An interesting offering from iShares known as MTUM (iShares USA Momentum Fund, Expense Ratio 0.15%) has pulled in notable new assets lately via creation activity, putting its total asset base above $835 million.
This fund debuted in April of 2013 and has gained awareness among ETF strategists and model portfolio builders as well as institutions, evident in the asset growth. According to fund literature, MTUM provides: “1) Exposure to large and mid-cap U.S. stocks exhibiting relatively higher price momentum 2) Index-based access to a specific factor which has historically driven a significant part of companies’ risk and return 3) Use to help manage exposure and risk within a stock allocation.”
Furthermore, we see that the investment objective of MTUM is “to track the performance of an index that measures the performance of U.S. large and mid-capitalization stocks exhibiting relatively higher momentum characteristics, before fees and expenses.”
Speaking of fees and expenses, we point out the rather modest 0.15% expense ratio on the product, which seems to be part of the appeal to those currently using the ETF. Current top weightings
in the fund are as follows: AAPL (5.37%), MSFT (4.85%), GILD (3.85%), INTC (3.75%), and JNJ (3.72%).
We note the concentration in Nasdaq-100 names here, with the exception of JNJ, and no one would scoff at the idea that the NDX and specific top components have exhibited enormous momentum and relative strength as compared to the broad market in recent quarters.