Latest / Trillions / The ETF Graveyard: This Has Been a Record Year for Closures

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The ETF Graveyard: This Has Been a Record Year for Closures · Trillions

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I think you'll see more culling of those lineups, but
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: more piling into tech, because that's where the assets are going.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: There's a 2X Starbucks. I'm drinking a pumpkin spice coffee
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: right now. I don't need 2X of that.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Trillions. I'm Joel Webber.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: And I'm Eric Balchunas.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Eric, it's Halloween season, which means one of our ongoing
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: episodes is ETF Graveyard, dedicated to funds that have closed
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: this calendar year.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the graveyard is getting big.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Really big, yeah.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Just for those... I guess there's a lot of ETFs,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: so that means the graveyard's got to get big too.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Roughly speaking, there's been 8,000 ETFs launched and 2,500 have
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: closed now. So the graveyard is 2,500 big. Basically, one
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: of every three or every four ETFs is going to die.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: And now they're dying younger. And so it's good to
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: look through here. A, what is caught our attention? Are
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: there any that we felt should have made it and didn't?
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Are there any trends that we see? It's just interesting.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: And And are there any that will try to get
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: dug up and resurrected Lazarus style?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: We have seen that and done episodes about it. All right.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: And I found one of those, by the way. So anyway, yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: I like doing this. I like grave digging, Joel.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We'll see what gems lie in that there cemetery. Joining
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: us for our trip through the cemetery, Todd Sohn, Chief
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: ETF Strategist with Baird Stratikas, as well as Andre Yap,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: a Senior ETF Research Associate with Bloomberg Intelligence. This time
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: on Trillions.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: ETF Graveyard.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Todd, Andre, welcome back to Trillions.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay, Eric, you walked us through how big
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the graveyard is in general. How big is the death
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: rate this year?
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: I have 182 officially liquidated. Now, there are some that
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: are delisted, so it's a little bigger than that. We'll
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: probably end the year 250 maybe. A couple things that
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: stuck out for me just real quick. A lot of ESG.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Schwab closed their ESG. And if Schwab closes it, you
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: know it ain't selling. Because Schwab could sell ice to Eskimos.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: They've got like hundreds of millions of clients or whatever.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: So that's one thing. A lot of ESG closures, which
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I called a long time ago before it was cool.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: I'm not surprised about that. A lot of 2X stock
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: ETFs closing that are babies. Basically like Trader, T-Rex, Defiance.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Launched it. Like, for example, they launched the 2X Apple.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Nobody cared. Closed it. Just boom, boom, real quick. And
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: there was a good dose of crypto. Some of the
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: sort of like, not Bitcoin, but like the really sort
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: of like outer layer planet Pluto type crypto, like a
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Dogecoin ETF. A lot of equity. And then there was
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: a couple unique ones in there that I'll save for
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: the rest of the conversation. But that was my general
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: take on it. There were a couple that returned a
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: lot that still closed and a couple with decent assets
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: that still closed. But largely all of them like were
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: just complete duds.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: How does that closure rate compare with average? Because we
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: have seen a lot of launches, Andre, but how do
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: these closures compare?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're on track to actually break the record
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: to be the largest year for closures in 2026. We
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: have two months left in the year and we're tied
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: for third with 245 closures. So go team, let's go
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: get that record.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: All right, Todd, take us into the graveyard. Which headstone
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: are you going to take us to first?
