Waystar’s Leap: A Stock Market Enthusiast’s Tale

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I’ve always thought of the stock market as a kind of high school cafeteria, where everyone is trying desperately to sit at the cool kids’ table. On Monday, Waystar (WAY) got its invitation to move up from the JV squad and sit with the varsity team-or, in financial terms, it was added to the S&P SmallCap 600. Its shares shot up nearly 10%, while the rest of us were left staring at our trays of soggy tater tots, wondering if we’d ever get asked to join.

You might say I’m reading too much into this. After all, it’s just an index change, not prom court. But let me tell you, there’s something oddly thrilling about watching a company graduate to a new tier of prominence. It’s like when your cousin finally cleans his room after years of being told he’ll never amount to anything. The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC), for comparison, rose by a measly 0.2%. If that doesn’t scream “underwhelming participation trophy,” I don’t know what does.

The Art of Climbing Ladders

This particular honor comes courtesy of S&P Global, which announced Waystar’s inclusion-and nine others-as part of their quarterly shuffle. Think of it as musical chairs but with spreadsheets and people who wear ties even on Zoom calls. As these ten stocks climb aboard, they displace others, including some familiar faces like Jack in the Box and Xerox Holdings. Poor Jack. I imagine him standing awkwardly near the punch bowl, muttering, “It’s fine. I didn’t want to be here anyway.”

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Fund Managers: The Unseen Party Planners

Now, here’s the thing about index funds-they’re like those chaperones at school dances who keep things orderly without drawing attention to themselves. Being included in an index won’t magically turn a struggling company around, but it does mean more people are going to show up to the party. And when index funds buy shares en masse because they have to track the index, well, that can give a stock price a nice little boost. It’s capitalism’s version of peer pressure.

As someone who once spent an embarrassing amount of time refreshing my brokerage app during earnings season, I find myself oddly comforted by this ritualistic reshuffling. There’s a strange beauty in how arbitrary it feels yet how seriously everyone takes it. Like when my brother tried to explain why he needed three different types of mustard in the fridge-it made no sense, but somehow it mattered deeply to him.

So here’s to Waystar, ascending to new heights and leaving the rest of us to wonder if we’ll ever catch a break. Maybe one day we’ll all get invited to the big dance. Until then, I’ll just keep cheering from the sidelines, eating my sad desk salad 🥗.

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2025-09-09 02:45