Launched with the support of Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, the VanEck Social Sentiment ETF debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday and could fuel notable moves in various tech and industrial stocks in the coming weeks, Jim Cramer said.
The Buzz ETF, as it is often referred to, is built around 75 stocks – each with a minimum market cap of $ 5 billion – chosen by an algorithm based on their positive social media sentiment. It will be traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol BUZZ and is managed by VanEck Associates Corp.
The 75 stocks will rebalance each month, adding replacements and removing underperforming stocks, based on what the founders call the highest rate of “ positive investor sentiment, ” based on the study of approximately 15 million posts on different social media networks.
TheStreet founder Jim Cramer said Thursday that the ETF and its stock selection technique are “fascinating” and will likely move many of the 75 names in it if traders take up Portnoy’s call to invest in it.
“Social media and mobile technology have fundamentally changed the way we interact with stocks,” the ETF website said. “There is a lot of online chatter every day. Changing sentiment and our collective views are clearly impacting their worth.”
The ETF itself was 1.11% lower at $ 24.13 at the start of trading on Thursday, compared to a 0.17% decline for the Nasdaq Composite Index.
Twitter TWTR) – Request report equities, the largest allocation in the ETF at 3.52%, were down 1.5% at $ 69.70 each, but are up more than 77% in the last six months.
The second largest holding company, online sports betting group DraftKings DKNG) – Request report, was marked 1.3% lower at $ 64.90, a move that cuts profits to about 80% in six months.
Ford Motor Co. F.) – Request report, the third largest allocation, was up 0.2% to $ 12.20 each and is up 77.5% over the past six months.
Other holdings in the EFT include Facebook FB) – Request report (on 3% of the total number of companies), Amazon AMZN) – Request report (2.94%), Apple AAPL) – Request report (2.9%) and Tesla TSLA) – Request report (2.75%).