus excluded by default.

A Dynamic Strategy to Keep Musk Out

The exclusion criteria are designed to adapt if Musk associates with other publicly traded entities. The SEC filing states that the funds seek “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.”

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A History of Politically Charged and Satirical Funds

Though these are legitimate financial instruments heading to market, Subversive Capital is no stranger to tongue-in-cheek investment strategies. The firm previously earned headlines for launching ETFs designed to let retail investors “invest like the oligarchy.” Those funds track the personal stock portfolios of Democratic and Republican members of Congress and their spouses.

It remains to be seen whether these new ETFs, trading under the tickers QQNE and SPNE, will attract significant capital or outperform their standard index counterparts. However, their launch highlights a rising demand for investment vehicles tailored to personal values, and, given his famed hostility to traders who shorted Tesla, they offer a new way for critics to vote against his influence with their wallets.