Sprott Asset Management has launched the Sprott Gold Miners Exchange Traded Fund on the New York Stock Exchange.
The ETF was created in partnership with ALPS Advisors and Zacks Index Services.
The goal of the ETF is to provide exposure to the Sprott Zacks Gold Miners Index, which seeks to outperform a purely passive, market-capitalisation representation of gold stocks. The index methodology is factor-based and was developed by leveraging Sprott's long-time experience as a gold investor and Zacks' research capabilities.
"The market is ready for an innovative new way to gain exposure to gold stocks," says John Ciampaglia, chief operating officer of Sprott. "To our knowledge, the Sprott Gold Miners ETF is the first gold equities ETF to be based on a proprietary, factors-based index strategy.
"We have a strong distribution relationship in the US with ALPS and look forward to working closely with them to introduce the Sprott Gold Miners ETF to investors.”
The index aims to track the performance of large to mid-capitalisation publically traded gold companies that are listed on major US exchanges. The index uses a transparent, rules-based methodology that is designed to identify 25 gold stocks with the highest historical beta to the spot price of gold, with each stock's weighting in the index adjusted based on its quarterly revenue growth on a year-over-year basis and the quality of its balance sheet, as measured by long-term debt to equity.
The index is rebalanced on a quarterly basis to incorporate the latest financial data into the screening process. The index can also invest to a lesser degree in silver companies that meet the above criteria.
