The ETF Graveyard

four days a year. Yeah, Psycho totally plans you're Halloween costume or your kids more maybe Yeah. My oldest is going to be the Grim Reaper, which a little dark, but that's what he wants to be, and my youngest is Black Adam the New Rock movie. Um My guy is still a little undecided. We've got this default costume that he turns to every year, which is an old milk carton. He like gets inside of it, it's amazing.

It's like made of foam or something. So we'll see if he's a milk carton or if he comes up with something new. But by the way. Can I just tell a story. My son went to his Halloween dance and the school is is a sixth through eighth grade dance, and some kid walked out dressed as Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, and I'm like, whose parents are letting them

watch that? And so the parents are immediately one of the parents was like, um, the kid was like, oh my god, nobody knew who I was except for one other kid, and he's like, well, what are the parents was like, that's more of a reference for our generation. Anyway, that was an unusual costume for a middle schoolween dance. Good moving away, Yeah, creepy and and book. I think if I see that kid at that dance, I go

home immediately. Okay, So to walk us through the graveyard insert scary music here, we've got Katie Grenfield, who's uh E t F reporter with Bloomberg News, Athanasios Seraphagus and Bloomberg Intelligence, where he's an E t F analyst with Eric and Todd rosen Bluth who's now with Vitafy and looking forward to having him back on the program, this time on trillions. E t F Graveyard, Todd, Athanasios, Katie welcome back to trillions. Thank you for having me. Glad

to be bad, excited to be here. Okay, Athanasios, I want to start with you. You've got some numbers for us to tell us. Put this all in perspective. How how bad is this year's graveyard? Uh, it's it's not that bad, but I think we have to look at where we're coming from. So normally, in a normal year, it's always been about two and a half to one, meaning there's about two and a half new launches for every clothe Sure, that's like the healthy chure and ratio

for the industry. It got pretty crazy after COVID, like UM a couple of so we reached as highest almost seven. So there were seven new e T s coming out for every closure. That's the HIGHESTT far back as I've ever seen. That's the highest reading that we've seen industry. And I think there's a couple of things feeding into it.

One was there was a new rule that was passed that just made it a lot easier to launch ets for the industry, and then you know the market going up, that was a big fueler into all these UH launches coming out. And then the third thing was retail. You know, after COVID, all the retail investors started jumping into the market, all these thematic launches that were coming out. We're really

tailored towards this this audience. But now what's happening is the closure number is starting to pick up, so that seven to one ratio is starting to come back down the earth a little bit. It's still really high by historical standards. I think now it's about four to one, but it's coming down quite a bit from we were before. But what I think is really interesting is I think there's about seven t s that have come to the market.

Since that is a lot of that's like a third of the industry or so that's only coming pretty recently. A lot of those are down, meaning you know, if you launched in one or even this year, you're down out performance. That's pretty rare because the market has been so good for so long. But a lot of these ets have just enjoyed the bowl market. So even if you don't have money coming in, your assets were going up.

Now you're sort of faced with this new thing that I think issuers haven't been faced with the while, is that performance is down. So a lot of them are facing this really significant like performance headwind that I think is going to force a lot of closures in the

in the future. I'm not trying to be mr you know, Grim Reaper here, but I think there's gonna be a lot of ets that are gonna face, uh, some pretty difficult conversations with clients, and I don't know a lot of them are gonna be able to stay around for as long as we like, Todd, what happens after that conversation with the clients? What what is a liquidation process of an e t F look like? Well, first, let me level said ets are closing because of lack of demand.

So while I hear what ath Nacios is saying and it's a tough conversation, there aren't that many of these tough conversations that are happening if if there were enough clients and that the e t F would survive even if the fund is performing badly. So this is more of an annoyance to an investor then, and to the handful of investors that are that are in my opinion, But what happens is the asset manager will choose to will liquidate the fund, which means they will sell all

of the holdings that they have within the portfolio. If they're tracking the index, and that's easier if it's one way. If they're actively managed, then they probably have been paring down their exposure heading in to the closure. They're gonna sell meat to settle the other obligations that they have, and then they're going to return the money back to shareholders.

