https://etfdb.com/nasdaq-portfolio-...launches-firms-first-leveraged-thematic-etfs/ ========= On Friday, ProShares, a premier ETF provider, launched its first leveraged thematic investing ETFs. ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Cybersecurity (UCYB) seeks investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to two times the daily performance of the Nasdaq CTA Cybersecurity Index. ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Cloud Computing (SKYU) seeks investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to two times the daily performance of the ISE CTA Cloud Computing Index. UCYB’s index provides access to companies classified as “cybersecurity” by the Consumer Technology Association (“CTA”)—companies focused primarily on the building, implementation, and management of technologies to protect networks, computers, and mobile devices from cyber threats. SKYU’s index provides access to companies classified as “cloud computing” by the CTA—firms providing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (servers, storage, and networks), Platform-as-a-Service (systems for the creation of online software), and Software-as-a-Service (software applications delivered over the internet) to their customers and end-users. Nasdaq manages both indexes. ProShares is a leader in thematic investing, with eight ETFs in its lineup. UCYB and SKYU build on the firm’s success in this space by adding new leveraged opportunities to the company’s strategic lineup of retail disruption, infrastructure, pet care, and transformational changes ETFs. For more information, visit https://www.proshares.com/funds/. =========
Looking at the prospectus and the index it follows, I don't think it will be very attractive to investors. Amazon AWS is the big dog in cloud computing, but the index has hardly any exposure to it. The index caps weighting to 4.5%, which is arbitrary. Given how little transparency there is in "cloud" businesses today, I don't expect there to be an index that can capture just the cloud parts of companies.
This is true with quite a lot of thematic indexes and ETFs, say environmental, crypto, innovation, etc. Yet, similar classification may be done by investment firms who classify their holdings internally. While there are already ETFs for every clearly defined category, so new ETFs are trying to come up with new ideas or serve niche industries. ARKK (innovation ETF) is currently one of the top ETFs with investments pouring in by the $billions. I also have it.
I kind of hinted at in in my final sentence, but I think these investment companies won't be able to come up with an index that is attractive, because the data isn't out there. For example, a Cloud ETF that tracks the revenue(or profit, or whatever else is broken out in the 10-Qs) of those companies would be much more desirable. Something that would rank shares of Alphabet by their cloud revenue, for instance, rather than than their ad business. Alphabet only recently began breaking out their GCP business from the rest of the revenue, so such an index would not have been possible up to now. I get that they have to come up with something that isn't already there on the market. But, making an index which is unlikely to beat the plain cap-weighted ones doesn't make sense. It would be like ranking these companies based on how many customers they had, or how many countries they do business in. Yeah, it's different, but no, I don't want to long that.
%% SKYU looks pretty good on a one week candle chart. IF they get the volume up /may turn out fine. NOT likely that one ever gets the volume of UPRO...................................................................................................................