With 5 of their Top 6 trades for 2016 already stopped out, and their recent heavy losses from swing-trading Gold, one might question the demand for an ETF that tracks Goldman Sachs' hedge fund research tips, but, as Bloomberg reports, David Kostin's "Hedge Fund Trend Monitor" report - tracking the 50 companies that matter most to hedge funds - is about to be launched.
According to EDGAR filings, the new ETF will be called the Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund VIP ETF and as Bloomberg notes, would mark the first time a Wall Street bank uses its own research report as the basis for an ETF.
While this isn’t Goldman’s own investment calls per se, it does show them looking to leverage one of their greatest strengths in an ETF and differentiate itself from a crowded field of over 1,800 ETFs issued by more than 50 different companies.
If these ETFs gather assets, this could turn into a trend for big Wall Street banks, some of whom are new to the ETF market.
Of course, this being Goldman - the company which brought you the Made for Shorting Abacus CDO - the guaranteed way to make money with this ETF would be to short it:
Still prior performance is not necessarily indicative of future results (except it has been)...
Given the dismal performance, one can only imagine that creating this ETF enables Goldman Sachs' clients to offload huge blocks of their positions into a muppet-friendly investment vehicle that every Tom, Dick, and Day-Trader will scoop up.
For now the ETF has not been assigned a ticker symbol - may we suggest 'LOSE' or 'MUPT' or 'FUKT'?
It should be noted that Goldman’s ETF wouldn’t be the first to track hedge funds’ stock holdings. The are a few ETFs that already do this, the most popular being the $120 million Global X Guru Index ETF (GURU).
Finally, if you want to play along at home, here is the latest Goldman VIP list:
The Biggest Hedge Fund Hotels all in one outwardly projecting liquid investment vehicle.
What could possibly go wrong? Since the answer is everything, the trade here is so obvious we won't even lay it out.