A quick housekeeping note before we begin. There were, once again, several SpaceX products in this week's batch. An income fund here, a leveraged variant there, a “beyond Earth” entry that I assume annexes the asteroid belt. I am no longer going to write about them.
This is not a complaint about the products. It is fatigue. There are now so many ETPs wrapping a company that has only just launched that the novelty has worn clean off. Leveraged exposure to a privately held rocket firm was a delightful absurdity the first three times. It is now simply follow the leader. So, we move on, and we leave the SpaceX variants where they belong, in the background waiting for reality to catch up.
Here is what actually caught my eye.
SavvyLong 2X AMD and 2X Micron (Toronto Stock Exchange), riding the memory boom with a running start
Memory chips have been the trade of the cycle. Micron is up over 200% on the AI buildout, AMD has been carried along on the same wave, and these are real businesses selling real silicon into genuine demand. By any reasonable measure, the underlyings are already exciting enough to ruin a portfolio without assistance.
So naturally there are now 2X versions of both. The pitch is straightforward: if a chip stock can take your money with brutal efficiency on the way down, why not let it do so twice as fast?
The iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF (NYSE), which caps your upside on the most volatile asset available
This one is almost philosophical. The fund holds Bitcoin exposure and sells call options against it, harvesting the premium and distributing it as income, targeting a double-digit annual yield. The trade-off, spelled out plainly, is that when Bitcoin rips higher, you participate in only part of the move.
Pause on that. The entire reason most people own Bitcoin is the prospect of the violent upside. This product takes the single asset most associated with going to the moon and politely declines the journey in exchange for monthly cash flow. It is the financial equivalent of buying a sports car and capping it at the speed limit. There is a real and sensible audience for this. It is just a remarkable thing to do to Bitcoin.
NSDT and MSET (London Stock Exchange)
NSDT is the Amundi Nasdaq-100 Target Income UCITS ETF, and MSET is the Amundi Euro STOXX 50 Target Income UCITS ETF. Both are covered-call income products: they own an equity index and sell options against it to manufacture a distribution. Which means that, having just admired the Bitcoin fund for capping its upside in exchange for yield, we now have two more funds doing exactly the same thing to the Nasdaq-100 and the Euro STOXX 50. The income-harvesting trade is no longer a niche. It is a genre, and it has come for the blue chips. The only genuine mystery left is why a perfectly sensible pair of funds chose to arrive wearing a disguise so complete that no investor could identify them without a forensics team.
And quietly, in the same batch: VanEck Electrification, ticker PIKA (SIX Swiss Exchange)
Amid the leveraged chip bets and the yield-capped crypto, one product just wants to own the companies that build power grids. The VanEck Electrification and Power Infrastructure ETF invests in batteries, grid infrastructure, utilities, and the unglamorous machinery of keeping the lights on while data centres and electric vehicles devour ever more electricity. A look under the bonnet confirms it: the holdings include ABB, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Vertiv, Quanta Services and National Grid, sitting alongside a long bench of regulated utilities. No swaps, no leverage, no derivatives wrapping a thing that does not trade. Just transformers, switchgear, and demand you can actually measure. The PIKA product has been out for some time but is now available on the Swiss exchange.
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