We have not previously covered the ETF provider known as Lattice Strategies out of San Francisco in this piece prior to today, but the firm brought a new actively managed ETF product to market this week, ROGS (Lattice Strategies Global Small Cap Strategy, Expense Ratio 0.60%).
An article in ETFTrends.com earlier this week by Todd Shriber, Lattice Adds Fourth ETF With Global Small-Cap Fund, has Ted Lucas, Managing Partner and Chairman of the Investment Committee at the firm stating in reference to ROGS:
Many American investors’ portfolios are limited to U.S. small-caps, which represent just a third of the overall global small-cap opportunity. In addition, they tend to be volatile and expensive, given that they currently trade around 40 times price-to-earnings.
Additionally, Lucas stated about ROGS and its timeliness in global markets today:
By diversifying across countries, Lattice’s global small-cap ETF is seeking to take advantage of lower correlations, improved valuations, and the potential benefits of small-caps with lower overall risk.
ROGS is the fourth actively managed ETF product issued by Lattice, as it joins RODM (Developed Markets (ex-U.S.) Strategy, Expense Ratio 0.50%, $25.2 million in AUM), ROUS (U.S. Equity Strategy, Expense Ratio 0.35%, $22.3 million in AUM), and ROAM (Emerging Markets Strategy, Expense Ratio 0.65%, $22 million in AUM).
Those unfamiliar with Lattice due to their recent entry into the ETF market as a provider/issuer, may note that the firm has been managing institutional assets as well as assets from other investment advisors in their core ETF strategies in Separately Managed Account format since 2007 according to firm literature, which probably speaks to the fact that the four ETFs have gained attention and notable asset flows in the short term in only a month’s time.
Unfortunately, the newness to market of the aforementioned ETFs makes it challenging to assess anything from a technical analysis standpoint given the very limited live trading history of the ETFs, (50 day, 200 day MA of course being important), but the short term asset flows in the funds are certainly worth taking note of.