AXS Investments has unveiled a new ETF providing exposure to a high-conviction portfolio of quality US-listed equities.
Greg Bassuk, CEO of AXS Investments.
The AXS Brendan Wood TopGun Index ETF (TGN US) has been listed on NYSE Arca with an expense ratio of 0.98%.
The fund tracks the Brendan Wood TopGun Index which was developed by Brendan Wood International, a Toronto-based business management consultant.
Brendan Wood is best known for its ‘TopGun’ methodology which seeks to identify high-quality companies exhibiting excellence in business strategy, performance, management, governance, sector demand, and more.
In identifying TopGun stocks, Brendan Wood conducts interviews with up to 2,000 institutional investment professionals who collectively oversee more than $55 trillion in equity portfolio assets. The interviews are aimed at discerning which companies have the strongest ownership convictions among respondents.
The interviews include questions regarding various investment quality metrics including each company’s business strategy, long-term and short-term performance, executive and senior management, governance, ESG practices, reporting and disclosure, balance sheet, commitment to own, momentum, and price appreciation.
Additionally, Brendan Wood also quizzes respondents on which sectors they intend to increase their investment exposure to.
The index, which is built from an initial universe comprising US-listed stocks with market capitalizations above $2 billion, selects approximately 25 companies that have the highest investment scores and are classified within sectors that are currently in high demand.
Constituents are equally weighted, and the index is reconstituted and rebalanced on an annual basis in January. Between reconstitutions, if a firm’s investment score or sector demand of its principal business has decreased to a level below a critical threshold, it will be removed from the index and exposure to the remaining TopGun companies will be proportionally increased.
Commenting on the new listing, Greg Bassuk, CEO of AXS Investments, said: “TGN has a simple but powerful focus: provide exposure to the best quality stocks in the highest demand sectors. We are excited to partner with Brendan Wood in bringing first-of-its-kind access for individuals to their world-renowned TopGun philosophy. While select institutions have benefited from Brendan Wood’s TopGun access for decades, TGN offers those same investment attributes to the broader investing public.”