Fund News Advisors Can Use: Dave Portnoy Promotes New ETF That Follows Social Sentiment This week in fund news, VanEck s BUZZ goes live with Portnoy s backing; mutual fund-to-ETF conversions are coming; and Avantis hires more DFA execs.
VanEck launched a new exchange traded fund this week that invests in U.S. large-cap stocks with the highest degree of positive social sentiment and bullish investor perception. The new
VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF (BUZZ) tracks the BUZZ NextGen AI US Sentiment Leaders Index, which analyzes interactions across social media platforms, news articles, blog posts and other content from online sources to measure stock-specific sentiment.
How to Play Small Caps and the Value Factor Simultaneously March 3, 2021
The small cap rally doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Combine that with a value resurgence and you get a potent combination in the
“The stars are really lined up for small-caps as an asset class this year,” said Amy Zhang, a small-cap fund portfolio manager at Alger.
VBR seeks to track the performance of a benchmark index that measures the investment return of small-capitalization value stocks. The fund employs an indexing investment approach designed to track the performance of the CRSP US Small Cap Value Index, a broadly diversified index of value stocks of small U.S. companies.
February 25, 2021
Small-capitalization stocks and related ETFs have been outperforming their large cap counterparts by the widest margin in over two decades as investors shift out of coronavirus pandemic plays and look to a broad economic recovery.
The
iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), which tracks the widely observed Russell 2000 Index, increased 15.8% so far this year and jumped 42.1% over the past year. Meanwhile, the
iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEArca: IVV), which tracks the benchmark S&P 500 Index, gained 4.8% year-to-date and advanced 23.8% over the past year.
Through the end of last Friday, the Russell 2000 index of small companies climbed 15% and set 10 closing records in 2021, well above the S&P 500’s 4% gain, marking the widest such gap between the two indices through Feb. 19 since 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Investor demand for small-cap stocks is based on favorable exposure to the domestic economy.
But some caution that recent gains resulted in stretched valuations.
The best-performing stocks of 2021 are those belonging to smaller companies, according to The Wall Street Journal. In fact, small companies are outpacing large ones at the widest margin in more than 20 years.
Russell 2000 versus S&P 500
The Russell 2000 Index, a collection of 2000 small-cap stocks, is up 15% since the start of 2021 versus a 4% gain in the S&P 500 index, WSJ noted. Taking a step back, the small-cap index is beating the S&P 500 index by nearly 30 percentage points over the past six months.