Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is nearing the end of its first full week as a public company. Although it enters Friday well above the $68 it was priced at prior to its public debut, Alibaba has tumbled more than 10% after trading above trading above $99 on an intraday basis last Friday.
Alibaba is not solely to blame for that lethargic performance, though company’s timing for its initial public offering could have been better because U.S. stocks have gotten smacked in recent days. That does not mean shares of Alibaba do not have a bright future.
That is up to the market to decide, but what is important to investors looking to ride Alibaba higher via an exchange traded fund is that a legitimate “Alibaba ETF” is already here. As was widely expected, the Renaissance IPO ETF (NYSEArca: IPO) has made Alibaba its largest holding.
Just days before Alibaba’s IPO, in an interview with ETF Trends from the Morningstar Conference in Chicago, Renaissance Capital Principal Kathleen Smith said based on Alibaba’s expected market value, the stock would likely be IPO’s largest position. [Alibaba IPO Spotlights This ETF]
That prediction has proven accurate as Alibaba sported a 14.2% weight in IPO as of Sept. 24, according to Renaissance Capital data. That is nearly 540 basis points more than IPO’s allocation to Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), the ETF’s second-largest holding. Alibaba’s weight in IPO is equivalent to the ETF’s allocations to its fourth- through seventh-largest holdings combined.
IPOs that pass Renaissance Capital’s formulated screening process are weighted by investable market capitalization, capped at 10% and removed after two years,” according to a statement released by Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital.