ETF Watch: ALPS Debuts Sector Momentum Fund

Fund selects securities based on their relative strength within their respective sectors.

Today ALPS rolled out an ETF that will rotate between sectors based on relative strength. The ALPS/Dorsey Wright Sector Momentum ETF (SWIN) comes with an expense ratio of 0.40%.

The fund is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

SWIN’s benchmark is derived from the Nasdaq Index. On a quarterly basis, the index methodology ranks 10 sectors based on their relative strength, or momentum score, then ranks the stocks of the parent index based on relative strength within their respective sectors. It chooses the top stocks from each of the seven sectors that have the highest momentum scores, generally arriving at 50 stocks in total, the prospectus says.

Components are equally weighted in the index.

Elkhorn To Round Out Midcap Sectors

A recent filing from Elkhorn Investments indicates that the firm will be adding a tenth fund to its recently launched family of midcap sector funds tracking indexes derived from the S&P MidCap 400 Index. The Elkhorn S&P MidCap Real Estate Portfolio will reflect the fairly new addition of a real estate sector to the Global Industry Classification Standard.

The midcap sector family that Elkhorn launched on the last trading day of 2016 was designed as a complement to the original Select Sector SPDR ETF family, but did not include a real estate ETF. State Street Global Advisors added real estate and financial services ETFs to the Select Sector SPDRs in 2015, but shut down the financial services ETF this year when it split the real estate names out of the Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF).

Midcap Complement

The proposed Elkhorn ETF will serve as a midcap complement to the Real Estate Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLRE) and track the S&P MidCap 400 Capped Real Estate Index. Like the other funds in Elkhorn’s midcap family, it is slated to come with an expense ratio of 0.29% and list on the Bats exchange. Bats Global Markets is the owner of ETF.com.

Invesco PowerShares launched a similar family of sector ETFs targeting a similar set of indexes derived from the S&P SmallCap 600 Index in 2010, but it does not yet include a dedicated real estate fund.

The filing does not provide a ticker symbol.

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected].