ETF Launch Review: Good, Bad or We’ll See! – December 2025

Hi Everyone!

It’s Conor here from Outer Beach Conor and I’m back with a December launch update.

We’re looking at all of the ETF launches in the US during the month.

I’ll be putting my opinion on each launch while also singling a few funds out to take a deeper dive on and explain my reasoning.

The goal is to segment them by what version of helpful to the market I think they are.

But first, here’s an overview of the U.S. ETF industry in 2025 in 3 charts.

Here are my metrics:

• 👍Good: Anything that may already exist in another form but is an honest attempt at reskinning the cat. Largely investor-positive.

• 🤔We’ll See?: May not exist yet, either as an asset type, strategy, or anything else in ETF format. Can be quite investor-positive. Requires analysis.

• 👎Bad: A fund that plays on an existing asset or strategy but without a value-add, sometimes with a value loss. Leveraged products, income products, high expense versions of existing product types with no discernible add-on. Almost always benefits the issuer instead of the investor.

Keep in mind that everything in here is just my opinion.

I’m happy to hear all challenges to my assigned ratings in the comments or via DM.

Breakdown:

For December, I ended up with the following results:

• Good: 57 launches

• Bad: 75 launches!!!

• We’ll See: 2 launches

This month saw 134 launches, up a bit from November.

Sadly, most of that increase went towards Bad launches.

We’ve seen a LOT of filings throughout October, November and December so the first quarter of 2026 should be really interesting! Let’s take a look at the breakdown for December.

A whole heck of a lot of good launches came around in December.

Vanguard launched the Vanguard Core-Plus Bond Index ETF (BNDP) with a 5 basis point fee.

Amazing value as usual from Vanguard but even for them that’s quite a feat.

The average fee for a “Good” launch held steady at 43 basis points, solid value to be found across the new products.

There were some other funds I want to highlight (This is NOT an endorsement!)

Hartford Funds launched the Hartford Equity Premium Income ETF (HEMI) which is a Wellington-advised income fund but look at that ticker.

How on EARTH was that still available!

I would have thought one of the many automotive products would have snatched that up. Goes to show there are a ton of great ones left.

Another hat tip to Columbia who launched the Columbia AAA CLO ETF (AAAC) with a 20 bps fee.

Very cheap for that asset class and CLOs are high right now.

Once again, I’m loving the diversity in offerings we’re seeing.

Everything from indexed equity to dual directional buffer products. I hope that continues.

Once again, we have quite a few launches I can gloss over.

Well over half of the launches are either leverage single stock products (mostly on either IPOs or less popular cryptocurrencies) or high-income chasing products that I still can’t see the use case for.

A few shops to shine the light on here, we have a bunch of VERY expensive indexed products.

Amplify had a few, Bitwise had 1, but the biggest headscratcher is the Truth Social indexed equity suite that launched at the end of the year.

These are very simple equity funds but carry an expense ratio of 65 basis points.

It seems like someone is trying to capitalize on the political discourse a bit but hopefully folks won’t bite as the baskets aren’t much more interesting than just buying SPYM, VOO, or IVV for 62 bps cheaper!

There were also a rash of expensive active equity products launched. Deepwater launched the Deepwater Beachfront Small Cap ETF (DBSC) with an 85 bps fee.

I don’t think that’s going to buy any waterfront property but I wish them the very best at that rate.

The last, and probably worst, launch is the iShares Systematic Alternatives Active ETF (IALT) from BlackRock.

I love BlackRock and most of their funds are well-priced and well-positioned but this looks to be a hedge fund imitator with a sticker price of 99 bps a year.

I guess they may have taken the hedge fund guise a little too seriously with a fee like that!

We have two entries for “We’ll See” this month.

The first made me laugh incredibly hard because I had a similar idea when I was asked in an interview by TrackInsight what my worst ETF idea was.

Here’s a link to the article but I’ll paste my answer in below.

If you could launch any ETF today, what would it look like?

I have created some hilariously bad ETF ideas but one takes the cake. I call it the Captain Ron Rico Chaos Navigation Fund (Ticker: AHOY or RICO).

It’s a passive managed fund tracking an index with the following methodology:

Companies must have:

• Must have a CEO with no formal business training

• Has to have survived at least one bankruptcy (near-death)

• Must be domiciled in a tropical tax haven.

• Must have changed their core business model more than twice since founding.

The funds annual reports would be chock full of bad nautical references and the issuer logo would be a one-eyed pirate that looks like Kurt Russell but not enough to get me sued.”

Enter the Founder-Led ETF (FDRS) a 49 bps equity index fund launched by Corgi, a new issuer to the market. The index itself is very basic. It selects founder-run companies and rebalances quarterly.

“Founder-run company. A company is considered founder-run if the founder (or one of the founders) is also the CEO of the company.”¹

I want very badly for this fund to succeed because it would make me look like an absolute genius for my original idea.

Do I think it will? Eh, we’ll see.

I think 49 bps for a relatively simple indexed product is on the very expensive end but crazier things have happened.

Maybe Corgi will issue all of their financial statements and statements with dog references.

That would be really “ruff”.

The second fund I want to talk about is a launch from KraneShares.

The KraneShares Dragon Capital Vietnam Growth Index ETF (KPHO).

Firstly, the ticker. Wow. That’s just a perfect win of a ticker, take a bow.

Carrying a 103 bps fee, which is obviously quite high, you’d expect me to immediately dump this into the “Bad” section.

I almost did.

On second glance though, this is a pretty unique offering.

Without going into too much minutiae, Vietnam is a very difficult country for foreign investment.

They have restrictions on how much foreign ownership (FOL) is allowed for each stock listed on their local exchanges.

This presents a huge problem for funds and investors wanting exposure to their rapidly growing economy.

KraneShares cleverly solved this but having this fund be able to buy shares of a locally-listed ETF, run by their subadvisors Dragon Capital. I love ingenuity like this.

That said. I hate the fee.

I get it’s probably super expensive to run but THAT expensive?

You can trade almost anything else for cheaper. Who knows if that would pay out.

I’ll try to keep a cadence of these going every month.

If you’d like to see me take a look at anything in particular, please comment.

I’m happy to dive into any ETF product that you’d like to see.

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. The opinions expressed by any author or co-author are strictly their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. We do not guarantee the accuracy of the information or calculations provided. It is essential to consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. We are not responsible for any errors or omissions in the data. Investing in ETFs or any financial instrument involves risk, and you should conduct your own research. Past performance does not guarantee future results. By subscribing to this newsletter, you agree to these terms and conditions.