New ETF Listings: An AI Fund Just Died, and Every Grown-Up in the Industry Filled the Silence

Somewhere on the NYSE this week, an actively managed ETF that let artificial intelligence pick its stocks quietly ran out of runway. In the same batch, three of the industry’s most establishment names in asset management rolled out new funds. 

QRAFT AI-Enhanced US Large Cap ETF (QRFT, NYSE)

QRFT spent its life trying to prove that a machine learning model could pick better large-cap stocks than a human with a spreadsheet and a strong opinion. It is now being wound down, its creation units halted, its last trading day already behind it, its assets about to be distributed pro rata to whoever is still holding units.

There is a particular kind of irony in an AI product failing to survive in an industry currently building an entire investment thesis around the idea that AI will replace human judgement everywhere else. The machine could apparently optimise a portfolio. It could not optimise its own fee structure against investor patience. Two sibling QRAFT funds are closing alongside it, which suggests this was not a one-off stumble so much as a company-wide reckoning with what "AI-enhanced" actually buys you in practice.

Hotchkis & Wiley International Value ETF and Opportunities ETF (HWIV, HWO, NYSE)

Hotchkis & Wiley has spent decades building a reputation as the kind of deep-value shop that holds unloved stocks for years and does not apologise for it. Patience is the entire business model. Turnover is treated as a character flaw.

This week that same shop launched two new ETFs into a wrapper best known for intraday liquidity, algorithmic market makers, and products that can lose most of their value before lunch. Watching a firm built on multi-year conviction adopt the vehicle of the day trader is its own small piece of theatre. The strategy inside the wrapper has not changed. Only the packaging has, which is either a sign that value investing has finally made peace with modernity, or proof that no business model can resist the ETF wrapper forever.

First Trust Indxx Quality Precious Metals Miners ETF (PMTL, NYSE)

Gold has been sitting at all-time highs for a while now, which normally sends product teams reaching for the leverage dial. Instead, this one reached for a quality screen. Rather than simply buying every miner with exposure to the metal, the fund filters for profitability, balance sheet strength, and financial durability before letting a name in.

It is a strangely disciplined response to a boom. Miners have historically been the part of the gold trade most prone to blowing up their own balance sheets chasing expansion at the top of a cycle, so screening for quality at the exact moment everyone else is euphoric is either excellent timing or a very expensive way to find out that discipline and gold miners rarely coexist for long.

Capital Group Select ETFs (CAPN, CAPQ, CAPU, Toronto Stock Exchange)

New trio from Capital Group: CAPN for international developed equities, CAPQ for global developed equities, and CAPU for US equities. No leverage. No AI. No stock-picking algorithm to feed or fire. Just diversified, actively managed equity exposure from a firm that has spent close to a century managing money the unglamorous way.