USA
In 2012 the Supreme Court allowed giant corporations and billionaires to pour as much money as they wanted into American elections. The ruling vastly expanded the power of lobbyists and the ability of wealthy people to influence politics.
Now, unbelievable as it may seem, there is ETF designed to tap into this.
The Point Bridge GOP Stock Tracker ETF (MAGA) will buy companies whose employees and lobby groups "are highly supportive of Republican candidates for election to the United States Congress, the Vice Presidency, or the Presidency", the prospectus says.
To qualify, companies and employees must have given more than $25,000 to a Republican candidate in any of the two previous election cycles. The fund will then rank companies by how much they’ve forked over to Republicans compared to democrats. The more net dollars given to Republicans, the more heavily they’ll be weighted in the index.
Curiously, the fund has the ticker MAGA – short for Make American Great Again, the slogan of the Trump campaign.
MAGA is the first ETF with this kind of highly politicised indexing on market
Asia
Korea
Several new ETFs have been launched in Korea today.
Korea’s oldest ETF issuer ARIRANG ETF will be listing Korea’s first ESG ETF in the near future (278420). Korea’s ETF market, like other east Asian countries, tends to be dominated by derivatives. There is little English language material available on the new listing at the moment but I will provide an update when more comes in.
HN QV has listed two leveraged oil ETNs. 550043 will give -2x leveraged exposure to WTI crude oil futures, allowing investors with a strongly negative view of oil prices. 550042 by contrast offers 2x leveraged exposure to WTI crude, for investors with strongly positive views. Both funds track total return indexes.
On the plain vanilla front, Tiger ETF will be listing three new KOSPI trackers. One will track large cap KOSPI companies (277640), another will track mid caps (277650) and a final one will track the KOSPI as a whole. Up until now Tiger ETF has tracked in-house indexes.
Europe
Germany
Deutsche Bank has listed six new ETFs in its German homeland, each of which represents a major sector in the US economy. The ETFs are:
· db x-trackers MSCI USA Energy Index UCITS ETF (XUEN)
· db x-trackers MSCI USA Financials Index UCITS ETF (XUFN)
· db x-trackers MSCI USA Health Care Index UCITS ETF (XUHC)
· db x-trackers MSCI USA Information Technology Index UCITS ETF (XUTC)
· db x-trackers MSCI USA Consumer Discretionary Index UCITS ETF (XUCD)
· db x-trackers MSCI USA Consumer Staples Index UCITS ETF (XUCS)
Each ETF will track its index physically.