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  Speaker 2: I went through the 200 or so, trying to find
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: what caught my eye. Yeah, there's a lot of leverage,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: as we were talking about. The ones that really stuck
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: out to me because I thought they were unique products,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: and as someone who looks at the markets through the
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: lens of ETFs, I was disappointed to see them go.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: And that's the BondBlock's High Yield Sector Suite. And so
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: what BondBlock's did.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: What was that ticker?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a few of them.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: RIP?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: RIPXYHE, or XHY, sorry. X, H, Y, F, X, H, Y, H, right?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: That's health energy, financials, healthcare, X, H, Y, I for
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: industrials and so on. What they did was they took
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: the high yield space and split it up by sectors
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: to get more precise. And if you, you know, the
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: high yield indices, they can be overweight telecom at some points,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: they can be overweight energy. You don't want that exposure
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: and want to play more direct, but I guess it
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: didn't catch on. And I was disappointed to see that
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: go because it was a great way to look into
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: what is going on in the high yield space, especially today.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: with hyperscaler debt being under pressure.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: That's also interesting that it, you can't apply everything that
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: works in equities to bonds. Cause I always think there
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: should be thematic, but if these close, no wonder there's
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: not thematic. Cause you've got to get a sector going
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: first before you do themes. But the bond world is
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: just not as fun. Like people don't want to have
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: any fun over there. It's just like, Hey, just the facts, ma'am.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Like I just want to get like, um, ag, different
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: asset classes or durations and like.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Move on with my life.
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  Speaker 1: Um, just, Welcome to the graveyard.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: I know, another sign. At least they tried. Someday, the
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: ETF market could be that big where I think they'll
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: try the sectors and they'll finally work.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: It could be a Lazarus.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a Lazarus candidate in my opinion.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Andre, take us to the next tombstone of note.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: So I'm going to play off Todd's sector themes and
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: I'm going to go with the Westwood Engineered Beta Sector ETF.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: That's the WEBS ETF. Essentially, those are the equity counterpart
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: to this. But instead of just being another Me Too
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: sector ETF, they try to target volatility. So they would
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: leverage up if their target volatility range was too low
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: versus to their target. Or they would go to cash
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: if they think that volatility is too high. And they
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: launched 11 of them back in 2025. And every single
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: one of them went in the graveyard this year.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So they're in good company. You know, they're not alone.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: They have like their brothers and sisters beside them. So,
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: you know, it's a family affair.
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  Speaker 1: That's nice. But they all closed. It's kind of sad
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: when it's the whole family, though.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: You don't want to be a survivor.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: You want to go with the crew.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: This is like Black Plague type stuff. Yeah, it's not friendly.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Eric, take the flashlight and take us to another corner.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Crane Chair's Global Luxury ETF. When I travel around, I
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: will get this question once in a while. Isn't there
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: a luxury goods ETF? And I'm like, there's been like
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: three or four attempts. This has been Lazarus'd. like four times.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: It'll probably be again.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: I know. So we'll see. At some point, the luxury
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: theme will work. I don't know when, and I don't
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: want to the stars are aligned, but this thing was
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: 69 basis points, only took in 2 million, but it's
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: severely underperformed. So that's also an issue.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I got a grave next to that one, by the way.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Good segue. Next to the handbags, what do you got?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Speaking of luxury, there is the iShares US Consumer Focused ETF, IEDI.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: I was a fan of these. This was part of,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I think, the Evolved suite they did years ago, where
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: they tried to kind of mix up the GIX sector
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: with their own classification. So it was going to be,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I believe, something like Apple was in there, right? Eric
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: and I just got new iPhones. We spent a nice
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: chunk of our wallet on it. Apple is a tech
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: company by GIX, but by this measure, I believe, assuming
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: it was in there, it was a consumer company. So BlackRock, iShares,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: they tried to shake up what is a real name
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: in a sector now, right? Because the Some of these
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: companies are crossing multiple boundaries, but it didn't catch on.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Where would Tesla be?
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Probably in that U.S. consumer focus. But, you know, Netflix
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: is not indiscretionary, but it's a consumer name.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Sounds a bit dramatic, right?
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: They closed the Consumer Staples Evolve, too. I mean, I
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: don't know. Did any of the Evolve make it?
