New Listings: A Fund Manager Has Built an AI Copy of Himself, and Kept the Right to Overrule It

Somewhere in a new prospectus sits the most honest sentence in asset management: the human will override the machine whenever the machine's logic turns out to be “circular” or “consensus-driven”. The machine, in this case, was trained to think like the human.

Longnook Uncommon Compounders ETF (LUNC, NYSE Arca)

The sub-adviser behind this fund describes its proprietary AI engine as a digital replication of the investment framework its founder refined over three decades, most of them spent running money at a very large institution. So far, so modern.

The prospectus then explains that the portfolio manager, who is that same founder, reviews every output and retains the authority to override the model when its reasoning is flawed. This is either rigorous governance or the first recorded case of a man arguing with his own reflection and winning.

The target is “Misclassified Compounders”: high-quality businesses that the market has priced as though they were ordinary. The marketing leans heavily on surfing, with the firm declaring that it does not paddle into flat oceans. At a 0.75% fee, investors will at least be paying for two opinions, even if they both belong to the same person.

Bitwise NEAR ETF (NRR, NYSE Arca)

A spot ETF on the NEAR token has cleared its regulatory hurdles, and the token reportedly jumped sharply on the news. It is a pattern the crypto market has now perfected: the product that lets people buy the asset causes people to buy the asset before the product exists.

The detail worth noticing is the secondary objective. The trust intends to stake all of its NEAR under normal conditions, which means the fund is designed to hold a thing and then quietly accumulate more of the same thing. Most ETFs track their underlying. This one is also farming it.

For the many investors who could not describe what NEAR Protocol does, the ETF offers a regulated, brokerage-friendly way to continue not knowing, for 0.75% a year.

Middlefield Alternative Global Fixed Income ETF Series (MAGF, Toronto Stock Exchange)

This fund may use long and short credit positions, derivatives and leverage to pursue relative-value opportunities anywhere across the global bond market. It charges a management fee plus a 10% performance fee above a Treasury-bill hurdle, subject to a high-water mark. That is hedge-fund plumbing in an ETF wrapper.

Its official risk rating is “Low to Medium”.

Listed alongside it is a sibling, the Middlefield Global Multi-Sector Fixed Income ETF Series (MGFI, Toronto Stock Exchange): no shorting, no performance fee, a lower management fee and a risk rating of simply “Low”. Between them, the two funds neatly show the difference a word like “Alternative” makes: roughly one notch of risk rating, and an entirely separate conversation about fees.

The Manulife quartet (MEQP, MBND, CORB and IDUV.U, Toronto Stock Exchange)

Manulife already offers ready-made Conservative, Balanced and Growth ETF portfolios. It has now added an All-Equity ETF Portfolio (MEQP) and an All-Fixed Income ETF Portfolio (MBND), alongside a new ETF series of its Corporate Bond Fund (CORB) and US-dollar units of its Smart International Dividend ETF (IDUV.U).

With an all-equity portfolio at one end and an all-bond portfolio at the other, investors can now combine the two to build the balanced portfolio that Manulife already sells them. It is the ETF equivalent of a restaurant putting the ingredients of its signature dish on the menu as separate items.