Silver | True Sectors | Leverage in Canada | Quant Hedge Funds | Kazakhstan Bitcoin
Ultumus has identified five notable launches illustrating the growing variety of structures available in multiple countries to cater for investors’ precise objectives: enhanced income from silver stocks, more concentrated sector exposure, leveraged long and short stocks, quant long and short stock-picking and digital assets in central Asia.
As silver makes new highs Amplify has launched the Amplify SILJ Covered Call ETF (SLJY), which aims to add 18% annual option income to a portfolio of junior silver miners based on the Nasdaq Junior Silver Miners™ Index, which is up 83% in the year to August 2025. Its top ten holdings are Coeur Mining, Hecla Mining, First Majestic Silver, Wheaton Precious Metals, Endeavour Silver Corp, SSR Mining, Boliden AB, OR Royalties Inc, Fortuna Mining Corp and Triple Flag Precious Metals Corp.
VanEck added two ETFs to its “TrueSector” range, which seek to fully replicate market cap weights in various sectors without worrying about regulatory or other diversification limits. This is achieved through a mix of direct stock holdings and holdings in other ETFs. VanEck Technology TruSector ETF (TRUT) has 16% in Nvidia, 14.5% in Microsoft and 13.8% in Apple as well as 43% in the XLK Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund, which itself also has heavy weights in these stocks. VanEck Consumer Discretionary TruSector ETF (TRUD) has 21% in Amazon and 71% in the XLY Consumer Discretionary Sector ETF, which also doubles up the Amazon exposure. Fees around 0.16% are below average for sector ETFs, but above the 0.08% fee charged by the XLK and XLY ETFs in which TRUT and TRUD invest.
Canada is catching up with the US on leveraged ETFs. LongPoint Asset Management launched Canada’s first triple levered index ETFS in May 2025 and GlobalX followed suit in August with both long and short triple levered ETFS on the TSX 60, NYSE Semiconductor Index and ICE US Treasury 20+ Year Bond Index.
LongPoint has just launched Canada’s first double leveraged inverse single stock ETFs: SavvyShort (-2X) NVDA ETF (TSX: NVDD) and SavvyShort (-2X) TSLA ETF (TSX: TSLD), which deliver double the inverse daily performance of Nvidia and Tesla respectively. The management fee of 1.55% is high even for leveraged products, which tend to have higher costs.
Also in Canada, Mackenzie Investments launched a hedge fund strategy: Mackenzie GQE US Alpha Extension ETF (MALX), which takes long and short positions based on the proven investment process of the Mackenzie Global Quantitative Equity (GQE) team based in Toronto. This product runs parallel in a mutual fund, which provides portfolio data not yet available for the ETF version. This is not a Canadian equity strategy – the top six holdings are US tech heavy: NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta and the Information Technology sector makes up 35.4% of the book. A management fee of 1.15% is high even for active ETFs but still below average for a hedge fund strategy.
The first Bitcoin ETFs were in Europe, followed by Canada, Hong Kong and the US, but now some emerging markets want their own locally listed digital currency ETF. Fonte Capital has just launched the first Bitcoin ETF in central Asia: Fonte Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (BETF), listed on the Astana International Exchange (AIX). It is a physically backed product traded in USD and custodied in cold wallets and secure vaults by US custodian BitGo Trust. Management fees of 0.75% are above average for a plain vanilla crypto ETF which may reflect the scarcity value.
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