On November 11, 2026, Nvidia’s board accepted Jensen Huang’s resignation as president, CEO, and director, “effective immediately,” and named CFO Colette Kress interim CEO, according to the company’s Form 8-K filed with the SEC. It came three days after Huang admitted in a staff memo that he had been unfaithful to his wife and the board opened an independent investigation into reports, first published in the press, that he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. No one has been charged with anything. The stock opened down more than 11% the next morning.
If you own an S&P 500 index fund, or a target-date fund that holds one, you owned a piece of that. Not by choice. The index holds companies in proportion to their size, and the biggest companies are increasingly built around a handful of people. So here is the question this week raises: how much of a typical 401(k) is tied to the people running the companies at the top?
The map: nine companies, nine CEOs, $62,283
Vanguard’s How America Saves 2026 report puts the average 401(k) balance at $167,970 at the end of 2025, and the median at $44,115. We’ll use the average, then show the median at the end.
The largest S&P 500 ETF listed its top ten holdings on November 10, 2026 (Alphabet appears twice, for its two share classes), and together they made up 37.08% of the fund, per the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust fund page. Apply those weights to the average balance, held entirely in an S&P 500 index fund:
| Company | Weight in the fund | Who runs it | Dollars in the average 401(k) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 7.84% | Tim Cook, handing off to John Ternus | $13,169 |
| Nvidia | 6.30% | Colette Kress (interim), after Jensen Huang’s exit | $10,582 |
| Microsoft | 6.10% | Satya Nadella | $10,246 |
| Alphabet (two share classes) | 4.69% | Sundar Pichai; founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin control the vote | $7,878 |
| Amazon | 4.10% | Andy Jassy | $6,887 |
| Broadcom | 2.43% | Hock Tan | $4,082 |
| Meta | 2.18% | Mark Zuckerberg, who also controls the vote | $3,662 |
| Eli Lilly | 1.77% | David Ricks | $2,973 |
| Berkshire Hathaway | 1.67% | Greg Abel | $2,805 |
| Total | 37.08% | $62,283 |
Each dollar figure is the balance times the weight: $167,970 × 7.84% = $13,169 for Apple, and so on down the list. Tesla sits just outside the top ten at about 1.6% of the fund, another $2,688 or so.
Apple’s handoff is the planned kind. The company announced in April that Cook will become executive chairman and Ternus will take over as CEO effective September 1, 2026 (Apple Newsroom). Nvidia’s was the other kind.
Some of these companies say it out loud
Every annual report lists risks. A few of these companies go further and name a person.
Tesla. The company’s most recent annual report states: “We are highly dependent on the services of Elon Musk, Technoking of Tesla and our Chief Executive Officer. Although Mr. Musk spends significant time with Tesla and is highly active in our management, he does not devote his full time and attention to Tesla” (Tesla 2025 Form 10-K).
Broadcom. Its annual report warns that the business would be hurt by the departure of senior management, “in particular the services of Hock E. Tan, our President and Chief Executive Officer”.
Berkshire Hathaway. A risk factor in its annual report is titled “We are dependent on a few key people for our major investment and capital allocation decisions”.
Not every company does this. Microsoft’s annual report names no individual; it talks about retaining “key leaders” and says “effective succession planning is also important to our long-term success”.
The two you can’t vote out
Owning a share usually means owning a vote. At two of the top ten, that vote doesn’t decide much.
Alphabet’s 2026 proxy statement shows Larry Page with 27.4% of the total voting power and Sergey Brin with 25.3%, as of April 6, 2026 (Alphabet 2026 proxy statement). Together that’s 52.7%, a majority. Meta’s 2026 proxy says it plainly: “Because Mr. Zuckerberg controls a majority of our outstanding voting power, we are a ‘controlled company'”.
Add the two together: Alphabet’s $7,878 plus Meta’s $3,662 is $11,540 of the average 401(k) sitting in companies where the founders hold the deciding vote. Your index fund votes its shares at the annual meeting. It can’t outvote a majority holder.
None of this makes those companies bad holdings. It does mean the usual check, shareholders replacing management, works differently there.
Does the market actually care when a CEO leaves?
Usually, less than you’d think. A study of 149 sudden deaths of top executives at U.S.-listed companies from 1991 to 2008 found an average stock reaction of about 1.2% down over three days, too small to separate from noise, and a meaningful share of those stocks rose instead (Nguyen and Nielsen, Management Science, 2014). Most companies are bigger than any one person.
The exceptions tend to be founders and executives the market sees as the strategy itself. Berkshire’s Class B shares fell about 5% on the first trading day after Warren Buffett announced in May 2025 that he would step down as CEO. This week’s Nvidia drop is the same pattern in a bigger company. The common thread is that the market had priced the person in.
How to guard against a day like this
You can’t stop a CEO from making headlines. You can control how much of your money is standing in the blast radius, and what you do when it happens.
1. Find your doubles
The index fund is rarely the real problem. The trouble starts when the same companies show up again elsewhere: Nvidia or Tesla bought directly in a brokerage account, a large-cap growth fund that overweights the same names, or unvested company stock from your employer. Add one company’s dollars across every account you own. The total is your real exposure.
2. Cap any single company at 5% of your investable money
Our rule of thumb: outside of broad index funds, keep any one company at or below 5% of your investable net worth. FINRA defines concentration risk as “the risk of amplified losses that may occur from having a large portion of your holdings in a particular investment, asset class or market segment” (FINRA) but gives no number, so this is a line you choose, not a rule anyone enforces. If you’re over it, trim inside your 401(k) or IRA first, where selling doesn’t trigger tax.
3. Shrink the slice through your mix, not by picking around people
Swapping stocks to dodge a CEO is a guess. Your asset allocation is not. Using the method from our S&P 500 concentration breakdown, a portfolio of 80% stocks and 20% bonds, with 30% of the stocks in international funds, holds U.S. stocks at 0.80 × 0.70 = 56% of the total. On the average balance, that cuts the nine-CEO slice from $62,283 to $34,878 and the Nvidia slice from $10,582 to $5,926. An 11% opening drop in Nvidia then touches about $652 of the account instead of about $1,164. Your mix should come from your timeline and tolerance for drops, not from this week’s news (Investor.gov, Asset Allocation).
4. Treat employer stock as a separate bet
If you work at one of these companies, your paycheck, your bonus, and your stock awards already ride on the same leadership. Selling shares as they vest, unless you would buy that stock with cash, keeps the bet a choice. Our RSU breakdown runs the numbers. If your 401(k) offers a company stock fund, check whether the plan caps how much you can hold in it.
5. Write your headline-day rule before the next headline
Decide now what you’ll do on the next day like November 12. A simple version: never sell a broad index fund because of news about one executive, and rebalance on a set date (once or twice a year) instead. Investor.gov notes that “rebalancing tends to work best when done relatively infrequently.” The selling decision you make in the first hour of a scandal is rarely the one you’d make with a week to think.
6. Accept what an index fund can’t fix
Index investors can’t outvote Page, Brin, or Zuckerberg, and can’t pick which CEO stays. Sizing is the only lever. If founder control bothers you, the answer is a smaller U.S. large-cap slice, not a fight you can’t win.
Your own numbers in two minutes
- Log in to your 401(k) and note each fund and its balance.
- Open each fund’s page and find its top ten holdings and their weights.
- Multiply each balance by each weight, and add the results for each company across funds and accounts.
- Add any direct stock and employer shares in those same companies.
- Compare the biggest single-company total with the 5% line.
At the median balance of $44,115, fully in an S&P 500 fund, the same nine CEOs account for about $16,358. In a target-date fund, the figure is lower, because those funds also hold international stocks and bonds.
The number isn’t a reason to panic. It’s a reason to know it.
Sources
- NVIDIA Corporation, Form 8-K, November 11, 2026, and CEO transition press release, November 12, 2026
- State Street Global Advisors, SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) fund page, top holdings as of November 10, 2026
- Tesla, Inc., 2025 Annual Report on Form 10-K
- Alphabet Inc., 2026 Proxy Statement
- Apple Inc., Apple Newsroom, April 20, 2026
- Nguyen, B.D. and Nielsen, K.M., “What Death Can Tell: Are Executives Paid for Their Contributions to Firm Value?” Management Science 60(12), 2014
- FINRA, Concentrate on Concentration Risk
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov, Asset Allocation and Diversification
- Vanguard, How America Saves 2026
The Thousandaire Editorial Team creates practical, evidence-based personal finance content for people building real wealth. We break down investing, retirement, taxes, real estate, and other wealth-building decisions with clear explanations, real numbers, and no hype
