SEC Cracks Down on ETF Names That Could Be Misleading Investors
- SEC is asking more about names as themed products proliferate
- More than a third of such funds tweaked their titles last year
A woman walks past an advertisement for SK Telecom Co. at the World IT Show 2018 in Seoul.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Exchange-traded funds looking to tap some of the hottest investment trends are going undercover.
A growing number of thematic ETFs are changing their identities before they even start trading to conform to a decades-old rule that dictates what issuers can and can’t call their strategies. More than a third of such funds started last year tweaked their names during the regulator’s approval process, filings show; one fund that initially included blockchain in its name is now described as a “transformational data sharing” ETF.