Serious question: Is there some ETF that is "Index of S&P500 minus anything that smells like Musk"?
Yes, kinda. Goldman Sachs launched that under the symbol SPXXAI last month. I'm not totally sure how to actually invest in it yet though.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/20/ai-goldman-sachs-stocks-ind...
The cheapest option might be to buy the index and sell short the appropriate amount of Musk companies.
If you have a big enough portfolio, direct indexing (using something like Frec or Wealthfront) could be an interesting option, and weighting the companies that you don't want at 0.
There is XMAG, but beware the expense ratio is much higher than the mainstream indices.
Direct indexing is pretty easy these days.
If you have $100k, you can do it with direct indexing at Schwab. The management fee is 0.40%.
I looked into it, but there are gotchas with wash sale rules and taxes. You really need $500k-$1M to avoid tracking errors. End of the day, the overhead seemed more problematic than the problem, so I ended up increasing my global allocation instead.