On this week ETF Prime, host Nate Geraci, speaks with Tom Hendrickson, VettaFi’s Chief Product and Innovation Officer, about VettaFi’s recent rebranding and a look at what stock ETFs advisors are investigating in the current markets. Later, Geraci is joined by Nick Bohnsack, CEO from Strategas Asset Management, who will talk about the financial markets and the company’s recent developments ETF starts. The podcast ends with David Auerbach, Managing Director at Armada ETF consultant who discusses the Home Appreciation USA REIT ETF (A HOUSE).
The conversation begins with a discussion of the VettaFi rebrand that saw ETF tendencies, ETF Database, Alerian and S-Network Global Indexes all come together under one fintech brand that is business-to-business with business-to-consumer responsibilities. The company needed a way to embody all of the end-to-end services it has offered in the past while also carrying them into the future, and VettaFi was born from that.
“We tried to bring in all of our core values and how we wanted the market to recognize these end-to-end capabilities that we have,” Hendrickson said. “Everything we do is certainly underpinned by a rigorous and disciplined nature when it comes to data.”
The name VettaFi includes the word “vet” for research before making decisions, “Vetta” means someone who knows in Sanskrit or a crest/peak in Italian, and “fi” for finance and fintech representation. The name also includes the letters ETF in it a homage to the ETF Roots with which the company will grow into the future.
To discuss advisors’ interest in equity ETFs, interest in dividend ETFs continued to increase on the VettaFi website in Q1 2022 compared to Q4 2021. Popular ETFs included the VictoryShares US EQ Income Enhanced Volatility Weighted ETF (CDC ) and the Pacer line of funds, including the Pacer Global Cash Cows Dividend ETF (GCOW).
Other popular strategies besides dividends were quality, aerospace and defence, and select low volatility or equal weight funds such as; Invesco S&P 500 equally weighted ETF (RRP )that Invesco S&P 500 Low volatility ETF (SPLV )that iShares MSCI United States of America Min vol factor ETF (USMV )and several other ETFs.
“Achievement is a retrospective metric – you look at historically what happened. An interesting thing is figuring out where advisors spend time thinking about how things might predict the future, and you use it as a kind of prediction mechanism to think about where the puck is going,” Hendrickson said.
The macro environment and residential investments
Next came Nick Bohnsack, CEO from Strategas Asset Management, who discussed financial markets and the launch of their two latest ETFs this year, the Stratega’s Macro Thematic Opportunities ETF (AND) and the Global Political Opportunities by Strategas ETF (SAGP).
Bohnsack spoke of the transition from a decade of very accommodative policies to a decade in which inflation has become a global problem, exacerbated by the pandemic and war in Ukraine. Also discussed were valuations and what types of companies to consider given a changing economic environment.
“The macro environment is challenging and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future; I don’t want to get too gloomy, but frankly we need to address some of these issues before we can begin healing,” Bohnsack said.
Last came David Auerbach, Managing Director at Armada ETF consultant who discussed the Home Appreciation USA REIT ETF (A HOUSE)the first active US residential pure play ETF. The fund does not include builders or mortgage finance companies, but is purely a company in the housing market.
“The idea of the fund is based on the fact that everyone has a story about the housing market across the country at the moment; It doesn’t matter if you’re in Raleigh, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Tampa or Denver,” Auerbach said. “With so many people trying to buy houses across the country, that means a lot of people are locked out of the housing market.”
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