So if you've heard that your fund is closing, the best thing for you to probably do is sell on your own terms instead of waiting to the last trading day and then getting what are likely to be sent on the dollar. I agree with you. I think closure liquidation risk is something to think about. But it's not it's it's not like you could lose your principle. I think it's an important point. It's annoying is probably the perfect word. Um. I think someone compared to a paper cut.

It's not like you're getting your arm chopped off. But now, okay, let's um, let's get into things here. So I ran the numbers on this year's dead ETFs. I have nearly one hundred. Okay, So even though as Athodosia said, the ratio has come down a little favoring the launches. There's still almost a hundred ETF that have decided they can't do it, and so, uh, just some quick numbers on these. The average fee of it of these are sixty basis points, a little expensive side, and a lot of them are

not that old. A lot of like ones have launched in the past couple of years or closing, they're not. It's not like a lot that are over five years old. So a lot of young ones here. I think the average lifespan of a dead et F overall is about three three years, UM. So anyway, just some cool points on that. Now, we're going to have each of the guests on the show point out a couple. They took a stroll around the graveyard and they're going to point out a couple that intrigued them and they would like

to talk about. And first up is Katie Gretfeld. Yeah, Katie, take us to your headstone. What's the first headstone you found. I'm gonna start with one that's pretty emblematic of what Eric was just talking about, and that is V pop. It's the simplify volt pop culture disruption e t F. And like Eric was saying, this is pretty young. It was launched December, closed down in June of this year. This called my eye because, um, what is a pop

culture disruption portfolio? It seems like this was mostly entertainment stocks. I see Spotify in here. I also see some social media names also tesla Um interesting. But it also caught my eye because we did have a k pop et F launched this year. It hasn't done spectactulally well. That k pop ETF is only taken in about two million. But when this e t F left us v Pop it had less than a million dollars in assets. As

you can guess, without portfolio was doing pretty pitifully. Had less than a million dollars in assets, down like fifty six percent year to date. I think last year it felt something like ten percent. So it was definitely uh riding the boom that we saw in and sort of sort of these high flying names and just unfortunately lost launched it the worst time. So that's an e t F that we said goodbye to this year. Yeah, this is an interesting one too. I almost picked this one

to Katie Um for the same reasons. I also think Simplify put this out. It's also interesting to watch these issuers like simplified to me. There their brand now to me is of a hedge fund type company that does ETFs. This is a thematic et F almost seems like something like until or Defiance would do. And I think sometimes once you get branded and thought of as a company, it's sometimes tough to go outside of that. But maybe it's good. Maybe they're meant to be that company and

not work on themes. But that's another observation from that is sometimes people go out of there u sort of wheelhouse reputation and it a lot of times doesn't work. Janics did a lot of these the ets back in the day, and a lot of them clothes as well. Yeah, I mean simplifies p fix, you know, the simplifying interest

rate hedge GTF. That's an example of a product I think that came ra out around the same period of time in the last couple of years, and it's it's typical of what I think of and what the industry probably now thinks of, which simplify as opposed to thematic ets. It definitely doesn't fit their traditional lineup. But just some advice, don't put pop in the name cup culture k pop popcorn, just don't do any of that. Those are gonna those

are going to close. They're gonna close bold So you're you're calling we're gonna be talking about K pop this time next year. Yeah. I actually told Eric I haven't had the headline for already it when it's gonna be k flop, that's gonna that's brutal. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Um alright, Todd, So you you took a tour of the graveyard with Tombstone. Did you find that

that you want to start off with? Yeah, I'd focus on JP Morgan's US dividend d t F j d I V is the ticker UM and for a couple of reasons, this has been a record year for E t F inflows tied to dividend strategies. I think we I was on a prior podcast where we talked about that likely to happen, and now has happened. We're hearing from advisors that vertify that they're seeking out income alternatives

given a rising interest rate environment. J Dive closed with about sixty million in assets, But for perspective, JP Morgan has the JP Morgan Equity Premium Income jep J e p I, which is a covered call income strategies owned stocks as well as the UM aspect, and it's pulled in nine and a half billion dollars this year. It's now a thirteen billion dollar ETF. So you can clearly see JP Morgan focusing on the covered call versions of of equity income as opposed to the dividend strategy. Yeah,

this is uh it's surprises. JP Morgan has close to ETFs UM sixty million for Indie. They probably hang around with that money, but JP Morgan that's like half a half a half a cent um, So I get this. But it's this fund is beating the smp it's and it's very moderately priced. The expense ratio is pretty low. So UM, I guess they're just going to focus on some of the other things that are working better as take us to uh your scary little corner of the graveyard,

would you find? Sure? So the one I picked was f U T, which is the pro shares Managed Futures et F. You know, I think on the show last week, you guys looked at ets were working this year and there weren't that many, but one of the ones that we're working were managed futures, and it just shows that sometimes e t s closed right before like their moment,

and I kind of feel bad for these guys. They've had this thing around since like two thousand sixteen and then finally like they've been waiting every year for managed futures to work, and this is like the first year that's actually starting to work. But they've closed it in May. So there's like this huge like seller's remorse with this closure. I think it didn't have a lot of money. I think they're tough strategies to sell. They don't work in every environment, but this is one of the only years

that they're working. So that one really, uh stuck out to me because you have some competitors that have come in after them and been able to raise like some pretty significant assets. So it's kind of a bummer. Like you know, timing matters too. We've seen in the past sometimes these clothes before there before the numbers called, But that one really definitely stuck out to me. If they if they had stuck it out just a little bit longer, how much longer do you think they would have needed

to clock before you know, they could have been reser erected. Maybe, Yeah, I mean a couple more months they closed than May, so it's still earlier in the year. But I look like the managed future stuff really started to take off, like in the summer, so we're just talking about a couple of months that they probably closed it a little too soon. That and they also closed along short equity e t F and ALTS, which is a combination hedge fund.

Alts are doing very well. They're finally having their moment. Why would you close it right before it's you know, um, we've seen this in the past oral I'm trying and I'm we're still trying to find the perfect metaphor for this. When an e t F closes and someone else launches it, we call that the Lazarus list because like resurrected, but like that, what do you call something that closed or died right before its number came up? Like pature. I guess somebody equated it to walking out of a movie

just before it got good or something. I don't know. There's if anybody who's listening knows the metaphor that's proper for this. We have a list and we're ready to go with it. We just need the right one and up. Normally, I don't lack metaphors. It's my strong spot, but I can't think of one. But anyway, um, I think that's a great one. And yeah, the ALPS category finally catching fire and they have three E T s that are not going to be around a uh you know benefit

from that. Okay, So Eric, you want to be including in this in this lap before we before we do a second lap of the graveyard. What do you find on lap one that stuck out to you? Oh? Okay, ready tags, this is the you even heard of this? This is the trend aggregation E s G TF Okay, So it holds a group of stocks. I think some of the stocks in here are like Netflix, Tesla, Navidia, okay whatever. One point one five cent is the fee.

I have to wonder like who wakes up or who is living in in like in a cave where they would think they could put something out that just holds equities and they don't have a brand name at all and they're going to charge that amount of money for it. Not to mention, E s G is so overcrowded. There is way too much supply for the demand. And when I talk demand, I don't mean black rocks, models or the surveys that say there is demand somewhere out there.

I'm talking about actual grassroots demand. So I think this fund is going to be is part of a wave of E s G closures that we're going to see. There's a couple in the graveyard this year. UM. I currently have a bet with Todd rosen Bluth, who's luckily going to be able to respond to this. I said, I basically, if not if nine T s G T is closed by the end of the year, he owes me another steak dinner. So far, I think we're at seven,

so he's probably gonna win this one. But it's still like I think some people might clean up the last few months of the year and I could make a run for it, but tags is one that stuck out to me, So I'm going to clarify. I'm going to make sure we get a couple of things on the record for this and hopefully it makes it into the cut. The way that we do the bet is it actually has to close before the end the year, and typically it is four to six weeks and an announcement for it.

So by the time people are listening to this, they might feel I might be already winning the bed for it. But I'm glad you found the one of seven e t F s that closed this year that you needed. Let's hope twelve more for your sake. Come out, Katie, take us on another lap of the of the graveyard, and would you find on this one? Okay, so I was gonna do J div as well, So Todd beat

me there. I will just say on J DIEV it's interesting that again it feels like it was the perfect moment for this e t F. It couldn't quite get there. Eric made the point that it was pretty low price, but it was still twelve basis points, and I mean Vanguard's v I G the dividend appreciation e t F is half that at six basis points. So I don't know. It's a well covered space. I'm going to break the rules on my second lap of the graveyard. As we discussed, this e t F that I'm going to name hasn't

actually liquidated yet. It's just been announced. We're talking about the Vanguard US Liquidity Factor e t F. They announced in late September that they were going to liquidate this fund. The ticker, of course is v F l q UH. It liquidates in November. The reason I want to talk about it, though, and I'm glad that I was first to the punch here, is because it's Vanguard's first U S E t F to be liquidated, which feels pretty monumental. Thank you for that. Wow. And it just never really

caught on. It was opened what seventeen sometime around then, umen it never really picked up it has. It had what like forty million dollars in assets when they announced this, which is for Vanguard E t F pretty puny, so it just never found its moment. I don't know, maybe it'll turn into one of these e t F s that closed prematurely but never got that buzz. I like

it because I had it. I had it on my list also, Katie, I was, I guess going to follow you and that it technically hasn't closed, but who cares. It's it says it's closing, and the graveyard gets filled up quickly. What's interesting is that they launched this e t F Vanguard at the same time that they launched a few other active factory tfs and those have caught on.

So you know, Vanguard US Value Factor v F v A has six fifty million value has been out of favor up until this year, but no one else has a liquidity e t F. I think it's a it's a harder term for people to get their arms around, as opposed to value and momentum and quality like the other more accepted factors that that other providers have. Alright, todd as long as you have a microphone, once you put your Halloween costumer on and give me your give

us your your second pick. So my second pick is h j p X, which is the I Shares currency heads jp X ni K four hundred. I have to admit I didn't even know this et F existed, So the factor's closing um is I don't I won't miss it. But what's interesting is this is not you know, the I Shas is not exiting the currency heads Japan market. They have a relatively popular one h e w J which is tied to the ms C I Index thirty

five million dollars. But I flagged this one because the the graveyard is littered with currency heads ETFs that closed too quickly, and this may be uh the last year hopefully that we see closures in this regard because currency hedging is working, so the pre existing one one that's gonna survive. H e w J is outperforming the unheaged version of Japan by over two thousand basis points. It's it's down three percent versus down, except no one cares.

I know you guys have covered this on e t F I Q as as well as I think perhaps on trillions. People are just not putting money in too currency hed gtfs. In fact, they're pulling them out of currency he heads gtfs, even though this is the time that it's working. So I guess goodbye or to to the e t F I didn't know existed, but really

should have gotten more money than it did. There's been a slew of currency hed gtfs closing because everybody lost their mind because so much money went to this tiny area and it blew up and everybody had to have a currency hedge. And then they started doing half currency hedge currency hedge this, that and the other, and they just went way too far. It was like one of

those frenzies. And I that's why I think the same thing will happen with e SG now that people realize, oh, it doesn't always outperform, I think there'll be a culling back of products because everybody is losing their mind a little bit with supply on that. So, um, I agree. I don't even know this existed. Um, it was just like think it. It just came and went, had no money even for ey shares. They couldn't sell it. So

good one, thank you, Ethanazias. What do you got, um trip t r y P which is this sonic shares like air hotels crews altogether? I don't know. We have to ask someone smarter than me, like smart than me, why when you saw all the revenge spending, all the travel like last year, why doesn't this thing go up when the airline's ever perform? Well, I don't know, like given everything that we saw last year, all the airport issues. Anyways, this product only survived like just over a year, which

I was pretty shocked. It was really short. I thought the timing was really good to take advantage of all the travel coming back. Um, and what was interesting about this one It only launched with a five dollar price handle. Many thet have only cost five dollars to buy it,

which is like the lowest I've ever seen. So they were going really heavy towards retail up and I think it also just signifies that maybe with some of the other closures in here too, that maybe this is sort of the end of like the retail buying stuff, that maybe they're sort of fatigued and a little bit of

tired of chasing somebody's names. But that one really stuck out to me and just how short lived it was for such a very interesting package trade together all the all the three main you know, travel things i'll i'll punched up together. I'm shocked, shocked. I was hoping trip would be like a psychedelic ETF. So maybe someone else will will take that ticker, And especially with the Y t R y P, it's like it's not your normal trip, it's gonna be a little different. It's a funky trip.

So I have hoped for that ticker. Someone should lock that down. Not that those ETFs have done so great, all right, Eric, you you dug through the graveyard, would you find on the second lap? Um? Yeah? So, speaking of the like the lifespan and tragically short lifespans, the Life Goal Vacation Investment e t F Sonny and the Life Goal Children Investment E t F child c HLD. These were like a pair and they were only five months old before they threw in the towel. And this

is an interesting concept. What this company was trying to do was to say, let's put the name of the thing you're trying to say for in the name, and we'll do asset allocation based on that. They's used to be called like conservative allocation, modern allocation, and aggressive allocation, like target date kind of they're like, well, let's put the thing you're actually doing, so you're saying for vacation

by this um. It just flopped. And part of the reason for that, and I think this is e t F that go across asset classes and try to do that work for you, they just never catch on that much. And I think part of the reason is that advisors are such a big part of the e t F world and they want to be that. So people will either use a target date fund in the four when K plan so they don't need it, or they'll use an advisor who's going to do at asset allocation for

them and talk them through these life goals. But it was an interesting experiment to try to, uh, you know, rethink how an e t F could be marketed and but yeah, tragically, short life you know, it's interesting. You know those are to the younger ones I had flagged. One of mine is I think the oldest on the list, which was the pro share short or oil and gas, which goes back to two thousand eight, which I'm pretty sure that was the oldest d t F on this

year's list. What do you make of that one? Eric, The ticker was d d G. Were just hold on, are you get to actually do homework on this and you have to just answer off the cuff. Well, I'm I'm trying to give an educated answer here. Okay, Uh, look d d G down fifty since coming out. But look, if you're short oil and gas, that was a good trade for a while. But yeah, nobody cared. Interesting that

something could be open that long with just no interest. Um, I think they just got I have to look, are there other leveraged oil et F that just sort of there were products that closed when we had the oils, but you know initial oil spike in you know, the if you were a short oil the last couple of years, you've Yeah, not a good time to be short. I will say, you know this one, it's almost sadder when they live a long life and they're just completely ignored.

It's like um kafka or something where you know, like no friends, was in the retirement home, you didn't come visit me. It's like it's really sad. Okay, Katie. As we do this last round, I've got some other questions I want to ask. Um, So before we get your your final et, F what was your what's been your best Halloween costume ever? You know, I'm just a cat every single year, the same cat or different ones, usually the same cat because I have these specific heels that

work with the costume. Um, So that's not exciting. Don't change it for a Kata was a cowgirl like in middle school. That was my go to these This isn't a good answer. I appreciate Listen, anybody who follows you on Twitter that is just so on brand though, Like yeah, and going right back to the costume year after year is interesting and you know brand cohesion and consistency is

super important to that point, Eric, So thank you. Yeah, like the simplify situation we just went over, you don't want to be you don't want to go too crazy away from the Katie thing. I don't want to get liquid. What's your what was your last, Uh, your last, this is a good one. This is a double header. Um. So there were two Spack E t F s that

were liquidated. You have the Defiance next gen spack derived E t F and then the Morgan Creek Exos spack originated E t F. Both of them we said goodbye to them over the summer, which is really just a sign of the times SPACs were hot. Then they were extremely not hot, and um they died. So, Eric, do you expect more of these more closures of Spack E t F s. Um, there's only like a couple left. Um. And the one that the one that was the big one was spc X. That's the I forget who put

that out? That one has thirty million only Yeah. Possibly, Um, SPACs were just just the tiny little window of time they sort of. I also think the f p X is the I p o E t F, and I believe that now incorporates back. So my guess is that SPACs will just sort of be part of the I p o E t F s that that are pretty legitimate. I think that's what will probably find going forward, So they'll be part of the E t F world. But I don't think spac specific e t s have a

bright future. The thing I liked about the spack ETFs was that spac rhymes with a lot of things or sounds similar to a lot of other words, such as spack attack, spack splat. If you're in the business of making charts, it was something to look forward to. Okay, Todd, I want to ask you a personal question, which is what is the candy that when you were a kid you got it, and then you were like, man, I don't want this, and and then you couldn't get rid

of it. Oh, I thought you're gonna tell me which one? Did? I like that? And then nobody else? That was the obvious question. So I want to ask the obvious questions. What was the thing that you got saddled with that you didn't want? I I mean, we just get Starbrusts and you have your favorite flavors behind it. So I don't like the I think there's a cherry one, like a darker red one. Of my memory is correct on it. Yeah, I don't like that. I like the I like the

lemon and the and the orange ones. Not a little while since I think I've had a Starburst. But you'd you'd have it, and then you'd unwrap it the first time, and then once you bite into a candy that you then noticed you had a dozen of those. There is a graveyard of pink or of orange and yellow starbursts in my car. I keep a packet, like a big bag of starbursts in my car so I can eat them when I drive. I hate those flavors, so then we should pair up and ride someplace. Katie Gradfield just

just eats starburst while driving. That's a little weird. Yeah, the well specifically red and pink starbursts, and then I just when I get I sort through all of them and then I'm left with orange and yellow and that's when I throw out the bag. So you kind of wish that they just made like a whole block of like pink ones and then you could just buy the pink starbursts. You know. It frustrates my husband's and he's said that, like, why don't we just specifically order you

this type? But I like the hunt, you know, Okay, speaking of the hunt, Todd back to you, what's your what's your last pick? Yeah? I like this. When this came out, I thought this is a funny TF that never caught on, but l O p X the direction and low price stock etf UM. This came out during when memes and and low price stocks or all the rage not for the right investment reasons, for the wrong ones,

but people were piling into it. Uh. This was gonna own companies or did own companies that were priced between two and five dollars. You know, typically companies don't come out between two and five dollars. But what I liked it is it reminds me of either the movie Better Off Dead, where the kid kept yelling I want my two dollars constantly in dove on top of a car chasing after John Cusack. Let's be able to get that. Or you can think of it as two buck chuck,

which I'm sure some of us drank in college. Uh, when that's all you could afford to drink. Better Off Dead UM. By the way, Todd is one of the more underrated eighties movies. UM. And this is a problem we have on E T F I Q with Matt Miller and myself. We actually throw out really high level references like Caddy Shack or Fletch or something like that. And Katie has a lot of work to do. So I would add Better Off Dead to Katie's list of movies. It's that she'll just love. I mean, there's these are

great movies. It's pretty wild because after every reference, it feels like that both of you look at me expectantly and it's like, I don't I'm not gonna if I didn't get the last three, I'm not going to get this one. But you keep trying, and I like that. I know. Yeah, Matt and I are exactly the same age, so we had the same childhood pretty much, I think.

