Ackman, Druckenmiller-tracking ETFs join ranks of star investor copycats

In a crowded ETF market obsessed with attention-grabbing pitches, one idea keeps coming back: Track the trades of star investors and sell them to the masses.

The latest entrant comes from VistaShares, which filed this week for a suite of ETFs designed to replicate the holdings of famed money managers like Bill Ackman, Stanley Druckenmiller and Michael Burry. By combing through regulatory disclosures, the firm aims to build funds that echo the moves of these high-profile investors — a fresh spin on the long-running effort to bottle hedge-fund mystique for retail buyers.

VistaShares plans to launch funds tracking the portfolios of Ackman’s Pershing Square and Burry’s Scion Asset Management, among others, by scouring their 13F filings or quarterly reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The VistaShares Pershing Square Select ETF, for instance, would be composed of up to 20 stocks reflecting the publicly disclosed holdings of Ackman’s firm, either directly or via derivatives including options or swaps, according to the filing. The other funds — seven in total, including two based on Druckenmiller’s Duquesne family office and a Berkshire one — would employ similar strategies.

But the offering from VistaShares comes with another caveat: 13F filings have an embedded lag as the money managers submit the regulatory paperwork at the end of each quarter, meaning that their strategies had already been implemented, possibly weeks prior to the public being privy to it. And whatever trend or quirk the money managers might have been looking to take advantage of may even have come to pass by that point. 

“Hyper-focusing on a few select managers’ holdings is interesting, but I have to question the utility of a product when there’s an inherent lag to the holdings,” said Todd Sohn, senior ETF analyst at Strategas Securities. “Managers can change their mind whenever they want, and the ETF would not necessarily reflect real-time decisions.”

Still, the strategy fits into a broader push to democratize institutional-style investing in a low-cost wrapper — and standing out in a saturated field.

VistaShares already runs the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (ticker OMAH), which targets names owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Its assets have grown to above $200 million, so the issuer may be looking to replicate the success it’s seen with that vehicle, said Sohn. It also is looking to soon launch the VistaShares Animal Spirits Daily 2X Strategy ETF under the ticker WILD, which would take the most popular companies — as measured by flows and assets — among amped-up single-stock ETFs and offer double-leveraged exposure on them.

VistaShares runs three ETFs altogether, including OMAH, according to its website. Its co-founder, Jon McNeill, previously served as president at Tesla, and also held a stint at Lyft, the website says. The company did not respond to a request for comment. 

ETFs built around hedge-fund tracking have had mixed success. The Goldman Sachs Hedge Industry VIP ETF (GVIP) is one standout, with its performance handily beating the S&P 500 so far this year and its assets growing to above $325 million. On the other hand, the Intelligent Livermore ETF (LIVR), which uses AI to harness the brainpower of the investment world’s most illustrious minds, holds just $17 million after having launched in September. Meanwhile, the Global X Guru Index ETF (GURU) tracks the top equity holdings of certain hedge funds — via a process also based on regulatory submissions — and the fund holds just $47 million, though it’s been around since 2012. 

“Investors have always been drawn to tracking 13F filings because they offer a rare glimpse into the portfolios of top fund managers,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s Athanasios Psarofagis. “Traditionally, this hedge-fund category has been tough to crack in the ETF wrapper. ETFs in the past have tried this and it showed that investors were more interested in what these managers were doing than they are in buying the ETFs.”