The relatively new index greatly differs from current social media ETF offerings, like the Global X Social Media Index ETF (NYSEArca: SOCL), which seeks to passively track the performance of a group of social media companies.
Market Prophit Social Media Sentiment Index’s current component holdings include top mentioned brands like Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL), Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN), Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT), GoPro (NasdaqGS: GPR), Tesla (NasdaqGS: TSLA), Baidu (NasdaqBS: BIDU) and Twitter (NasdaqGS: TWTR).
Year-to-date, the index has increased 7%, mainly on short positions – the index had 36% of its positions shorted prior to August 24 due to poor Twitter sentiment, Balchunas said.
Due to its active indexing methodology, any potential ETF that utilizes the twitter-based index may come with a higher price tag than the average index-based or smart-beta ETF. The Market Prophit’s index could cause an ETF to incur capital gains through high turnover, or higher frequency of buys and sells, along with additional costs associated with borrowing securities to sell short.
For more information on ETF indices, visit our indexing category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.