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ETF Tickers 2025: A Year in Review

Picture of Bernie Thurston

As part of my year-end analysis, I combed through 2025's ETF launches searching for clever tickers.

Unfortunately, the ticker I most wanted to see never materialised: I was hoping for PINGU for the Canary Capital PENGU ETF, a potentially groundbreaking fund combining cryptocurrency and NFTs. The proposed fund would allocate 80-95% of assets to PENGU (the official Solana-based governance token of the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem), with 5-15% invested in actual Pudgy Penguin NFTs selected for rarity, desirability, and collection value. The trust would also hold small amounts of Solana and Ethereum to facilitate transactions.

I can't believe I just wrote a sentence about Pudgy Penguin NFTs. I need a stiff drink.

What's worse: the filing sparked immediate market chaos, with PENGU's price surging over 100% in the following weeks. Despite this enthusiasm, the SEC remains cautious about approving ETFs tied to highly volatile memecoins with limited utility beyond collectability. The SEC decision, originally scheduled for October 2025, has been delayed until 2026 due to the government shutdown. PENGU's price dropped 11% following the delay announcement.

The only other 2025 ETF that managed to secure a genuinely clever ticker was:
WILD (VistaShares Animal Spirits 2x Daily Strategy ETF) – Launched June 4, 2025

This is genius branding. The ticker channels economist John Maynard Keynes' concept of “animal spirits” – the irrational exuberance and herd mentality driving markets. WILD provides 2x leveraged daily exposure to five popular stocks selected by buying momentum and investor sentiment, rotating monthly. It's essentially an ETF betting on retail trader mania and hype, making “WILD” the perfect ticker for pure speculative chaos. The fund currently holds about $2.79 million in assets and has been genuinely wild, with 52-week price swings from $17 to nearly $40. With AUM this low, I wouldn't expect the fund to survive long, which is a shame.

The absolute chef's kiss of 2025? We got WILD – a leveraged fund betting on meme stock mania – in the same year that memecoin ETFs (Pudgy Penguins, Dogecoin) became serious regulatory filings. The entire market collectively decided that if you can't beat the chaos, you might as well package it, leverage it 2x, and charge an expense ratio.

The European Situation

The most depressing element is Europe's complete lack of fun. We're basically limited to NATY (YieldMax Future of Defence Option Income UCITS ETF) and awkwardly trying to pronounce WDEF (WisdomTree Europe Defence UCITS ETF).
The irony is rich: the continent that gave us fashion, art, and Champagne produces investment products with all the personality of a parking ticket. At least the defence ETFs are printing money, even if their tickers are printing Ambien.

Bernie Thurston

Bernie loves data. Fortunately for him, London’s finance industry has been indulgent, providing him lots of benchmark data to play with and enjoy. Bernie’s journey began at Sky, where he designed the first interactive television and helped build a technical-based charity (ctt.org). He then hopped over to finance, and soon found himself at a start-up working on dividends and derivatives. Then, by nature of the fact that finance and technology have rapidly conjoined, he found himself working with Credit Suisse to build an index aggregation and distribution platform. Markit then acquired the start-up and Bernie battled his way up the greasy pole becoming the Managing Director of Markit’s equities division, with responsibility for index, ETF and Dividends. But the siren song of startups called once more. And Bernie was headhunted to rescue a failing index business. Over five years, he helped reverse the fortunes of DeltaOne Solutions, turning into a fighting force. So successful was the turn around that Markit came along and acquired this company as well. But Bernie still loved start-ups. To that end, he founded Ultumus, an ETF and benchmark data company. Ultumus aims to provide the best data in the most timely and consumable manner possible. With clients on both buy and sell side, when something happens in the index or ETF industry, Ultumus is the first to know.

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