Amplify Closing MLP ETF

Oil-hedged fund to shut down later in April.

There have been a number of fund closures that have been either completed or announced in approximately the past week.

Most recently, Amplify Investments has said it is closing one of its ETFs. The Amplify YieldShares Oil Hedged MLP Income ETF (AMLX) will see its last day of trading on April 19. The fund launched less than a year ago, but never gathered significant assets.

The closure will leave Amplify with just four ETFs.

Additional Closures

The shutting of the iShares iBonds Mar 2018 Term Corporate ETF (IBDB) was hardly unexpected, to say the least—the fund saw its last day of trading on March 26. It had been scheduled to close in March 2018 right from its launch. iShares’ iBonds family includes two full suites of target maturity bond ETFs that cover fixed-income securities maturing in the same year.

And at the end of last week, AdvisorShares shut down another of its ETFs. The AdvisorShares Meidell Tactical Advantage ETF (MATH) was an actively managed multi-asset ETF that implemented a momentum strategy. It never gained significant assets, but that’s not why it closed. AdvisorShares moved to become a 100% employee-owned firm, and MATH was the only one of its ETFs that did not have enough votes to make the transition. As a result, the fund saw its last day of trading on March 29. 

Last year was a record-breaker when it came to closures, and followed another record-breaking year. In the first quarter of the year, 20 ETFs shut down, roughly the same number of ETFs that were shuttered in the first three months of last year. However, with roughly 50 Barclays iPath ETNs scheduled to stop trading later this month, the number of shutdowns for 2018 is set to see a sharp spike very soon.

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]