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  Speaker 2: I think tech is the only one left.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: But they had Staples Healthcare, right? Like Managed Care Plus Toothpaste.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember those coming out. They were kind of
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: like an answer to something. I think they were an
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: answer to ARK. They were like, okay, we're going to
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: make these more crossed gig sector things. Because ARK, when
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: ARK came out, I think what it really showed people
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: is gig sectors are a little rigid. And ARK was like,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: we'll give you innovation across two or three sectors. And
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: that was a big deal. And everybody followed. And they realized, okay, wait,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: maybe gig sectors need to be updated. And I think
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: that's when that came out. Then there was an explosion
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  Speaker 3: of theme ETFs, and there was just so much competition.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Took it away.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: One that I sorted by, and I thought this was interesting,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the largest fund to close so far this year, Victory
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Shares West End Economic Cycle Bond ETF, BMDL. Anybody? Is
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: there anything for being a big guy and falling on
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: this list?
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: No, nothing on there.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Mystery. Just a death in the woods. Yeah.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I want to say there was a $ 400 million ETF
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: that closed one time. I think iShares closed alts, and
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: that was pretty big. And somebody closed a commodity ETF.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: So that's not the largest closure ever, but anything over
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: $ 50 million to me would be eyebrow-raising. Like, well, why
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: would you close it? They must have their reasons. That said,
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: $ 100 million is not that big of a deal, especially
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: if you're a company that has billions.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Which is what we're saying. Most of the ones that
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: we're talking about here are much smaller than that. So
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: this really comes down to, did you get assets or not?
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Not really. So there are some flows, but when you
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: look at flows and you see just a random big
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: giant bar and you see nothingness for months, that's BYOA.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: That is a line.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Bring your own assets.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's some in-house flow. Organic grassroots hits look like
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: an uneven mix of like, it just looks more human
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: and uneven. So this just looks like they had no
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: actual interest beyond their own people. And that's probably why
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: they closed.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: It.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I'm curious, any particular themes that tanked? We talked about
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: bonds a little bit. There's some more fixed income than
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: not in here. Any other one?
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: Let's go with leverage. So we spoke about this at
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: the beginning, but leverage is just something that just seems
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: to be the kind of useless calories that are just
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: easy to get to. You eat them and you get
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: rid of them really quickly. And that seems to describe
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: leverage ETFs this year. We've had 93 of them close
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: in so far this year.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: 93 out of 245.
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: That's about 35% of the closures or something about there.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: My math is probably bad, but forgive me. So that's
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: Pretty big. Like if you work it out, we've had
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: about 27 closures every month. Leverage is responsible for about
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: 10 of them every month.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So without leverage.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: We'd have 17 closures every month instead of 27. So
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: let's look at leverage as kind of the failing theme
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: for the year.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: I guess. But it's also like been there for some
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: really big moments, right? So it's sort of like either
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you hit it and you find something that traders really
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: want or not.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Easy come, easy go.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, this is like the lottery for issuers. Because
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: if you just get, let's say you launch 10, you
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: get one or two to stick, you charge 1%, you're golden.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: So those eight were worth it. So this is the
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: slickest spaghetti, the least likely to stick.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Not everything needs leverage, but I get it. Just throw
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: it out there.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: Most of these look like they're 2x stock.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: One of them is a 2x short micro strategy, which
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: I would have thought would have had a nice run
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: there for a minute. But even those... Sometimes that one
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: probably is the third or fourth. So with leverage also,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: if you're not the liquid one, it's kind of like
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Ricky Bobby, if you're not first or last. If you're
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: not the liquid one in that category, there's really not
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: much else you can do. It's like, I don't really
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: care if you're cheaper. This is the problem Corgis has.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: They have a ton of 2X and they're cheaper, but
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: that crowd doesn't care about fees. So it's just, are
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: you the liquid one? So if you're third or fourth,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: the odds of making it as a 2X are really tough.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's really hard.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: You see them like trying to innovate and do these
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: weird things where it's like, oh, we're doing leverage on
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: an options income ETF.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Let's do that.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: These combining of the strategies and nobody wants this.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants this.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: That said, I remember when they were filed and we
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: were like 2x NVIDIA, like who needs that? And that's
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: like what, five, six billion dollars, 21%. That's 60 million
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: a month, a year in revenue. So, you know, they
