Daily ETF Watch: Academy Plans Index Funds

The firms behind the actively managed Innovator IBD 50 (FFTY) recently filed an exemptive relief request for permission to launch index-based ETFs.

Academy Asset Management and Innovator Management, which is partially owned by Academy, have made a fairly standard request to be allowed to launch passively managed equity and fixed-income ETFs that invest in both foreign and domestic securities, as well as 130/30 ETFs, long/short ETFs and self-indexed ETFs and fund-of-funds ETFs.

The initial fund described in the filing will be based on an index developed by Investor’s Business Daily. The Innovator IBD Small-Mid Cap Leaders Fund will track companies that have market capitalizations of $5 billion or less and that have been awarded a score of at least 95 by Investor’s Business Daily. IBD rates stocks on a variety of metrics and also issues a composite rating from 1 to 99, according to the IBD website.

FFTY uses the IBD 50 Index as its selection universe and reweights the components based on their fundamental and technical indicators.

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected].