philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

New Virtual Reality ETF Hopes For Real Returns

...Wednesday’s launch of the Defiance Future Tech ETF (AUGR), whose ticker symbol plays into the product’s focus on augmented reality and virtual reality technologies.

The fund comes with an expense ratio of 0.65% and lists on the NYSE Arca.

Defiance was founded by Matt Bielski, and alum of ETF issuers like ProShares and BlackRock’s iShares. Most recently, he left Direxion to form Defiance. The firm is primarily focused on the technology space.

The AUGR fund tracks the rules-based, modified equal-weighted BlueStar Augmented and Virtual Reality Index comprised of companies whose products and services are predominantly tied to the development or commercialization of augmented or virtual reality technologies.

The components are selected based on publicly available regulatory filings. To be eligible for inclusion, they must have at least $150 million in market capitalization and meet minimum liquidity requirements.

According to the fund’s prospectus, those technologies include artificial intelligence; gaming systems; graphic processing units; image and touch display manufacturing; sensors used for touch, depth, or image perception; and software or applications dependent on augmented and virtual reality.

The AUGR fund’s top five holdings comprise Nintendo, Silicon Motion Technology, Lenovo Group, Corning and “Cash & Other.” The rest of the portfolio’s 59 holdings is laden with large-cap tech names— including leading players in the AR/VR space such as Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft, Samsung and Sony—and a decent slice of smaller, less-familiar companies.

Roughly 60% of the fund is U.S. companies, with foreign countries represented in the index including Japan, South Korea and France. The constituents include such big names as Nintendo, Disney, Sony and Snapchat, but also lesser-known names such as Dassault Systemes, Kopin and Battle Technologies, according to Bielski.

See the full story here: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/new-virtual-reality-etf-hopes-for-real-returns-40095.html

plus here: http://www.etf.com/sections/daily-etf-watch/virtual-reality-etf-debuts?nopaging=1