USA
Pacer lists industrial, data and retail REIT ETFs
Pennsylvania-based Pacer Financial is rolling out three new real estate ETFs as part of a planned family of sectoral REIT ETFs. They are:
- Pacer Benchmark Industrial Real Estate SCTR ETF (INDS)
- Pacer Benchmark Data & Infrastructure Real Estate SCTR ETF (SRVR)
- Pacer Benchmark Retail Real Estate SCTR ETF (RTL)
Each of the three funds is fairly self-explanatory, tracking the sector of the US property market advertised on the tin.
INDS tracks industrial sector REITs, which includes self-storage companies, the prospectus says.
SRVR tracks companies in data and infrastructure. The prospectus indicates that 45% of the fund’s weight will come from three companies: American Tower, Crown Castle International, and Equinix.
RTL will track companies in the retail real estate sector. These include Simon Property Group, Realty Income and GGP Inc.
The prospectus indicates that there are several more REIT ETFs planned, including office space, hospital, residential and hotel ETFs.
Analysis – a retail REIT ETF has been tried already
At present, there are no sector-specific REIT ETFs in the US - or at least no family of them. iShares tried its hand at listing a retail REIT ETF in 2007 (interestingly, under the exact same ticker RTL) although it liquidated the fund for failing to gather assets. The reason for the failure seems intuitive: many feel that retail REITs are on the way out in an era of Amazon. Maybe this opinion is wrong, but the challenge for Pacer’s RTL will be to succeed where iShares failed.
High volatility ETF from Salt
New York-based fintech and ETF newcomer Salt Financial is listing an equally weighted high volatility ETF. The Salt truBeta High Exposure ETF (SLT) will track an in-house index made up of 100 large cap companies chosen for “highest forecasted systematic risk relative to the market,” the prospectus says.
SLT starts with the 1,000 largest US companies and kicks out the 500 stocks with the lowest liquidity. The 500 remaining stocks are screened by Salt to forecast their beta for the upcoming quarter.
The 100 stocks with the highest beta are chosen and equally weighted. SLT puts a 30% cap on the number of stocks from a single sector.
London
JP Morgan widens out fixed income ETFs
Many have predicted that the next is frontier for ETFs is fixed income. And JP Morgan has taken such predictions seriously, with plans to list three new fixed income ETFs into London. They are:
- JPMorgan EUR Ultra-Short Income UCITS ETF (JEST, JSET)
- JPMorgan BetaBuilders UK Gilt 1-5 YR UCITS ETF (JG15)
- JPMorgan GBP Ultra-Short Income UCITS ETF (JGST)
JEST, like other supershort term debt funds, is designed to get around worries about rising interest rates and maintain low volatility of principal. To do this, the fund will invest in investment grade, Euro-denominated, short term fixed, variable and floating rate debt securities. It will complement the USD version of the fund JP Morgan already offers.
JG15 will invest in Pound Sterling-denominated fixed rate UK government bonds with a maturity of between 1-5 years.
JGST will do something similar to JEST but for pound sterling-denominated debts.
Lyxors lists long/short ETF
Following in the footsteps of Amundi, Lyxor is rolling out a long/short ETF that transplants the hedge fund strategy in an ETF format. The Scientific Beta Developed Long/Short UCITS ETF (MFLS) the performance of the difficultly named SBELS35N VAR Controlled EUR Total Return Index, which appears to be calculated by S&P, to judge by Societe Generale’s website.
Europe
Germany, London
In keeping with the ESG zeitgeist, Lyxor is listing two new ESG ETFs in Germany and London. They are:
- Lyxor MSCI EMU ESG Trend Leaders DR UCITS ETF (LESE, EESG)
- Lyxor MSCI USA ESG Trend Leaders DR UCITS ETF (LESU, WESG)
Both will apply an ESG screen to their markets (Europe and USA, respectively) and then weight companies by market capitalisation. Interestingly, the index factsheet for LESE says that the top weighted company will be french Total, the oil major.
Cross listings:
London:
Lyxor NASDAQ-100 UCITS ETF (NASD, NASL)
Switzerland:
Xtrackers Spain UCITS ETF (XESD, XESP)
