June 2019 ETF Filing Roundup

There were several filings from newcomers and a few from established issuers.

There were some very interesting filings in the ETF space during the month of June. Below, we discuss some of the standouts.

New To The ETF Industry

Former DFA CEO Eduardo Repetto has started his own fund firm, which will offer separately managed accounts, traditional mutual funds and actively managed ETFs. The Avantis ETFs will initially be launched by American Century Investments and will target companies with smaller market capitalizations and higher profitability and value levels.

Another newcomer, Liquid Strategies, is looking to launch a family of five ETFs through Listed Funds Trust. The Overlay Shares ETFs will pair exposure to an equity or fixed income category with an options overlay that can buy and sell short-term put options to generate additional income for the fund.

And Empowered Funds plans to roll out its first ETFs using Alpha Architect’s exemptive relief. The index-based funds will invest in other ETFs, with the underlying indexes generated through something called a “genetic algorithm,” a type of machine learning that updates the index’s structure based on changing data. The Merlyn.AI ETFs follow a momentum-based strategy.

Current ETF Issuers

Of the established issuers in the space, the most extensive filing was by Direxion, which outlined plans for 10 different ETFs offering 300% leveraged or inverse exposure to various asset classes, including various sectors and industries, countries and smart beta strategies. Meanwhile, ProShares is planning to add another three dividend strategy ETFs to its offering.

There were also a number of notable one-off filings, including one for the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund. KraneShares is stepping outside of its normal China-focused space with plans for an ETF that invests in carbon credit futures, while Franklin Templeton has filed for a core U.S. bond fund.

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]