But anyway, um, that's a good one, Todd. I think that the two dollar one was there was a lot of ets that were sort of born out of the pandemic, whether it was the memes thought craze, or it was the hotels and airlines, and you know, a bunch of them didn't make it. You know, the E T F world is such a lot of opportunism, and like you said, with currency hedge, people just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and some stuff just doesn't make it.

But yeah, this one, I remember tweeting about it when the filing came and I could tell the reaction Wasn't that great. Okay, Athanasios, here's my question for you, which is I asked Katie best costume she's ever been? What's the best costume you've ever seen? Uh? Well, maybe because I love this movie a lot. But I saw couple dressed up as like John Travolta and Ferman like doing the dancing scene from Pulp Fiction because I love that movie.

I love that scene. Yeah, and they like and they were even like doing the twist on it was at this Halloween party and I thought they pulled it off

really nicely. That's a good one, all right. Your last pick um, This one is ct Are You, which is from The Untouchable Kathy would the art transparency et F and just show you how tough it is even sometimes Kathy Wood has to close E T. S. And I think Eric probably like this one because it might fall on the E. S. G bucket maybe, And so it just shows if she can't pull off the su you know, story and selling it and her whole business is built on transparency and all that, and they're even having a

difficult time selling it. So that one I felt was really really interesting. Uh when when they shut that one down, it really didn't live that long. I think this was one of the shortest ones we've seen, right. Launched in December, closed in July, seven months or so, so really really short life. Uh, but it's just more interesting that it came from our really any product shoes throwing out There was was being pretty okay on the asset gathering side,

so that one definitely stuck out. You gotta be transparent about your closings too, right, So it goes two ways. I actually thought this might be a good shot at making E s G like more hot saucy and where you have a cat, because only had a hundred holdings equal weighted, so that Vault was going to be jacked up. So it was like transparency or governance. The g mostly on steroids, and it could be used a complement to Vanguard, But I didn't work, so I am looking for that.

I think we'll have more hot sauce E s G coming out down the road, and I think that has more of a home than the one that tries to take over your core. All right, Eric, here's my question for you. How do you decide which candy you're going to give out every year? Oh? Good question. Um, I just basically go to Walmart or Target, and uh, the bag that's right there, and then I just picked from this year. It would totally be the low cost you do you do the low cost eats? Yeah, that's exactly

who you would what you would do? You do the I mean I don't. I don't. I don't sketch out like, I don't make a blueprint and come up with the battle plan. I just go to the store whenever it's there, I grab a couple of bags. Looking. We're in Philly, like and where we live, we don't get a ton of trick or treaters and we're out. So what we do is we put the candy in a bowl and just you know, put take one and we put it out there and the kids just come and get it

because we're out with the kids trick or treating. But I will say the one that I got this year, the candy that I loaded up on, which I think rules, is cookies and cream Hershey things. It's so good. It's like a little vanilla cookies and cream. But um, it's just such a you're keep those white chocolate You're gonna keep those, yeah, and kit Cat. We always get those because my older son likes it, and then we get nothing peanut because my younger son has a peanut allergy,

so the snickers and all stuff we can't have. Eric, your final pick from the graveyard. Yeah, this is boring but interesting for an analyst because it's shows how tough the et F market is. I got the Nationwide Risk based US equity e t f R BUS now Nationwide closed another one. And this is a big insurance company, right, and I look, they have a hundred thirty billion in assets, right. They clearly could have put some money in this. I

don't know why they did not. Why would they all meet and the manager gets together with this company says, yeah, let's launch these ETFs because at the very least we can put our own nationwide money in there. Why wouldn't they plan that at a time they clearly put about Obviously the marketplace didn't care because it's so brutal, and the own people didn't care. Why And I don't know what's going on there. Delta Shares are the same thing.

