Topic: How To Invest

Q: May I have your take on the VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF? Not sure how it’s doing, but I think it takes an interesting approach to picking stocks. Thank you.

Article Excerpt

A: VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF, $22.78, symbol BUZZ on New York (Units outstanding: 6.8 million; Market cap: $154.9 million; www.vaneck.com), holds 75 stocks, each with a market cap of $5 billion or more; each also generates social media attention. The fund tracks the BUZZ NextGen AI U.S. Sentiment Leaders Index. That index aims to use computer-based analytics to harness the collective thinking of millions of investors. The premise is that investor sentiment has proven to be an important factor in stock performance—and that sentiment can be tracked by monitoring millions of online interactions. At the same time, a consistent track record of online discussions, not short-term bursts, is required for a company’s inclusion in the index. The index tracks the performance of the 75 large-cap U.S. stocks showing the highest degree of what it sees as positive investor sentiment. Millions of investment-related messages, news articles, blog posts and more on websites like Reddit, Stocktwits, Twitter, and others are analyzed to identify these…