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It is technically possible for a product to appear in new listings data on the very day it ceases to exist. This batch contains two such products. We will get to them.
The Direxion Daily F Bull 2X ETF and Direxion Daily F Bear 1X ETF
Direxion launched leveraged and inverse products on Ford Motor Company some months back. Two instruments, neatly symmetrical: one for people who believed Ford was about to rise considerably, and one for people who believed the opposite. Between them they covered all convictions. Neither attracted sufficient assets to survive. Both were wound down on the same day they appear in these listings.
The complete lifecycle of these products, from launch to liquidation, fits inside a single year. They were tactical tools that found no takers. And yet here they are, duly filed, fully processed, and in the new listings data.
There is something both efficient and melancholy about it, like receiving a birthday card from someone who has already moved abroad.
The ONE+ONE Nasdaq-100 and Bitcoin ETF (OOQB) and ONE+ONE S&P 500 and Bitcoin ETF (OOSB)
The great debate of the current investment era is whether Bitcoin belongs in a serious portfolio alongside traditional equities. Volatility Shares has resolved this debate by structuring a product that answers: yes, all of it, at the same time, leveraged.
ONE+ONE delivers 100% equity index exposure and 100% Bitcoin exposure within a single wrapper, achieved through leverage. You are not diversifying. You are not hedging. You are, essentially, taking a position on the idea that everything goes up. The name is admirably honest. One plus one equals two. Two times the exposure. The math is transparent.
What happens when both legs of this go down simultaneously is left as an exercise for the reader.
The Direxion Daily BRKB Bear 1X ETF (BRKD)
Greg Abel recently took over as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, bringing to an end one of the longest and most celebrated runs in modern financial history. Warren Buffett, having compounded capital at a rate that still makes actuaries uncomfortable, stepped back and handed over a company sitting on nearly $400 billion in cash. The transition has been managed with characteristic Berkshire orderliness. The stock dipped modestly when the change was announced and has since continued to behave more or less like Berkshire Hathaway stock.
Someone has, in this context, filed for a daily inverse ETF on the class B shares.
There is nothing irrational about this. Inverse ETFs serve legitimate purposes. But there is something almost poetically pointed about the timing. The most famous long-term value compounder in American history enters its post-founder era, and a single-stock Bear product appears in the listings within months. Somewhere, a lawyer is drafting an S-1 on patience itself.
The Direxion Daily LMT Bear 1X ETF
Lockheed Martin's stock has risen sharply in recent months. Global instability is, as analysts have noted with remarkable enthusiasm, Lockheed's “ultimate tailwind.” The F-35 is being procured at an accelerated rate. The backlog is at a record high. Defence budgets globally are expanding at a pace not seen in decades.
Into this environment, someone has launched a Bear ETF.
To be fair, inverse single-stock products are tactical tools for hedging and short-term positioning. Nobody expects them to function as long-term investment theses. But there is something bracingly contrarian about packaging a bet against the world's largest defence contractor at precisely the moment when geopolitical chaos is functioning as an order-book accelerant. The product exists. It is available. It will find its users. I tip my hat.
The Quiet One at the Back
OVNI (ISIN: LU3215541056) is a BNP Paribas ETF tracking the Euro Short-Term Rate. It tracks the overnight reference rate published daily by the European Central Bank. It preserves capital. It yields something close to the current policy rate. It does not employ leverage. It does not take a view on whether Bitcoin should sit alongside your equity index. It does not bet against anybody.
I found it quietly reassuring, in the way a glass of water is reassuring after a long immersion in absinthe.
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