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: got the last laugh. It has worked out. There's, multiple
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: over a billion. So this is, the 2X stock space,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: actually leverage in general, is, I don't, it's a place
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: you don't get a ton of respect. You know, like
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: in the industry, it's like, oh, it's almost like you're
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: selling contraband, like you're selling cigarettes or something. But you
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: can make a ton of money because, you know, Vanguard
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: will never play there and neither will BlackRock, neither will Schwab.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Like all the Walmarts of the world are not, they're
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: going to leave you be. And so it's very seductive
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: for the issuers to do that.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I think you'll see more culling of those lineups, but
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: more piling into tech because that's where the assets are going.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: There's a 2X Starbucks. I'm drinking a pumpkin spice coffee
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: right now. I don't need 2X of that.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, when a stock gets hot like Micron,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: nobody cared until that got really hot. Now that's a
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: big deal. So sometimes you set them all out and
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: you hope like the soccer ball gets kicked over to
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: that area and you're like, okay, now it's our day.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: I would say the more volatile and techie, the better
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: chances you have. But there is a world There is
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: a scenario where 2x waste management could be like the
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: hot new thing, you know, because we found that that
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: stock tends to go up when AI falls. Because it's
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: like garbage is the opposite of AI.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Back to the graveyard.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Are there any asset managers or issuers who had a
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: especially rough go here?
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: I would say the 2x people stuck out. Trader, Defiance, T-Rex,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: and Bitwise. Bitwise closed like 9 or 10. A lot
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: of like, they tried like crypto income. They went pretty
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: wild and they have some good hits, but they probably,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: they launched a lot of stuff. So they culled their
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: product line.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Like the Dogecoin funds.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, BWOW.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Rest in peace, doggy.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Was that this year? Yeah.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: BWOW.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: BWOW. Which, yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Sounds like a 1989 rapper.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Okay. Did anybody happen to note if there were any
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: other golden tickers that died?
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: I got a top five ticker closed this year.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: Top five.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Toke.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Toke.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: You know, I love verbs.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, walk us through it. Yeah.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: So this is the cannabis ETF from Cambria. Cambria also
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: rarely closes ETFs.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Wait, your selling point with Toke is that it's both
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: verb and noun? Yeah.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know exactly what it does. Like, it
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: just checks every box.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, moo.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. So, hack. Those are, like, it's hard to
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: get all of that in one shot. Toke came out
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: a little late. Cannabis has struggled. Has some good runs,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: but it largely has been a bummer. And it's weird.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: I just, I didn't mean to talk like the dude
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: right there, but that's just appropriate. It's a bummer, man. Anyway,
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: $ 13 million. This one was not quite a pure play.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: It had some cigarette companies. It was trying to capture
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: the theme. I think it even had beer in here.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: I think the idea was to get a wider cannabis economy.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: The idea was great, but it was the sixth one
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: to launch. The problem with doing economy ETFs and not
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: pure plays is when the thing gets hot, this would lag.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: This would do better in a sell-off. It's almost like
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: a lower beta version of a cannabis ETF, but Usually
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: people who want the cannabis ETFs, they want that quicker,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: faster hit higher.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Saw what you did there.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: That went up here high.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Not bad. Can I bring up a blast from the past?
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Another era.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Take us to the other corner of the graveyard.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: The iShares Future Metaverse. Oh, Metaverse. And the Fidelity Metaverse ETF.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Isn't that crazy?
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it's called AI. We don't talk about the Metaverse anymore.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: We just talk about AI.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: No more metaverse. I think there's probably one or two
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: still left over, but man.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: The only one that mattered is the one that you
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: changed the name of your company for.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: That too.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: It is really wild. That was such a big word.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: It was a moment.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And we just don't talk about that moment anymore. Have
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: you heard about our AI?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: So that fits in the thematic area.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Of something that didn't work.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. Todd, any other surprising closes or noteworthy.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: I think given the environment we're in, Global X interest
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: rate volatility and inflation hedge never caught on. But we
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: have interest rate volatility right now. Inflation, it depends, I think,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: who you're talking to. It's certainly here in New York City.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: So that just comes as a peculiar one. I understand
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: if it doesn't have assets, it's hard to keep going.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: But just in the bigger picture of what we're all
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: dealing with in markets, I found that to be curious.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Andre, closing thought?
