The court jester would like to offer the duke a suite of ETFs.

That’s right — The Motley Fool’s asset management business is prepping a line of new funds, with plans to more than triple the number of ETFs it currently provides. On Tuesday, Motley Fool Asset Management, which is owned by the personal finance publication, filed for Securities and Exchange Commission approval of 15 ETFs. Those products differ significantly from the three active and three passive ETFs in its roster, expanding into themes such as equal weight and low volatility.

“When we talk to advisors and investors, we know that every investor comes to the table with a different risk factor and set of assets they own,” said Bill Mann, chief investment strategist at Motley Fool Asset Management. “The funds that we now have provide good service to certain types of investors, but we wanted to come out with a much broader suite that will allow Motley Fool Asset Management to meet people where they are.”

Not Even Fooling Around

The firm is planning to roll out the forthcoming ETFs slowly — not all 15 will launch at once, Mann said. He did not say which products would come to market first, but that may depend on the SEC’s approval process. The new line of funds is all index-based, so the company is not adding any asset-management staff in connection with the product expansion. “An index runs itself,” Mann said. “Once you’ve designed an index, it becomes a perpetual motion machine.”

Many people are familiar with the widely-read publication but potentially less aware of the company’s financial products. Motley Fool Asset Management launched at the “inauspicious time” of 2008, in part as a response to the poor judgment that individual investors often show when markets take a dive, exiting holdings with bad timing, Mann said.

The firm’s $2.5 billion ETF line includes:

• Active products, all of which have been converted from mutual funds: The Motley Fool Global Opportunities ETF (TMFG), Small-Cap Growth ETF (TMFS) and Mid-Cap Growth ETF (TMFM).
• Passive ETFs: The Motley Fool 100 Index ETF (TMFC), Capital Efficiency 100 Index ETF (TMFE) and Next Index ETF (TMFX).
• The forthcoming products: The Motley Fool Aggressive Growth Factor, Smart Volatility Factor, Crowdsource, 100 Equal Weight, Value Factor, Next Equal Weight, Enhanced Income, 100 Minimum Volatility, International Opportunities, Next Minimum Volatility, Large Cap Growth, Rising 100, Momentum Factor, Rising 100 Minimum Volatility and Multi Factor ETFs.

Fool’s Game: If there is a commonality among the forthcoming products, it’s that they are designed to reach a wider audience. That, and they would invest in stocks chosen by the parent company’s research. “They are based entirely on the proprietary research, along with, for a few of them, the analysis of the MFAM investing team,” Mann said. “The Motley Fool has been doing this for more than 30 years.”

Editor’s note: The Motley Fool is a minority investor in The Daily Upside.

Americans are running faster and faster toward their financial goals, but many feel like they’re spinning on a hamster wheel.

While some investors said they are comfortable in their jobs and saving for retirement, others think they’re in a losing battle. Across age ranges, roughly 90% of Americans are anxious broader economic forces will impact their long-term financial plans, according to U.S. Bank’s latest wealth survey. Eight in 10 of the 5,000 people surveyed said they feel anxious about stock market fluctuations. The data show a growing confidence gap that will require advisors to emphasize financial education with clients — not solely portfolio management.

“Even if the data suggest you are doing well, it doesn’t feel that way,” U.S. Bank CIO Eric Freedman said at a news conference in New York City last week. “When you start entering into a system like an equity market or the broad investment sphere, that’s where people feel a lot less agency, a lot less control, even though we’re at all-time highs.”

It’s Always Something

The market has been anything but calm this year. Liberation Day tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and weak jobs reports have created volatility, compounding the stress. “People have never had control of the stock market, never had control of the economy,” said Scott Ford, president of wealth management at U.S. Bank. “But it’s just been a lot [of volatility] all at the same time.” The survey found:

• About 20% of Gen Zers and millennials have given up on retirement, along with 25% of Gen Xers and 9% of boomers.

• A quarter of Gen Zers and millennials say they can’t afford to raise children.
• Some 90% of survey participants believe homeownership signals success, but a quarter doubt they’ll ever own a home.

“It’s one thing to cut back on day-to-day finances,” said Sarah Darr, U.S. Bank’s head of financial planning. “But to hear that it is impacting their retirement timeline, their residency … that really speaks to the magnitude of how much these constraints and these economic factors are really taking a toll on them.”

Knowledge is Power. Still, there is optimism. The survey found that financial confidence improves significantly with an advisor, even for clients with less than $50,000 in assets. Freedman said advisors should focus less on chasing high-asset clients and more on education with clients across wealth ranges. “Firms tend to want to be involved with clients with high AUM because of the high margins,” he said. “But focusing more on education empowerment would be important for us as a community.”

The rate cut that investors fretted would never come finally arrived last week, which, of course, means it’s time for … fretting about the next cut.

US markets fell on Tuesday, putting a pin in a record-setting run, after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave off a hawkish vibe, insisting the central bank will move cautiously on additional cuts and suggesting that equities are overpriced.

Proceed With Caution

In a speech in Rhode Island, Powell delivered no revelations, but rather a reminder. The Fed remains in a “challenging situation,” caught between managing inflation (which has been above the central bank’s 2% target rate since 2021) and the labor market (which has softened appreciably in recent months).

Even with investors betting there is a 91.9% chance the Fed’s policymaking board lowers rates by at least a quarter-point on Oct. 29, according to the CME FedWatch, Powell’s message was clear: Nothing’s written in permanent ink. “If we ease too aggressively, we could leave the inflation job unfinished and need to reverse course later to fully restore 2% inflation,” the level the Fed has long viewed as stable economic growth, he said. During a Q&A after his remarks, Powell also reiterated another factor that many prominent observers have said for months or longer could eventually catch up with investors, that “equity prices are fairly highly valued.” Central to those concerns is the strength of the AI boom, which has powered this year’s market rally. It was rattled on Tuesday:

• The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, after reaching an intraday high before Powell’s remarks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1%, with several AI power players down (Nvidia fell 2.8%, Oracle 4.3%, Amazon 3% and Meta 1.3%).
• On Monday, Nvidia pledged to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, while OpenAI promised to buy chips from Nvidia. Yes, that’s circular, for those of you keeping score at home. Bespoke Investment Group analysts wrote in a note on Tuesday: “OpenAI is now selling itself off to a supplier in order to fund its investments. Phrased differently, [Nvidia] is purchasing a stake in a customer in order to assure future revenue. You don’t have to be a skeptic about AI technology’s promise in general to see this announcement as a troubling signal about how self-referential the entire space has become.”

Get Used to It: The S&P 500 is trading at the highest against future earnings since the 2021 post-COVID boom. The most aggressive bears, like Universa’s Mark Spitznagel, forecast a crash. Powell said Monday, for the Fed’s part, officials will “balance both sides of our dual mandate,” suggesting interest-rate cuts will come if growth is at risk. Vanguard analysts wrote last week that the “real” long-term consideration for investors is “how they adapt to a world where structurally higher rates — and the forces behind them — are likely here to stay.”