US ETF fund manager First Trust has secured a European passport for a US-listed managed futures ETF, according to industry reports. Called the First Trust Managed Futures Strategy Fund, it is an actively managed ETF which is currently listed on NYSE Arca.
No further detail is currently available on which European jurisdictions the fund will be marketed in. Currently there are no other actively managed futures funds of this type available in Europe in an ETF wrapper, so this could create an interesting sales opportunity for First Trust.
The First Trust Managed Futures Strategy Fund has over $150m in assets under management and a total expense ratio of 1.01%. It is able to take both long and short positions on the market so cannot be marketed under the EU’s UCITS directive.
Actively managed ETFs are becoming increasingly popular with investors on both sides of the Atlantic. Unlike the traditional index-tracking ETFs, these funds allow the fund manager to actively make changes to their portfolio, while the fund itself can still trade on an exchange in an ETF wrapper.
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First Trust boosts US range of target outcome ETFs
First Trust has also just launched three further ETFs on NYSE Arca, including the FT Vest Investment Grade & Target Income ETF, the FT Vest High Yield & Target Income ETF, and the FT Vest 20+ Year Treasury & Target Income ETF.
The funds are also actively managed and seek to provide income and capital appreciation potential by investing in treasury securities and making use of an options strategy to provide exposure to fixed income securities. Each fund’s options strategy consists of purchasing and writing (selling) exchange-traded call options, including Flexible Exchange options on their respective underlying ETFs.
The funds are the latest additions to First Trust’s lineup of what it calls Target Outcome ETFs, which has over $27 billion in total net assets, a 59% increase over one year, and 106 ETFs in total.
The funds are managed and sub-advised by Vest Financial using a “target outcome strategy” or pre-determined target investment outcome. Vest is the creator of Target Outcome Investments and manager of the longest running buffer strategy fund.
