A new contender is willing to challenge other ETFs to a cage match.

That’s the Calamos Autocallable Growth ETF (CAGE), of course, whose index the company said has absolutely smashed broad-market index funds (at least for theoretical investors who had adequate time on their hands). It’s the newest entrant in the firm’s autocallable line of exchange-traded funds, which package notes of varying maturities. The company was the first to bring an autocallable ETF to the market with its nearly $1 billion Calamos Autocallable Income ETF (CAIE) last June. A few other companies have since followed, but the new CAGE fund is the first to take autocallables into growth territory.

“If you’ve got time on your side, a kitschy line is: ‘You could make that time more valuable with CAGE,’” Calamos head of ETFs Matt Kaufman said.

Like Stocks … But Bonds

The new ETF is essentially a bundle of 52 bonds tied to stock market returns. What differentiates it from Calamos’s Autocallable Income ETF, and the more recently launched Nasdaq Autocallable Income ETF (CAIQ), isn’t just that the coupon payments are reinvested in the fund. It also does away with the -40% coupon barrier, instead going with 0%, meaning that the notes pay on their maturity dates if the market is positive, rather than just being higher than -40%, as is the case with the autocallable income funds. It also employs a different means of reducing long-term risk, in the form of “memory,” a feature in which coupons in down markets are saved up and paid in full later, assuming the markets recover. It also has a 50% principal barrier, which means that notes return principal if the index is consistently down. The fund is expected to be more volatile than the S&P 500, but that’s by design, Kaufman said. “You’re just storing growth in down markets and capturing it when the markets recover,” he said. “If you’ve got time on your side, you can compound remarkably.”

The cost of all that is an expense ratio of 74 basis points. As with the two other autocallable funds in the Calamos line, the growth version uses JPMorgan as the swap counterparty. The swap index for the new fund is the MerQube US Large-Cap Volatility Advantage Autocallable Growth Index, whose annualized returns over 10 years are 23.75%, Calamos (happily) pointed out.

Here’s how the autocallable ETF market looks, currently:

• Since CAIE launched in June, 10 other funds have arrived, and total assets are over $1.25 billion, per data from Morningstar Direct.
• Among those adding to the pile are FirstTrust, TrueShares, Innovator and REX Shares.
• GraniteShares also launched two funds in February, with one focused on notes tied to Tesla and another to Nvidia.

Don’t Get It? Investors don’t necessarily need to understand how the new growth fund works in order to potentially benefit from it as a long-term holding, Kaufman said. While structured notes have long been a tool for high-net-worth investors, a retail variety that packages more than 50 notes and employs memory and protection barrier features is perhaps even more difficult to understand. “It’s a bit of a mindbender to get your head around,” he said.

Who doesn’t like getting paid?

Derivative income is one of the hottest areas for new ETFs, and while no one is likely to knock JPMorgan off its pedestal anytime soon, other asset managers still want what pieces of the market they can get. One firm fashionably late to the party, Direxion, recently prepped a line of single-stock, option-income funds, dubbed Income Boost, that will probably launch over the summer. That represents a new category for the company, which specializes in leveraged and inverse ETFs (only two of its 131 ETFs are neither leveraged nor inverse). The nine funds use option premiums to generate income and focus on Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Micron Technology, Nvidia, Palantir and Tesla.

Perhaps the Mag 7 should be revised as the Notable 9 … Although that doesn’t have much of a ring to it. Let’s call it a work in progress?

Follow the Money

It makes sense that asset managers want to expand into the category. Derivative income has been one of the fastest-growing areas in ETFs, bringing in $17 billion in the first three months of 2026 and nearly $58 billion over 12 months, data from Morningstar Direct show. Its sales growth rate of over 50% is the biggest among the top-10-selling ETF categories this year. “It is clear that ETF issuers have identified options trading and covered call strategies as a focus for product development,” said Kevin Lyons, senior analyst of product development at Cerulli Associates.

Survey data from the firm supports that:

• Over half, 56%, of ETF issuers surveyed last year by Cerulli said that options-trading strategies were either a primary or secondary focus for product development.
• Further, 36% pointed to defined-outcome products as an area with unmet demand, with fixed-income strategies being the only category with higher potential.

Need Proof? JPMorgan’s $45 billion Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPI) raked in $1.3 billion in March, bringing its total year-to-date haul to $2.8 billion and its 12-month net inflows to $4.8 billion. And that’s just half the demand of its cousin, the $36 billion JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPQ), which pulled in $9.8 billion over 12 months and $3.3 billion in the first three months of 2026, per data from Morningstar Direct.

That tracks with figures from data and benchmarking firm Hearts & Wallets, which found that people who own ETFs are more likely than others to want to earn income. Among those investors, 60% said they have a goal of generating income from their investments, compared with 26% for those who don’t dabble in ETFs. Whether they want to get paid by single-stock ETFs is a separate matter, but Direxion is among those betting that more than a few do.

Is it getting hot in here?

ETFs with tickers such as TAN and FAN are doing particularly well this year. The first, the Invesco Solar ETF, has returned about 7% year to date and 95% over 12 months. The second, First Trust’s Global Wind Energy ETF, is up 20% year to date and 67% over a year. It isn’t any surprise that petroleum-themed funds have appreciated significantly amid a war in the Middle East, but the rising need for energy has also lifted renewables and nuclear.

“There has been this long-term idea that renewables will be taking more of oil’s breakfast over time,” said Kenneth Lamont, principal in manager research for Morningstar UK. But, “when the price of energy spikes, all energy goes up.”

Oil Be Glad When This Is Over

Another product, the $2.6 billion United States Oil Fund (USO), shows how the oil and gas industry’s returns are a recent story, as year-to-date returns are about 80%, compared with 12-month returns of 85%. Solar and wind, by comparison, had more of a boost last year, which is part of the saga about the insatiable demand for power for AI data centers. Going along with that, VanEck’s $4.6 billion Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NLR) is up 10% so far this year, but 96% over 12 months.

But, sales data show differences in demand:

• USO brought in more than $800 million in the first three months of 2026, compared with just under that amount for NLR. But over a year, NLR brought in $2.8 billion, while USO saw less than $800 million in net flows, per data from Morningstar Direct.
• Meanwhile, $350 million went into the $1.5 billion TAN this year through March, compared with just $7 million for the $249 million FAN.

Rising Sea Level Lifts All Boats: Globally, investors pulled money from energy ETFs as a category last year, with net outflows of about $8 billion, per Morningstar. So far this year, though, about $16 billion has poured in. ETFs in the company’s energy-transition category are another matter: Those saw over $5 billion in net inflow this year through April 10 and a total of over $10 billion over 12 months, with only 10 of the prior 52 weeks in net outflows. “It’s not one-to-one,” Lamont said of the demand for energy across fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear. “It’s a highly complex market.”