2026 ETF.com Award Nominees: Commodities

The Nominees

SLVR - Sprott Silver Miners & Physical Silver ETF

Launched: January 2025 | ER: 0.65% | AUM: $633M | Issuer: Sprott

Investment Strategy: SLVR provides a pure-play strategy for silver investors. The fund seeks to track the Nasdaq Sprott Silver Miners Index that includes physical silver as well as silver developers, producers, and explorers. 

• Merit: Very High - Unique miner + physical combo structure
• Position: First-mover on hybrid silver exposure
• Utility: Excellent - "Silver miners plus bullion” is compelling
• Power: Good- Silver has industrial and global-chaos drivers

Why it’s nominated: Most silver investors face a choice: physical metal (stable, no leverage) or miners (implied leverage to the metals price, volatile). SLVR eliminates that choice by combining both in one wrapper, bringing Sprott’s signature approach to silver investing. The $633M in AUM and $414M in flows prove investors wanted exactly this. Sprott’s precious metals expertise makes them the natural issuer.

METL - Sprott Active Metals & Miners ETF

Launched: September 2025 | ER: 0.89% | AUM: $42M | Issuer: Sprott

Investment Strategy: METL offers actively managed exposure across a broad range of strategic metals that include copper, uranium, silver, steel, lithium, and more. The strategy invests in metals as well as miners, recyclers, and related companies. 

• Merit: High - Active management across all strategic metals
• Position: Strong - Sprott’s mining expertise is well regarded
• Utility: Good - “Sprott’s best mining ideas” is clear pitch
• Power: High - Critical minerals are a structural theme

Why it’s nominated: Rather than betting on a single metal, METL gives investors Sprott’s active view across the entire metals complex. Energy transition, defense reshoring, infrastructure buildout—all require metals, and METL captures the opportunity set. What's more, Sprott’s team conducts 200+ management meetings and 30+ mine site visits annually, applying a value-oriented, and old-school-active approach to metals investing. This active approach allows repositioning as relative value shifts between commodities.

GBUG - Sprott Active Gold & Silver Miners ETF

Launched: February 2025 | ER: 0.89% | AUM: $156M | Issuer: Sprott

Investment Strategy: GBUG brings Sprott’s actively managed approach with a focus specifically on gold and silver mining equities. It's the only ETF of its kind to focus solely on gold and silver miners. 

• Merit: High- Sprott precious metals mining expertise
• Position: Good - Sprott franchise in a core competency
• Utility: Good - Competes primarily with passive products
• Power: Good- Gold/silver have had a run

Why it’s nominated: While METL goes broad across all metals, GBUG (great ticker) goes deep focused entirely on Sprott’s core competency in precious metals mining. Like most of their product line: this is traditional active management, built on relationships, site visits and track records with the actual people running the held companies. For investors who want concentrated exposure to gold and silver miners with active management, GBUG is the pure play. The $156M in AUM suggests the gold bugs noticed GBUG already.

FMTL - First Trust Indxx Critical Metals ETF

Launched: November 2025 | ER: 0.65% | AUM: $3M | Issuer: First Trust

Investment Strategy: FMTL captures lithium, rare earths, cobalt, and other materials driving electrification and reshoring via miners. It does so by seeking to track the Indxx Global Critical Metals Index and includes securities that fall within one of three sub-themes. These are: sustainable energy metals, nextgen mobility metals, and other high technology metals, with the index tracking the top 50 miners and providers of the critical metals. 

• Merit: High - Critical metals theme is structural
• Position: While not a first mover, it's a growing category with policy tailwinds
• Utility: Good - Fills gaps in either a defense or electrification tilt
• Power: High - The demand is real for these materials

Why it’s nominated: The energy transition – whether you think of it as an "ESG thing" or an "AI thing" – runs on critical metals. EVs need lithium and cobalt, wind turbines and defense need rare earths, grid infrastructure needs copper. FMTL captures this structural theme. While tiny ($3M) and infant (2 months old), the thesis is sound and the timing, with reshoring policy tailwinds, global armies on the march and grid demand, is right.

UX - Roundhill Uranium ETF

Launched: January 2025 | ER: 0.75% | AUM: $3M | Issuer: Roundhill

Investment Strategy: UX provides Pure-play uranium exposure as nuclear energy experiences a global renaissance. It does so through direct investment via the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, as well as swaps, offering exposure to the price of physical uranium. 

• Merit: High - Nuclear renaissance is real and accelerating
• Position: First-mover on pure uranium ETF play
• Utility: Excellent - “AI needs nuclear, nuclear needs uranium” is timely
• Power: Very High - Structural demand from data centers and decarbonization

Why it’s nominated: The nuclear narrative shifted dramatically in 2025. Microsoft signed a deal to restart Three Mile Island. Google and Amazon are investing in nuclear for data center power. Uranium is the bottleneck—supply is constrained while demand is surging. UX captures this structural shift. The AUM is small ($3M), but the thesis is among the strongest in commodities, and the fund gets its exposure primarily through swap contracts, eliminating issues like "storage" and "radiation."

1. All data sourced from FactSet as of 12/26/25.

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