Asset managers are treating monster IPOs like retailers treated the World Cup: They’re stocking the shelves, marketing products and building momentum before the main event even begins.

Take South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix’s upcoming listing of American depositary receipts. While they’re expected to start trading on the Nasdaq Friday, issuers including Themes, CorgiFunds, Direxion and ProShares have already announced leveraged funds that will track the US listing. It was just a few years ago that single-stock ETFs hit the US market, giving investors leveraged bets on some of the hottest names on Wall Street, such as NVIDIA, Tesla and Apple. Because these funds are geared toward short-term trading, cost isn’t as much of a differentiator between single-stock ETFs as marketing, brand awareness and time to market. Being able to take advantage of investor hype pays off, and firms are adapting their strategies accordingly.

“We’re seeing renewed investor interest in IPOs and newly listed companies, and at the same time, single-stock ETFs have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the ETF market,” said Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, which is planning a fund focused on SK Hynix.

Who Gets the ETF Treatment?

Not all single-stock ETFs are created equal when it comes to investor excitement. One for a utility or insurance company probably won’t generate the same buzz as a chipmaker like SK Hynix. That’s an important consideration for issuers:

• As SK Hynix becomes available to US investors, ProShares sought to offer investors exposure to a company “playing an important role in artificial intelligence infrastructure,” Hyman said.
• “We expect investors to have strong opinions, both bullish and bearish, on SK Hynix, and we want to provide them with leveraged exposure to the upside and the ability to hedge on the downside,” said Paul Marino, chief revenue officer at Themes ETFs, which recently announced the Leverage Shares 2x Long SK Hynix Daily ETF (SKHX) and the Leverage Shares 1x Short SK Hynix Daily ETF (SKHZ).

A Close Look: Marino added that when considering any leveraged single-stock ETF, the firm looks at investor trends, interest, volume and volatility. “Currently, many of those characteristics are in sectors like AI, robotics, crypto and innovative companies that IPO,” he said.

No one likes getting picked last for dodgeball … or investment accounts.

The Treasury Department selected State Street’s SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (SPYM) as the “initial default investment” for newly opened Trump Accounts, tax-advantaged savings vehicles for children under 18, which became available for initial deposits last week. Products from Vanguard and iShares were also included in the menu. The move reinforces the notion that ETFs have become the industry investment strategy of choice, said Benjamin Hernandez, research analyst at TMX VettaFi.

“Ten or 15 years ago, if there was a similar program available, this initial five-fund list may have been mutual funds instead,” Hernandez said. “It really says that the US Treasury is more aware that investors are gravitating toward the ETF vehicle.”

SPYM, On a Whim?

SPYM has performed well this year, up 9.4% year to date. It’s also cheaper than its big brother, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), and boasts a slightly lower expense ratio than one notable exclusion from the list, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO). (The latter is currently the largest ETF in terms of assets.) Hernandez said he was surprised it didn’t make the cut, but that once the program begins operating, the government may include it. The other funds on the list, he said, made sense from a risk management perspective. “It introduces younger investors to, ‘Hey, if you want to get the higher gains, you’ll have to assume more risk in mid- and small caps that inherently have that volatility,’” Hernandez said.

The other ETFs listed as primary investments for Trump Accounts have performed similarly year to date:

• The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), with $892 billion in assets, is up 9%.
• The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) manages $663 billion and is up 9.6%.
• The State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 1500 Composite Stock Market ETF (SPTM) oversees $13 billion and is up 9.45%.

There may be a “patriotic component” to the decision, since SPY was the first ETF ever listed in the US, and SPYM is a derivation of the original fund. But questions remain regarding whether, and when, switching from the default holding to the other approved choices is possible, since there isn’t guidance from the Treasury just yet.

Cost Is King: The guiding philosophy for understanding why these funds were chosen should be cost, not brand recognition, said Jeff Judge, a founding partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners. This is in part because the Trump Accounts law states that for a certain period up until the first day of the year that the account holder turns 18, investments can’t charge fees of more than 10 basis points.

“This isn’t a curated ‘best of’ list. It’s a compliance list,” Judge said. “Any fund with a higher expense ratio, any leveraged or inverse product, any fund not tracking a broad US equity index, was disqualified before the Treasury got to a rationale.”

If it was really Mark Twain who said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” he was right on the money.

History class tells us those who got rich off the gold rush weren’t the miners. The same logic goes for the artificial intelligence boom: The chipmakers have been the real winners so far this year. It’s no surprise, then, that AI-related ETFs made up nine of the 10 best-performing exchange-traded funds midway through 2026, and most offered exposure to the semiconductor industry.

The performance has been driven by “relentless demand for semiconductors, which are in limited supply and highly complicated to manufacture,” said Zachary Evens, a passive strategies analyst at Morningstar.

More Gold in Those Hills

There’s still room to run for semiconductor-linked funds and the technology sector at large, said Aniket Ullal, head of ETF research for CFRA. Earnings-per-share growth for technology companies is projected to be topped only by energy firms this year, with continued growth into next year, per CFRA research. Cooling energy prices have also eased rate hike fears, a tailwind for tech. “It’s really a combination of the fact that we’ve had very strong earnings growth and probably some motivation in interest rate hike expectations,” said Ullal.

Excluding leveraged funds, the top ETFs of this year so far, per Morningstar data, include:

• The Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF (BWET), with a 683.8% return. The fund, which has only $17.6 million in AUM as of the closing bell on Tuesday, focuses on crude oil tanker freight futures, which spiked when the Strait of Hormuz closed after the US and Israel attacked Iran.
• The Invesco Semiconductors ETF (PSI), up 138.1%, with $2.7 billion in AUM, as investors cash in on the AI boom.
• The VistaShares Artificial Intelligence Supercycle ETF (AIS), which had a 124.4% return and $892.6 million in assets. It holds a broader mix of AI companies beyond chipmakers.

Other top players include the First Trust Nasdaq Semiconductor ETF (FTXL), Xtrackers Semiconductor Select Equity ETF (CHPS), iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) (Korea produces the majority of the world’s semiconductors), and the YieldMax Target 12 Semiconductor Option Income ETF (SOXY). (Is the word semiconductor starting to sound weird to anyone else?)

Skewing the Data: Don’t forget about those popular geared products. Not surprisingly, leveraged ETFs had the highest gains this year, led by the Direxion Daily MU Bull 2X Shares (MUU) at a whopping 959%. But they’re, of course, incredibly volatile and not built for long-term strategies. “When we try to look at longer-term performance trends, we tend to excuse them because they tend to jump around longer with the performance,” said Ullal. “But if somebody has a short-term view on a particular sector … then leveraged ETFs are an effective way to double down on that.”