Two Israeli-Linked Stocks Are Joining the Nasdaq 100
Recent changes to Wall Street’s major benchmarks, including the Nasdaq 100, S&P 500 and Russell indexes, will take effect at the end of June and are expected to trigger unusually heavy trading and volatility in the affected stocks. Index additions often get a lift because exchange-traded funds tracking the benchmarks must buy the new members and sell the names that are removed. Nasdaq says hundreds of investment products track the Nasdaq 100, moving hundreds of billions of dollars. Yahoo Finance data cited in the article found that the median stock joining the Nasdaq 100 has gained nearly 14% over the following year.
The Nasdaq 100, which holds the 100 largest nonfinancial companies listed on Nasdaq, will add five companies on June 22: Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius, Rocket Lab and Teradyne. They will replace Charter Communications, Insmed, Verisk Analytics, Sol Solutions and Zscaler. The article highlights the growing presence of artificial intelligence-related companies in the index changes.
Two of the new entrants have ties to Israel. Nebius, a Dutch-registered company valued at $59 billion after a roughly 390% rise in its share price over the past year, employs dozens of workers in Israel and was co-founded by CEO Arkady Volozh, who also holds Israeli citizenship. Nebius is also building Israel’s national supercomputer under a state contract. The company has a business partnership with Nvidia, which announced a $2 billion investment in Nebius in March.
Astera Labs is also linked to Israel. The American company, listed about two years ago, counts Israeli chip investor Avigdor Willenz among its early backers, and his longtime partner Manuel Alba is chairman. In February, Astera announced a development center in Israel, to operate in Tel Aviv and Haifa, and said it would hire hundreds of employees. Its shares have risen 309% over the past year to a market value of about $63 billion. The article also notes that all of the new Nasdaq 100 entrants have some connection to Nvidia, including CoreWeave, in which Nvidia invested $2 billion in March and now owns about 11%.
Separately, SpaceX, which completed the largest IPO ever over the weekend, is expected to join the Nasdaq 100 within 15 days and the Russell indexes on June 26, but not the S&P 500 for at least a year. Marvell and Flex will join the S&P 500. In the Russell index reshuffle on June 26, Taboola will be added to the Russell 2000 and 3000, TAT Technologies to the Russell 3000, and JFrog and Ondas are also set to join. Pagaya and Tides, formerly Outbrain, are listed among the deletions.
