New Listings – We Now Have Two Funds Called DRAM, and One of Them Is Leveraged on the Other

Two different issuers have launched two different memory-chip ETFs and given them, with the serene confidence of people who have never met a trademark lawyer, almost exactly the same ticker.

RAM, which is two times leveraged on a fund called DRAM

Roundhill launched a memory ETF. It bundles Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Sandisk into a single wrapper and trades under the ticker DRAM, which is the kind of naming discipline I can respect. Memory chips are having a genuine moment, the AI build-out needs somewhere to put all that data, and a thematic fund is a perfectly reasonable way to express the view.

Roundhill has now decided that owning a basket of the most volatile component in the entire semiconductor supply chain was not, on its own, sufficiently thrilling. So now there is RAM, which delivers two times the daily move of DRAM. Read that sentence again. It is a leveraged ETF whose underlying is another ETF, and the whole edifice rests on a sector famous for boom-and-bust cycles so violent they have their own academic literature. The expense ratio is well north of one percent, which feels almost reasonable given the entertainment value.

DRAM, again, but this time it is European and spells itself DR4M

Across the Atlantic, Defiance has launched Europe's first memory UCITS ETF. Its ticker is also DRAM, except on the London Stock Exchange where it becomes DR4M, presumably because the good ticker was taken and a four is the next best thing to an A if you squint. It tracks a global memory index, holds broadly the same names, and arrives within days of its American near-namesake.

So we now have two funds called DRAM, from two issuers, on two continents, holding largely the same chips. The memory shortage, it turns out, does not extend to memory ETFs, merely the tickers to describe them.

XIGV, the Nasdaq-100 with the software surgically removed

Defiance also brought us a fund that tracks the largest Nasdaq-listed companies, and then deliberately excludes anything whose core business is software. The pitch is exposure to the hardware, semiconductors and infrastructure of technology without the application layer sitting on top.

I find this quietly fascinating. We spent two decades being told that software was eating the world. Someone has now built a product whose entire premise is that you would like the world back, please, with the software scraped off. It is the index equivalent of ordering a sandwich and asking them to hold the filling.

SMHC, a China semiconductor fund, arriving at an interesting moment

VanEck listed a fund tracking Chinese semiconductor companies. As a piece of index construction it is clean and sensible. As an act of timing it is a study in nerve, given that the entire global conversation about Chinese chips currently revolves around export controls, sanctions lists and which equipment is and is not allowed to cross which border on which day.

This is a fund that has decided geopolitics is someone else's problem. I admire the commitment.

FOLOW, PRINT and SLEEK, or how BNP Paribas spent the afternoon

BNP Paribas rolled out a clutch of active ETFs and gave them tickers that read like a creative agency's mood board. There is FOLOW for a multi-asset managed strategy. There is PRINT for an equity premium income product, which I assume refers to the income it hopes to print rather than any promise about your capital. And there is SLEEK for a global long/short equity fund, which is the kind of ticker that makes you sit up a little straighter.

I have no complaint about the funds themselves. Just to flag that somewhere in Paris, a very good meeting was held, and that the branding conversation must have been as enjoyable as the portfolio construction one. 

FAMEM and AMEI, the only funds that avoid the fun stuff

Amid the leverage and the shampoo tickers, two funds turned up that are constitutionally incapable of joining in. The Amana Developing World ETF and the Amana Equity Income ETF are sharia-compliant strategies from Saturna, a shop that has been running halal portfolios for decades under the supervision of an independent board of Islamic scholars who review the holdings every quarter.

The rulebook is the opposite of everything else in this batch. No interest-based banks. No alcohol, gambling or insurance. A strong aversion to leverage and debt-laden balance sheets. The equity income version even generates its yield the old-fashioned way, through dividend-paying companies, at the precise moment the rest of the industry is busy manufacturing income by selling options and calling it a premium. These are also ETF wrappers of strategies that have existed for years, which makes them the rare new listing with an actual track record attached.

There is something bracing about a fund whose risk discipline is a matter of doctrine rather than a marketing decision. Nobody named these to sound sleek. They were named after the principle they are built on, and then they got on with it.