Markets & the Economy: Chop, Chop, Uncertainty
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SP500 has touched 6100 7x in the past few weeks. Two months of so far benign churn, working off frothy 2024 sentiment, and absorbing waves of policy noise. Encouraging resilience or a fragile equilibrium?
Add it to the ETF Line Up
New Launches: (week ending 2/21) a few highlights…
One + One ETFs debuted from VolShares
- OOSB~ this one is SPX + BTC, similar to the Return Stacked ETF methodology like RSST or RSSB
Bitcoin + Ethereum listing
- EZPZ~ Franklin Crypto Index ETF
Precious metals miners fund
- GBUG~ Sprott Active Gold & Silver Miners ETF
New Filings: Defiance, Roundhill
Defiance filed for a Trillion Dollar Club ETF
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TRIL~ which will hold Co’s whose market cap is over one trillion as of the expected effective date of 4/30/25 would include the Mag 7 + Berkshire
Defiance also filed for a MAGA Seven ETF
- MAGT~ will invest in 7 stocks that they expect to benefit from the Trump administration policies
Roundhill filed for an ETF mimicking USA Sovereign Wealth Fund
- SWF~ Roundhill US Sovereign Wealth Fund; will mirror investments of the yet to be launched US Sovereign Wealth Fund
ETF Check Up: Flow Show, IBIT, Gold
It's over, New King crowned…
- VOO officially passed SPY in assets~ end of an era
- Why does it matter? Both are ginormous at $600B~ its symbolic of the Vanguard effect and massive retail/advisor adoption of ETFs (that crowd loves cheap & VOO is cheaper by over 6.5bps)
- Possible iShares Core SP500 ETF~ IVV catches SPY this year as well
Source: Bloomberg as of 2/18/25
74 ETF launches in January, 126 & 93% of them are active as of the beginning of this year
- But not ‘old school’ Active as 61% use derivatives (eg 2x stock, buffer, options writing)
- A real chance we see over 1000 ETFs launched this year; current record is 720, set last year & 510 was the prior record
Incredible: IBIT alone has 1100 holders via 13Fs
- For context, NUKZ a successful nuclear theme ETF launched the same day as IBIT has 29 holders
Gold been on fire, a near record start to the year (2nd best annual start since 2005)
- Up 45% in the past 12mo (which is double QQQ)
Source: Bloomberg Intelligence