Pass on this ETF

Article Excerpt

DIRECTION IBILLIONNAIRE ETF (no longer listed) aimed to replicate the largest stock holdings of a select group of 10 billionaires. As we forecast in November 2017 for our very first issue of Best ETFs for Canadian Investors, this ETF did indeed struggle to gain traction. That was despite its interesting idea of trying to mirror the investments of successful billionaire investors. In March 2018, just over three years since its launch, the promoter of this ETF decided to close the fund. It ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange on April 6, 2018. We believed that the basic concept of the ETF was flawed. Managers of the fund selected stocks by studying Form 13Fs. Those are publicly available documents that larger investment firms must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Form 13F discloses long positions, or stocks held with the intention of profiting if their prices go up. However, institutions can wait up to 45 days to file a Form 13F following a quarter’s end. For…