Two new funds are borrowing from Mean Girls’ Gretchen Wieners, telling Elon Musk: “You can’t sit with us.”

Subversive ETFs filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week to launch a pair of “ex-Elon funds,” including the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF (QQNE) and S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF (SPNE). The actively managed products offer exposure to the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500, respectively, but ditch any securities in companies founded, controlled, led or primarily associated with Musk. In other words, mostly SpaceX and Tesla.

There are plenty of reasons investors may want to kick the world’s richest man out of their portfolios: his polarizing views and right-wing politics, including an on-again-off-again alliance with President Trump, his controversial labor practices, market-moving comments on crypto and, of course, his handling of chainsaws, just to name a few. But will that actually compel investors to move assets into these new funds?

“In theory, the ETF is an interesting idea, since many investors may have strong opinions about Elon Musk,” said Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research and analytics at CFRA. “In practice, however, it will have to overcome several challenges.”

X’ing Out Musk

This isn’t Subversive’s first time hoping that excluding certain types of investments will curry favor with investors. Its Subversive Metaverse ETF (PUNK), which focused on metaverse companies but excluded Meta, launched in 2022 before being shut down the year after. But this time, it’s betting that excluding Musk’s companies will lure investors who view the “potential corporate governance concerns, political risks, and heightened share-price volatility” often tied to those firms as “less desirable,” per the filing.

It likely won’t be an easy road for QQNE and SPNE, Ullal said:

• He pointed out that Tesla and SpaceX together constitute less than 5% of the Nasdaq-100, so QQNE may not be sufficiently differentiated from the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), the largest ETF that tracks the index.
• The funds could also underperform when Tesla and SpaceX stocks are doing well. “It may test whether investors are willing to sacrifice performance for values or politically related reasons,” he said.

Subversive said the firm cannot comment as it’s in a quiet period after filing, while fund advisor Tidal Investments also declined to comment.

Shorting Celebs: Betting against influential names, whether they be companies or individuals, can be challenging. The Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF, which shorted stock picks of CNBC’s on-air personality Jim Cramer, closed in 2024 after less than a year on the market.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) made history after its April launch, attracting more than $23 billion of net flows, the fastest exchange-traded fund to pull such numbers. The fund gives investors hard-to-find access to the biggest names in the memory chip manufacturing industry, including Korean companies that were previously difficult to invest in directly. Since then, several other memory funds have launched, with differing strategies all looking to grab a piece of the action. While the segment has been one of the best performers of the year, the recent US listing of Korean chipmaker SK Hynix may siphon some assets that would have otherwise flowed into these ETFs.

“SK Hynix, maybe, changes the game,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, now that investors can buy the stock directly. “A lot of money went into space ETFs in advance of SpaceX listing, and some of that money has flowed out because it was short-term investments.”

Cache Me If You Can

Artificial intelligence relies on massive amounts of memory to power large language models, and as models improve, they need more of it to process data in real time. Three companies dominate memory chip manufacturing: Micron, the only American player, and Korean rivals Samsung and SK Hynix. The high demand has created a bottleneck in the AI infrastructure buildout. “These three companies have extreme pricing power,” said Howard Chan, CEO and co-founder of Kurv, which recently launched its own memory ETF. “Because of this huge demand, supply for most of what they call HBM, high-bandwidth memory, has been sold out until the end of 2027. Flows will continue to come into the space because this bottleneck isn’t an issue that’s going to be resolved over the next six months or even a year.”

Following DRAM’s success, a few other recently launched ETFs are hoping to capitalize, according to Morningstar data:

• The Tema Memory ETF (DISK), launched June 30, has attracted $43 million in assets as of the closing bell on Friday, according to ETF.com.
• The Kurv Memory Select ETF (KMEM), which also listed June 30, pulled in $40 million in net flow.
• The Tuttle Capital Concentrated Memory Stack ETF (HBMX), launched June 2, has $34 million in AUM.

Nothing Lasts Forever: Chan sees room for memory ETFs to keep running, but Rosenbluth isn’t so sure. “Stocks don’t rise in perpetuity,” he said. “People who are looking at a product that has climbed this high, this fast, should be prepared that it might pull back because the stocks are priced for significant growth, which may or may not materialize.”

You can’t win ‘em all.

ETFs as a whole had an uncharacteristic week of outflows earlier this month, with about $3.7 billion in redemptions, according to ETF.com. The week ending July 3 came amid a massive year of inflows, however, with the industry on track to grow by over $2 trillion by year’s end. So what caused the blip, and how should investors be thinking about it? Some areas with the largest monthly outflows in June were commodities and digital assets, said Brian Paoli, a research analyst for Morningstar.

“Broadly speaking, flows typically follow performance,” Paoli said, adding that the largest outflows were in gold- and bitcoin-linked funds. “In 2025, we saw a crazy performance for both bitcoin and gold … and then heading into 2026, as the price of gold has come back down, we’ve seen those outflows increase in the first two quarters.”

Go With the Outflow

There are many reasons for outflows, with causes ranging from investor uncertainty about a stock to loss of confidence in an entire sector or category of fund. When specific products lose assets, the reason might be that advisors have shifted their strategies, Paoli said. That happened recently, he added, when investors pulled out of the VanEck MSCI International Value ETF (VLUE) because of its heavy concentration in Micron, which could be worrisome for both investors and advisors. “Roughly a quarter of that ETF was actually being held in Micron, and so you had some investors both concerned about its individual stock exposure, but also, if you’re an advisor, you have a certain investment policy,” Paoli said.

Another factor that might be at play is SpaceX. Several funds that had the highest net outflows track the Russell 1000 or 2000 Indexes, which recently added the newly public behemoth to its ranks. “I can’t say with certainty that it’s [caused by] investors selling for that reason, but the Russell 1000 indexes are adding SpaceX to their holdings, both on the value and growth side,” Paoli said. “Russell 1000 trackers are going to show up naturally with the largest inflows or outflows. But it is interesting.”

Don’t Be a Worry Wart: Should investors be concerned about the negative numbers? Hardly, said Maital Legum, head of ETF solutions for Teucrium. “We as an industry have gotten so used to inflows week after week after week,” Legum said. The hundreds of funds that launched in the month of June alone, she added, indicate how “aggressive and how bullish” the industry is about the investment vehicle. “One week of outflows is really not any systematic or structural indication that things are cooling off.”