Let me tell you about Xanadu Quantum Technologies. It's a photonic quantum computing company that went public via a SPAC, raised over $300 million, and is currently making about $4 million a year in revenue while losing around $70 million. Its stock has already been down more than 65% from its highs since listing.
I think most people would look at that chart and feel the excitement was perhaps sufficient.
Tradr disagrees. They've launched XNDX, a 2x daily leveraged ETF on Xanadu's stock. So if the underlying drops 55% in a session (which it has done before), you're doing that at twice the speed. The product is designed for short-term traders who understand daily rebalancing mechanics. Whether those traders have also formed a view on the addressable market for photonic quantum processors is, I suppose, their own business.
I'll give Tradr this much: there's a kind of poetic appropriateness to building a leveraged product on a company whose technology exploits quantum superposition. The position is simultaneously worth everything and nothing. It may collapse the moment you look at it. I can't think of a better analogy for owning 2x leveraged quantum stock.
Two ETFs launched on the same day using an AI scoring system to pick the best stocks. One covers the top 100 companies in the S&P 500. The other covers the top 300 globally. Both at once.
The underlying methodology is actually pretty interesting. 3AI is a UK firm that uses machine learning to assign each company an “Alpha Intelligence Score” based on business-cycle sensitivities and forward-looking signals. It's S&P Dow Jones Indices' first AI-enhanced index family, and the idea of using explainable ML for factor investing is a legitimate research area, not just buzzword soup.
But I'd be lying if I said the dual launch didn't make me smile. Someone ran the numbers, got approval, and shipped both. The World version exists because once you've built the US version, a global product at marginal cost doubles the addressable market. That's not a criticism, it's just how product development works, and anyone who's sat in those meetings knows exactly how that conversation went.
The fund names contain neither “Quantum” nor “Frontier,” which I found oddly refreshing. Whether that's principled restraint or a missed opportunity, I still haven't decided.
Strategy Inc., formerly known as MicroStrategy, holds over 700,000 bitcoin. That's about 3% of all bitcoin that will ever exist. The company has no dividends. Bitcoin has no yield. The whole thesis is a one-way directional bet: bitcoin goes up, everyone wins, the end.
Now 21Shares has launched STRC, which gives you access to Strategy's preferred stock, currently paying 11.25% a year in monthly cash distributions. It's being marketed as a bridge between crypto and traditional finance.
What I'd actually call it is: a way to collect steady monthly income from a company whose entire public identity is that steady monthly income is for people who don't understand the future. Michael Saylor has built one of the most audacious balance sheets in corporate history on the conviction that you should hold bitcoin, not earn yield. The preferred stock exists to fund more bitcoin purchases. STRC is, in effect, a structured way to take rent money from that conviction.
I find it genuinely satisfying. The preferred holders get their 11.25% every month while the bitcoin thesis plays out either way. If bitcoin goes to a million dollars, Strategy looks visionary and the preferred holders were simply conservative. If it all unravels, the preferred holders still had twelve months of distributions on the way down. It's the financial equivalent of charging a gold bug rent on the vault.
No leverage. No AI. No Bitcoin. No quantum anything. Just a sensible, diversified portfolio of US small-cap growth companies doing exactly what it says on the tin.
This ETF cannot be contextualised in respect of these others. But I am sure it will survive.