Delta Shares is another big insurance company, Transamerica. They have eighty eight billion. So I think this speaks it's two things. If you're one of these big legacy managers, and you're not going to come out and be either really cheap or really shiny. You would better bring your own assets. And I'd always say, have a meeting beforehand where everybody signs off that, yeah, we're gonna put a billion dollars

into this. Otherwise it's going to be embarrassing. And so I think these speak to the terror done nature of the market when you've got giant, behemoth insurance companies that can't get anything going in these things? Is that two dour of a note to end on? I fell when he said nationwide stop. It's true insurance companies are this isn't that the greatest note to end on? Um? So okay, my mine was boring. Let's see if you can spice

it up. We haven't asked you to do any joll give us mine what I had A couple that UM that I that I had UM. You remarked for this moment fallen nives et FU with the ticker they couldn't spell knife, so they did in I FE. I thought that was great, like perfect Halloween, Uh shout out for for the fallen knives et F. Yeah, and people must have gotten bloody hands because I mean, I don't even know what was in that thing. You know, it's weird. I do not see the holdings, Todd, do you remember

what was in this? It was just stocks that were going down but maybe had good valuations, like yeah, traps basically, or you know, trying to catch things that might bounce off it. I don't remember the exact criteria, but yeah, again, not many people got hurt in this one. Otherwise it

would have it would have survived. To try to attract people with something called a falling knife is they might want to call it like, I don't catch it, you know, things that could bounce, not like hey catch this falling knife Like that just seems like a like you're gonna

get hurt. But I don't know if so. Here was the other one, And here was another one that I that I had flagged, which was I think it was the best ticker on the list, shout up for eric here deep uh Diva, which was the A g F I Q hedge Dividend income E t F. But I feel like that ticker. Somebody's gonna have to come up with something good for Diva. Wait, you're calling Erica diva? Is that what I heard I'm glad you've got it way worse. It's fine. That's a that's that was good.

There was there was one other one that I liked, which was the bud X the Cannabis Growth e t F. We hadn't talked about cannabis in here. I thought that was a good one. That's the one I converted, like from a mutual fund to an et F and then still closed. I think, yes, that's a good point. Yeah, that was they couldn't get anything going on the mutual fund side. And then I guess not here either. But when you pass the bud and you can't and you still can't get any takers, it's you know, that's time

time to time to put the roach down. It was a crowded space when this kid thing came in. And I don't know, but X reminds me of like it just seems like something that if a movie wanted to not pay Budweiser, they would have butt X as the product in the in the movie because it's like not a real like the McDowell's version. Yeah, like McDowell's Yeah, butt x um. Who has a Halloween question for Joel

about candy or costumes? So Joel, what candy are you going to steal first from your child's bag when they give it to you to hold while they go to the next house. It's a great it's a great question. I don't do it the night of. I wait until like the next day, following week two weeks, and then I start to sort of like squirrel them away. But the almond Joy category big fan of the coconut, so the coconut stuff will slowly disappear. I'm guessing your son is okay with that, Like coconut is not like a

big hit with kids. They've got so much candy they didn't even notice. Yeah, I know. I dip in that bag for a long time because we have our candy that wasn't taken and his, and so I call it. I call it. My wife makes fun of me cleansing the palette. I just popped something one of the hallow and candy after dinner, and I just my mouth feels better. Good questions, good answers, good costumes, good candy. Thanks for joining us, Todd, Athanacios, and Katie, thank you. Thanks for

having me on Happy Halloween, everybody. Thanks for listening to trillions. Until next time, you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webber Show. He's at Eric Fultuness. This episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson Bye