A customer pulls her shopping cart past an information kiosk at a Walmart store in Levittown, N.Y. Kiosks and signs throughout the store keep customers informed that they are shopping in an artificial-intelligence-driven environment.Exchange-traded funds have evolved significantly from investments that track broad indexes to a plethora of theme-based plays such as clean energy, currency hedging and social media.
ETF providers regularly introduce products that reflect market trends, such as the cannabis ETFs launched in the run-up to Canada’s legalization of recreational marijuana, or the new gender-diversity products focused on companies that show a commitment to putting women on their boards and in top leadership positions. Investors are also looking for longer-term plays based on macroeconomic themes such as climate change, new technology and demographics that will transform society and business.
“Generally speaking, ETFs are a wonderful way of getting efficient, inexpensive, diversified and convenient exposure to a theme, trend or asset class,” says Noah Solomon, president and chief investment officer at Toronto-based Outcome Wealth Management Inc.“Regardless of what you think [the next big theme] will be, you want efficient exposure to it.
Companies have little choice but to ramp up their cybersecurity efforts and, in turn, that sector has become an investment opportunity. Investors will find a handful of cybersecurity ETFs on the market today, including“I love this space from an investment perspective,” says Raj Lala, Evolve Funds Group Inc.’s president and chief executive officer . “Because cybercrime continues to increase, demand for cybersecurity services will continue to increase as well.
Some other cybersecurity ETFs include the ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF , which is the largest cybersecurity ETF on the market, and