In recent months, ETF launches have accelerated, leaving advisors with the increasingly daunting task of sifting through the available offerings. Among the flood of new products are “hidden gems” that offer unique, differentiated approaches to risk management, income, ESG, and portfolio diversification.
In the upcoming webcast, Take Your Portfolio To The Next Level In 2022 With These Hidden Gems, Mamadou-Abou Sarr, co-founder, president, CEO, VShares; Nathan G. Miller, senior vice president, portfolio manager, Emles Advisors; and Mark Downing COO, chief product officer, Dynamic Shares, will highlight some of the lesser-known but highly compelling strategies that may have gone under the radar, with the goal of helping financial advisors grasp new tools to help cope with challenges that their clients face today.
For example, the recently launched V-Shares US Leadership Diversity ETF (VDNI) helps track the ISS ESG US Diversity Index and is the first ETF to hold a basket of companies with a specific focus on broad ethnic and gender representation for board directors and Named Executive Officers (NEOs). The fund’s holdings are selected from a universe of large-, mid-, and small-capitalization U.S. companies.
The investment framework for VDNI will be reinforced by V-Square’s custom proxy voting policy guided by the core tenets of accountability, stewardship, transparency, and sustainability. By focusing on these areas of responsible governance, V-Square seeks to promote long-term shareholder value creation and risk mitigation at portfolio companies.
The Emles Alpha Opportunities ETF (EOPS), which is managed by Nathan Miller, former equity long/short portfolio manager at NGM Asset Management, Citadel Investment Group, and RBC Capital, provides institutional investors with access to a hedge fund strategy through an ETF structure.
EOPS is an equity long/short strategy that combines deep-value investing and catalyst trading. Miller has implemented the underlying fund strategy for hedge funds and family offices for over 20 years. EOPS invests in value stocks of North American companies, focusing on “old economy” sectors like industrials, consumer discretionary, and materials. While assets are deployed primarily across equities, the fund has the flexibility to use options, indexes, and other transparent and liquid instruments to seek to generate alpha and mitigate risk.
Lastly, the recently launched Dynamic Short Short-Term Volatility Futures ETF (NYSE Arca: WEIX) is dedicated to democratizing access to sophisticated trading strategies. WEIX is designed to mitigate the risks inherent in selling volatility via traditional passively managed short VIX short-term futures ETFs by seeking to manage its notional exposure to shorting the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index. The fund seeks to add value to portfolios while preserving capital during extremely volatile markets by using a responsive approach to shorting volatility, adjusting exposure as needed so investors don’t have to.
WEIX offers convenient access to an institutional-caliber investment strategy that attempts to capitalize on a structural opportunity to sell volatility that is created by equity hedging imbalances and gives market participants the ability to short volatility as an investment, not just a trade.
Financial advisors who are interested in learning more about alternative strategies can register for the Thursday, February 24 webcast here.