A fund that we have not covered previously in this piece has a catchy symbol, BFOR (Barron’s 400 ETF, Expense Ratio 0.65%), and debuted in June of last year.
Most are familiar with Barron’s, and specifically this product tracks the Barron’s 400 Index, which according to fund literature “collects the most fundamentally sound and attractively priced stocks from all corners of the market, using a proven and disciplined stock-selection process.”
Thus, the fund has a look and feel of an actively managed, fundamentally slanted “All Cap” strategy, and looking at fund classification tools, it is categorized as “Value” which is also not surprising.
The fund is the third largest strategy in the ALPS camp, behind AMLP (Alerian MLP, Expense Ratio 0.85%) and SDOG (ALPS Sector Dividend Dogs, Expense Ratio 0.40%), with approximately $237 million in assets under management currently, which is a decent amount of assets gathered in a relatively short period of time.
Top holdings in BFOR are currently AAL, AMBA, CAMP, ARII, and AMBC, with much of the portfolio’s tilt in the Mid/Small/Microcap equity spaces (>75% of the index) and the fund leans the heaviest to the following sectors: Industrials 19.39%, Consumer Discretionary 18.46%, Financial Services 15.74%, and Technology 14.85%.