u/whatthewhat_007

What's the catch with this ETF? It sounds to good to be true.

"The Fund employs an options strategy that seeks to provide approximately twice the upside price return (the “Accelerated Return”) of the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (the “Underlying ETF” or the “Reference Asset”) up to an approximate cap (the “Cap”) while seeking to approximately track the downside price return of the Underlying ETF. This strategy seeks to provide enhanced returns for investors who hold Fund shares over the entire Outcome Period when the Underlying ETF has a positive return for the Outcome Period. The table below provides an indication of the Cap and other payoff values as of the previous day’s market close."

2x the upside (up to the cap), but only 1x the downside. The "cap" seems to be the catch. I'm having trouble determining what that cap actually is. For this quarter, the "starting cap" is ~8% and the "remaining cap" is ~1%. Does that mean your max return is ~9%?

I was looking over some of Vanguards mid/small cap funds and came across a somewhat confusing cap weighting between these two funds

VXF is labeled as a mid cap blend. It tracks the S&P completion index which is all stocks excluding the S&P 500. It's median market cap is $9.1 billion

VB is labeled as a small cap blend. It tracks the CRSP US small cap index which is "US companies that fall between the top 85% and 98% of investable equity market cap". It's median market cap is $10.8 billion

Why would a mid cap blend fund have a lower median market cap than a small cap blend fund? I know it's a small difference, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a mid cap fund to have a lower market cap than a small cap fund (and vice versa).

I was messing around with some rolling return data on the available funds in my 401(k) account today. Mainly comparing three different funds:

VIIIX (S&P 500 index)
JLGMX (Large Cap growth)
VEMPX (small/mid cap).

Large/mega caps have dominated the market for at least the last 10 years. However, this year is the first time since 2013 that VEMPX has outperformed both VIIIX and JLGMX through the first 4 months of the year. Anything could happen with them the rest of the year, but I thought it was an interesting data point to share. Any insight on what stocks or factors may be driving the relative outperformance of the small/mid caps thus far this year?

Anyone familiar with this ETF? How should it ideally be implemented into a long-term portfolio? It's only been available since 9/2024, but it's had nearly identical returns compared to SSO since then. Could it serve as a SSO alternative, but possibly with less volatility decay?

MTUM ending value is greater than total contributions, but still shows a negative cumulative return and negative CAGR. What am I not understanding?