A glittering assembly is how ETF Express described the new ETF bond business launched this week. The team behind BondBloxx, Leland Clemons, Joanna Gallegos, Elya Schwartzman, Mark Miller and Brian O’Donnell are all BlackRock alumni and aim to disrupt the US fixed income ETF industry.
The new firm has filed for seven sector-specific funds indexed to the ICE BofA US High Yield Index focusing on: Industrials; Telecom media and technology; Healthcare; Financial; Energy; Consumer cyclicals and Consumer non-cyclicals.
This week saw a long-read profile of Jan van Eck, of his family firm VanEck, and the importance of taking the historical perspective in order to keep up with the times. Van Eck says: “In the investment world we are trying to predict the future – with the historian’s sensibility. The world is changing a lot the whole time, so you look for new opportunities and are conscious of the change.”
For van Eck, that welcoming change means a commitment to ESG and cryptos, the most discussed subjects of this year in the ETF world. “What led me to look at cryptocurrencies in 2016 was the concern at disruption,” he says. “I was concerned that bitcoin would disrupt gold as a store of value in people’s portfolios so I rolled my sleeves up and did as much research as I could and came to the conclusion that it would become part of investors’ store of value in their portfolios.”
VanEck is awaiting news of its futures-based ETF application in the US, expected at the end of October. ‘A US bitcoin ETF? Well, almost…’ writes Bailey McCann giving us an update on all things crypto in the US. McCann takes us through the ETFs now available in the US that are, as she puts it, “all-in on bitcoin” which gives investors “a pretty solid bitcoin tracker without taking on direct exposure to the underlying cryptocurrency – a move which the SEC seems to favour at least for now”.
Beverly Chandler, managing editor, ETF Express
Companies in this issue
BondBloxx
ETF Securities
Fidelity Investments
Simplify Asset Management
VanEck
WisdomTree