3 Reasons To Attend ETF.com Awards

If you’re anything like me, the idea of sitting around a dinner table with industry friends to celebrate the year’s best in ETFs sounds really appealing right now. How I miss the faces (3D, that is) and the live conversation!

Here’s the bad news: This year’s ETF.com Awards isn’t going to be that. Not literally, anyway. There’ll be no dinner served—unless you’re cooking—and faces will remain 2D, but in high resolution, which is a small win, I guess.

But the good news is indeed good: Come April 20, the 8^th annual ETF.com Awards will be a remote event bringing together some of the most exciting, news-making, product-revolutionizing folks the ETF industry has to offer. It’ll also highlight the most interesting and meaningful ETFs the market has welcomed in the past year.

The conversation will definitely be “live”-ly and enlightening, which brings me to reason No. 1 for joining us for and watching  the ETF.com Awards that evening, at 5 p.m. ET sharp:

• The Conversation

The heart of what makes ETFs tick is right there on their name: “exchange-traded.” Be it the unique creation/redemption mechanism that allows for in-kind transactions in the primary market, or the day-to-day real-time intraday trading across exchanges everywhere, tradability is crucial to ETFs.

I’d argue few—if any—folks know more about ETF trading than GTS Principal Reggie Browne, who’ll be leading the lineup of great conversations taking place at the awards.

If you remember, Reggie won the Lifetime Achievement Award last year for his extensive and impressive work in the ETF industry. But the global pandemic threw a wrench into the awards season in 2020, so we’ve yet to properly toast Reggie for this achievement.

CNBC’s Bob Pisani will be doing the honors, interviewing Reggie about his legacy in ETFs, as well as opportunities and what’s next for this industry. We’d love for you to be there and celebrate his achievement with us.

Talking about what’s next, the evening will also include a sit-down with Cathie Wood, of ARK Invest. Her name is now synonymous with innovation, disruption, and successful active management that’s almost confounding in its powerful punch. She's also known for having a conviction in stock picking like few we’ve ever seen.

Bruce Bond, who essentially initiated a whole new category of ETFs now known as “defined outcome ETFs,” is a pioneer of sorts, offering investors ETF portfolios with guardrails—a type of product other issuers have since come to offer. We’ll hear from him as well.  

What’s more, the evening will be headlined by Gemini founders and bitcoin and crypto asset advocates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. No conversation about finance or ETFs today is complete without taking bitcoin head-on, and the Winklevoss brothers have done a lot of work in this area. This is a can’t-miss conversation for anyone who’s even remotely interested in crypto currencies.

And the final cherry on top is the big reveal of who this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awardee is. The nominations didn’t lack star power, and the winner will certainly have something to say worthy of your “remote” time.

• The ETFs Themselves

The ETF.com Awards recognizes and celebrates the excellence of the ETFs themselves. On April 20, the most innovative funds, most meaningful disruptors, and most creative investor-problem solvers will be recognized and awarded, as they should.

We know the drill. Yes, we love to tout that the ETF market is ripe with innovation. But we also know that a lot of spaghetti hits the walls as newcomers—and some veterans, too—try to find yet another way to slice and dice market access for investors.

Product launches outnumber closures every year, with some 250 or so new strategies coming to market any given year (including over 300 in 2020) looking for a piece of the investor asset pie. Among all the noise, there are true gems. Those are the ones we’re here for.

This year’s award nominees are a very diverse mix of funds that either met the need of the day in a quick, nimble way, or that broke new ground with first-of-a-kind access, or that were even ahead of their time—in a good way—offering investors exposure to slices of the market in new and novel ways.

What’s the best new ETF of 2020? I can’t wait to find out! That’s always been one of my favorite categories because it encapsulates the best the ETF industry has to offer with one award. The winner represents the best innovation in a well-built product that offered a timely solution to a real investor problem. That’s what this is all about.

There were some 30 different tickers nominated in this category alone—all of them worthy contenders of the honor of being the year’s best new launch. The finalists include:

• Direxion Work From Home ETF (WFH)
• Invesco NASDAQ Next Gen 100 ETF (QQQJ)
• iShares US Small Cap Value Factor ETF (SVAL)
• Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF (BETZ)
• Vanguard ESG U.S. Corporate Bond ETF (VCEB)

The winner of this race is only one of 16 different ETF categories we’ll be awarding on April 20, each populated with compelling, useful, meaningful ETFs we should all know. Join us for the results.

• The Bragging Rights

Sometimes it just comes down to being able to say, as Hamilton would, you “want to be in the room when it happens.”

The awards aren’t just for the ETF issuers. They aren’t just for the index providers, either, or just for the ETF traders and custodians. They are really for everyone who has skin in the ETF game, and that includes the advisory and investor communities. It certainly includes you.

Why? Because in awarding the best people and products, we recognize that the ETF industry is truly an interdependent ecosystem that relies on its many moving people and parts to deliver the best outcomes possible.

At the ETF.com Awards on April 20, you’ll get front-row seats to the best conversations, the best product innovation, the best ideas and the best music—did I mention there’s a live music guest, Luka Kloser, and well-known radio and television personality Nic Harcourt, helping host the evening with the team at Spark Network?

Be there, where and when it all happens. If ETFs are for you—in any capacity—this event is for you. Join us, even if you have to order your own DoorDash.

Watch the 8th Annual ETF.com Awards.

Contact Cinthia Murphy at [email protected]