Daily ETF Watch: Fund Registration Roundup

A number of ETFs have gone into registration in the past week, including a pair of inverse plays on the world of junior gold miners, and a play on high-dividend-paying companies in the emerging markets.

The ETF industry continues to be a hotbed of innovation, with all sorts of strategies going into registration all the time. Hundreds of ETFs are currently in various stages of registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Broadly, more than 1,600 funds are now listed in the U.S., and total assets in ETFs are just shy of $2 billion. Inflows into ETFs continue at a record pace. Indeed, flows into ETFs this year now total $192 billion—above the record of more than the $188 billion set last year.

ProShares

Bethesda, Maryland-based ProShares put into registration the two gold miner funds. They are:

1. Short Junior Gold Miners ETF, which is designed to deliver the inverse of its index, and is rebalanced daily
2. UltraShort Junior Gold Miners ETF, which is designed to deliver twice the inverse of its index, and is also rebalanced daily

The two strategies are in the same category as the Direxion Daily Junior Gold Miners Index Bear 3x Shares (JDST), which has triple inverse exposure to its index.

It’s crucial to recognize that inverse and leveraged funds are designed for short-term traders, as they are rebalanced daily. That means they’re subject to “path dependency,” meaning their market prices can deviate significantly from the value of their underlying indexes.

ProShares didn’t say in the registration statement what the proposed funds’ tickers might me or how much their annual expense ratios would be.

Global X

Additionally, New York-based Global X put into registration an emerging market fund designed to deliver an outsized dividend yield.

The proposed fund, the Global X SuperDividend Emerging Markets ETF, joins a similarly structured U.S.-focused fund from the same firm. That fund, the Global X SuperDividend ETF (SDIV | B-35), has more than $1 billion in assets under management, according to data compiled by ETF.com.

Dividend-focused strategies remain quite popular in post-crash financial markets that are characterized by ultra-low bond yields and a consequent search for high-yielding alternatives.

Global X didn’t say in the registration statement what the proposed fund’s ticker might me or how much its annual expense ratio would be. SDIV has an expense ratio of 58 basis points, or $58 for each $10,000 invested.