Google joins S&P 500. (WSJ, subscription required) This should really raise the equilibrium price at which Google trades since some of the stock will be tied up in index funds. As more stock is tied up in index funds, there is less available for trading effectively raising the price. Looks like the stock has already jumped 7%. When I get time, I’m going to do a similar rudimentary analysis of what the optimal portfolio of an index fund consisting of only S&P 500 stocks using methods similar to what we learned in F303. Just for informations sake, the stock that got replaced was oil and gas producer Burlington Resources, which was bought out by ConocoPhillips.