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The latest batch of new ETP listings contains a space ETF, two interest rate products with names that sound like fitness apps, and a man who spent 35 years on Wall Street calling for higher markets every single year, who has now named his firm “Humble.”
There is a lot to unpack here.
The Three Humilis Funds
Let's start with Brian Belski. If you have spent any time watching financial television or reading sell-side research, you know Brian Belski. He is one of North America's most prominent market strategists. He has maintained, through bull markets, corrections, pandemics, and the general chaos of modern finance, that we are in a long-term secular bull cycle. His year-end S&P 500 targets have consistently ranked among the most optimistic tracked by Bloomberg. He believes, as a matter of principle, that equities go up.
He has named his new firm Humilis Investment Strategies. Humilis is the Latin word for humble/grounded.
Three funds have appeared in this batch under the Humilis banner: the Humilis Fundamental Opportunities ETF, the Humilis North American Tactical Equity Fund ETF, and the Humilis North America Dividend Growth ETF. Launching three products simultaneously is, by most definitions, the opposite of a low-key entrance. The tagline, for anyone who has not already looked it up, is that conviction and humility are not contradictions.
I am prepared to accept that as a philosophical position. I will note that launching three ETFs at once, after a 35-year career as one of the most recognisably bullish voices on the street, does push the definition of “humility” in directions that Cicero probably did not anticipate.
The products themselves look well-constructed. The partnership with LongPoint gives them Canadian market distribution and genuine operational infrastructure. But the brand positioning is, to put it charitably, doing a lot of work.
Tema Space Innovators ETF
Meanwhile, in a different product development meeting, someone has looked at the space industry and decided what it really needs is another ETF.
The Tema Space Innovators ETF filed with the SEC recently, entering a field that already includes ARKX from Cathie Wood's shop, VanEck's JEDI (which at least has the best ticker in the asset management industry), Procure's UFO, and Roundhill's planned offering. Space ETFs have been surging. SpaceX IPO speculation is, at the time of writing, at a pitch that can be heard from orbit. The sector is genuinely exciting. The potential is real. The launches are frequent and the satellite constellations are proliferating at a pace that would have seemed like science fiction a decade ago.
It is, in other words, an extremely crowded trade. The moment when everyone simultaneously decides to launch a themed ETF is also, historically, the moment to check whether the theme has already done its work.
Tema's other products suggest they know how to construct a thematic fund with more rigour than the average buzzword aggregator. They may be right on the trade. But the queue at the launchpad is getting long.
Vest 10-Year and 2-Year Interest Rate Hedge ETFs
Two products from Vest have also appeared in this batch: RYSE, which seeks to profit from rising 10-year interest rates, and HYKE, its shorter-duration companion targeting the 2-year end of the curve. The naming conventions deserve a brief acknowledgment. HYKE is a play on “hike” as in rate hikes. RYSE is a play on “rise.” This is either very clever or the result of a very long afternoon with a thesaurus. Possibly both.
The products themselves use interest rate swaptions to create asymmetric payoff profiles. Losses are capped (between 15% and 20% over a quarterly outcome period). Gains are also capped, but you knew that. The appeal is obvious. In a world where the direction of interest rates is, generously speaking, contested, a product that lets institutional and sophisticated investors hedge their rate exposure without simply going short duration bonds has a clear use case.
The argument for these products is not that you know rates are going up. It is that you are not entirely sure they are going down, and you would like something in the portfolio that behaves well if they do not.
That is a defensible position. It is also, by the standards of this batch, the most restrained ambition on display.
And then there is the Aptus Laddered Buffer ETF
Somewhere in this same notification file, nestled quietly between the conviction, the space race, and the rate hedges, is the Aptus Laddered Buffer ETF.
A laddered buffer strategy works the same way a laddered bond portfolio does. Rather than taking a single defined outcome period (say, a 15% buffer that resets once a year), a laddered approach holds exposure across multiple overlapping outcome periods. You diversify your timing risk. You spread your protection across the calendar. You accept that you will not get the most out of any single moment, in exchange for not being entirely at the mercy of when that moment arrives.
It is an extremely sensible thing to do. It is the financial equivalent of not keeping all your emergency supplies in one cupboard.
In a batch that includes three simultaneous launches from the house of humility, a space ETF entering an increasingly crowded orbital trajectory, and two rate products whose entire existence is premised on the possibility that central bankers will change their minds, the laddered buffer quietly gets on with the job.
I found it oddly reassuring. Someone, somewhere in the product development process, looked at the current state of markets and thought: what investors probably need is a way to protect themselves that does not depend on getting the timing exactly right.
They are not wrong.
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