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Is Innovator IBD 50 Fund (FFTY) a Hot ETF Right Now?

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Launched on 04/09/2015, the Innovator IBD 50 Fund (FFTY - Free Report) is a smart beta exchange traded fund offering broad exposure to the World ETFs category of the U.S. equity market.

What Are Smart Beta ETFs?

The ETF industry has long been dominated by products based on market cap weighted indexes, a strategy created to reflect the market or a particular market segment.

A good option for investors who believe in market efficiency, market cap weighted indexes offer a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way of replicating market returns.

However, some investors believe in the possibility of beating the market through exceptional stock selection, and choose a different type of fund that tracks non-cap weighted strategies: smart beta.

By attempting to pick stocks that have a better chance of risk-return performance, non-cap weighted indexes are based on certain fundamental characteristics, or a combination of such.

While this space offers a number of choices to investors, including simplest equal-weighting, fundamental weighting and volatility/momentum based weighting methodologies, not all these strategies have been able to deliver superior results.

Fund Sponsor & Index

FFTY is managed by Innovator, and this fund has amassed over $353.69 M, which makes it one of the larger ETFs in the World ETFs. This particular fund, before fees and expenses, seeks to match the performance of the N/A.

This ETF is active and does not track a benchmark.

Cost & Other Expenses

Investors should also pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio. Lower cost products will produce better results than those with a higher cost, assuming all other metrics remain the same.

Operating expenses on an annual basis are 0.80% for this ETF, which makes it on par with most peer products in the space.

The fund has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.17%.

Sector Exposure and Top Holdings

Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.

Looking at individual holdings, Daqo New Energy Corp (DQ - Free Report) accounts for about 3.60% of total assets, followed by Grubhub Inc and Abiomed Inc .

The top 10 holdings account for about 35.15% of total assets under management.

Performance and Risk

The fund's year-to-date return has added about 0.09%, and it's up approximately 26.75% in the last one year (as of 05/04/2018). FFTY has traded between $26.17 and $35.99 in the past 52-week period.

FFTY has a beta of 1.14 and standard deviation of 19.41% for the trailing three-year period, which makes the fund a high choice in the space. With about 50 holdings, it has more concentrated exposure than peers.

Bottom Line

To learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.


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