Investors generally have faith that markets go up over time, but will they care to make a wager?

A new suite of proposed ETFs from Roundhill Investments is designed to make all-or-nothing bets on market indexes hitting targets by 2030. Late last week, the company filed an initial prospectus for the Roundhill S&P 500 10,000 Target 2030, Dow 75,000 Target 2030 and Innovation-100 50,000 Target 2030 ETFs, funds that would allocate most of their assets to Flexible Exchange Options, which are exchange-listed and customizable. It wouldn’t be surprising to many market watchers if the S&P 500 hit 10,000 in less than four years, up from its current level of 6,917, for example, but a lot can happen between now and then.

“It seems like the natural evolution of the betting marketization of all of finance,” said Dave Nadig, president and director of research at ETF.com. “This is essentially the same bet you could make on Polymarket right now.” While neither Polymarket nor Kalshi offers event contracts specific to the S&P by 2030, they do offer a variety for it over a year. Further, the timing is curious, given that CBOE is reportedly considering listing binary options for bets on financial markets, he said. “Welcome to gambling on the market.”

An Option Too Far?

The Securities and Exchange Commission could send Roundhill back to the drawing board, however, if its recent rejections of 3X, 4X and 5X leveraged ETFs are any indication. Last year, several firms sought approval for those highly leveraged funds, only to be told that anything beyond 2X runs afoul of the SEC’s Rule 18f-4. That includes Roundhill, which late last month filed for 4X SPY and QQQQ ETFs and was quickly given a no-go by the regulator. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

“The Roundhill fund’s value drops to zero if the S&P 500 is 9,999 instead of 10,000, which imbues it with an astronomical volatility metric,” said Bill Singer, a veteran Wall Street regulatory lawyer. “[I]t would seem that a fund that could lose 100% of its value while the underlying index is actually up 50% (but below the target) would trigger similar ‘investor protection’ alarms as the 4X proposal.”

Roundhill would offer a new “defined target period” when one ends, resetting the fund each time, according to the initial prospectus.

Don’t Drink the Hot Sauce: In all fairness, highly leveraged ETFs come with warnings that they shouldn’t be used by most investors and that there are risks of losing all value. There don’t appear to be any products on the market comparable to what Roundhill is seeking, but any seasoned investor would likely use it sparingly. “[T]he all-or-nothing approach is unique. It’s a risky strategy for most investors, and shouldn’t be a replacement for a core holding,” said Roxanna Islam, head of sector and industry research at TMX VettaFi. “But in small percentages, these strategies could potentially add some returns without significantly affecting overall portfolio risk.”

Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner, and although many Americans will try their luck via the widening world of sports betting, there are some more traditional options for the avid sports fan.

Exchange-traded funds like Invesco’s Leisure and Entertainment ETF (PEJ) and Gabelli’s Opportunities in Live and Sports ETF (GOLS), which launched last month, give investors exposure to the world of live sports, whether it’s by investing in venues like Madison Square Garden or holding entertainment companies like Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. Sports investments can also be helpful for advisors looking to cater to a younger generation of clients.

“There’s definitely interest in investing around sports, especially among our Gen Z clients who are earning [a] good income early,” said Joon Um, a financial planner with Secure Tax & Accounting. “Many of them [are] in the social media and creator space, which already overlaps with entertainment and live sports.”

Any Given Sunday

GOLS, which has garnered $12 million since its launch last month, isn’t Gabelli’s first foray into the world of live sports — having already been a shareholder of Madison Square Garden — but it is the firm’s first sports-focused strategy, said Alec Boccanfuso, portfolio manager of the fund. It also offers investors exposure to specific teams, like the Atlanta Braves, the only publicly traded Major League Baseball team. “A lot of people assume the sports fund will only own pieces of sport teams, but there’s the whole ecosystem,” Boccanfuso said. “There’s sports technology companies out there, media companies, real estate assets,” he added. “We think the whole industry is attractive.”

Whether events like the Super Bowl actually impact these products’ performance is another story. While Boccanfuso expects a boost from the event — he said it will drive up the stock of ESPN, which last week acquired the National Football League’s RedZone channel — Um said it’s inconsequential. “Exposure is usually indirect, and the Super Bowl itself doesn’t meaningfully move sports ETFs beyond short-term hype.”

The performances of ETFs with exposure to the sports industry as a whole are mostly down so far this year:

• The Invesco’s Leisure and Entertainment ETF (PEJ), which is down 2% YTD.
• The Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF (BETZ), which is down 14% YTD.

Wide Reception: However, the Super Bowl can still influence other areas of sports investing. The Seahawks may get sold after this season, which would reset valuations across the NFL — the last full team sale was the Washington Commanders, at about $6 billion — and drive up sports-adjacent companies’ stocks.

“What we’re going to see is a Super Bowl-caliber franchise theoretically coming to market,” Boccanfuso said. “This would be a real test of how much investors are willing to pay for scarcity, brand power and live fan engagement.”

How about we take a little bit off the top?

Vanguard unveiled its latest round of expense ratio cuts on Monday, estimating that the reductions across 53 passively managed funds will save customers a total of about $250 million this year. It’s becoming something like an annual event, as the company a year ago made a similar round of cuts, to the tune of about $350 million in investor savings among 87 funds. With the newest reductions, the average fund fee at the investor-owned financial giant is just 0.06%, according to the company.

What’s Left to Cut?

It’s like maintaining a buzz cut, going to the barber and having millimeters shaved off the top. Vanguard built its empire by being a low-cost investment shop, and it has routinely cut fees to keep that status, so much so that competitors appear to be tired of trying to keep up. “They don’t have to do this. They’re still providing very low-cost investments at the end of the day,” said Dan Sotiroff, associate director of US passive strategies at Morningstar. “Last year when they did this, there was almost no response … Nobody else was really willing to play the game.” Most of the cuts apply to institutional share classes and ETFs, suggesting that the company may be giving an incentive for many investors to choose ETFs over its Admiral mutual-fund share class, he noted.

Here’s an overview of the changes:

• The company lowered expense ratios on 84 mutual fund and exchange-traded fund share classes across the 53 products.
• Many of the reductions are 1 or 2 basis points, though they range from as little as half a basis point to as many as 10.
• All of the affected funds are index-based, mostly with prior costs of under 10 basis points.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to get their clients to complain if they’re reducing fees in their investments,” said Craig Kilgallen, relationship manager at Fuse Research Network. “That’s what they built their business on.”

Service and Tech: Somewhat ironically, one of the biggest problems Vanguard has now is its growth, Sotiroff noted. At $35 trillion, the firm represents 28% of assets in US mutual funds and ETFs, and it took in $240 billion in 2025, the second-largest haul in the industry, per Morningstar. While the fee cuts are welcomed, “I suspect many Vanguard investors would happily let Vanguard keep that extra basis point if it meant better technology and service,” Jeff DeMaso, editor of The Independent Vanguard Adviser, wrote in a response to the news.

The company has been hammered for years over client experience issues, but it has been investing heavily in technology to address them, with over 90% of its personal investor business now being on the cloud, rather than server-based, CEO Salim Ramji said last year in an interview with Morningstar. “We’re turning the corner, but this isn’t a destination. This is a constant journey,” he said, adding that last March, Vanguard got a top ranking from JD Power for its DIY investor client experience. “[O]ur tech stack is now modernized in a way that just wouldn’t have been possible two years ago or three years ago.”