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: I think the winner of the closures for me would
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: be Goldman. you'd think that with their acquisition of Innovator
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: closing this year that they would have a large product
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: line to close, but not really. They only closed three
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: products as a result of that. So there was really
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: just limited overlap. So it seems like their targeting was
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: really good. So they closed their three buffer ETX, GBXB, GBXA, GBXC.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: I did that in the wrong order, forgive me. But
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: that's the only three that they closed. And all they
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: did was just say, hey, we got the Innovator lineup now.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: You could go to those buffers instead. So I think
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: they were very smart with their acquisition, and it showed
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: in their closures this year.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: All right, Eric, take us out of the graveyard. Final thoughts?
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: One more would be Invesco minimum volatility ETF. It's minimum
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: variance SPMV. This is ironic because this is some old
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: school stuff here. Invesco had the low vol ETF, SPLV,
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: huge hit. Then iShares followed with the USMV, which was
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: a different way to do low vol. So Invesco was like, oh, okay.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: we need some of that too. So they tried to
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: match iShares. Long story short, the whole low minimum vol
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: complex has kind of died out a lot. It reminded
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: me of currency hedging. I think the buffer ETFs really
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: have hurt that category because why hope you get lower vol,
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: probably get lower vol, lock in lower vol with buffers.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: So we have a note or a theme we call
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: that buffer ETFs kill the low vol star. So that's
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: part of our theme. And also it's just interesting with
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: SPLV was The original, this was trying to basically battle
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: the other Me Too. Yeah, a lot going on there.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: I will still stand for lowball. I'm not giving up
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: on it. I agree with the buffer thing. Because SPLV
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: has no tech in this environment.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: If you need equity.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: SPLV just buys the least fall stocks. And you end
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: up in the really boring sectors, like utilities and.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Dirt.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: It's a dirt index, basically. The boomers who.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: In a huge sell-off, SPLV would go down too. It
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: just would go down less.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but the flip side of that is that when
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: tech rises, it gets none of that, so it just
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: lags so much every other time.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: That's why it's dirt.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: You've got to carry the dirt.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to go around the room one
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: more time. We're going to talk about the thing. If
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: there was one product on this list that you think
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: has a decent shot of coming back and, you know,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: getting out of the graveyard. Todd?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: How about the Advisor Shares Hotels ETF? That was B-E-D-Z.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I remember this from COVID days, I think.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, like, still demand for travel.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe getting a little bit tougher because of rates in
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: oil and whatnot now. But at some point in the future,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: those ideally will calm down. Good ticker. There's a proper
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: way to do it.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: The themes natural monopoly ETF. By the way, the ticker
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: is CZAR. C-Z-A-R.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Pretty good.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Pretty campy. But I do like this idea of wide moats.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: And I think monopoly is kind of an interesting way
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: to name it. So I just, you know, maybe it
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: won't be named monopoly, but I really like this idea
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: of pricing power. So I could see something like that
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: being resurrected.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And Andre, what do you got?
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: So I know I just kind of poo-pooed a little
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: bit on leverage ETFs, but I actually think, you know,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: the ridiculousness of some of them kind of makes them
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: something that would come back in the future. So I
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: think the 2X agricultural commodity ETF, so that's C-O-R-X and W-H-T-X,
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: that's 2X corn, 2X wheat. Might be a candidate for
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: revival at some point in the future.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Who knows?
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: Maybe we'll enter an apocalypse and food will be scarce
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: and we'll care so much about it.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Let's go with that. All right. We'll leave it there. Todd, Andre,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining us on Trillions.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Trillions. Until next time, you can
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: or wherever else you like to listen. We'd love to
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: hear from you. Hit us up. Trillions is produced by
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Magnus Henriksen and Keshav Pandya. Amy Keene is our executive producer.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Cheryl Brumley is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Bye.