Analyst Report

The MicroSectors FANG+ Index 3X Leveraged exchange-traded note aims to triple the daily return of an index of so-called FANG stocks, meaning Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google-parent Alphabet Inc. The fund offers highly concentrated exposure those five “core” companies, plus another five technology growth stocks, including Alibaba, Baidu, NVIDIA, Tesla and Twitter.

The notes are intended to be used as short-term trading tools by sophisticated investors. FNGU, like most leveraged products, rebalances at the end of every trading day. In practice, this means FNGU’s performance will diverge significantly from the underlying stocks. The daily reset means that FNGU could lose money over time even if the underlying equities have posted a gain, which can come as a rude surprise to buy-and-hold investors.

Investors looking for long-term exposure to technology might be better-served with low-cost funds like State Street Corp.’s Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) or the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT). Both offer broad tech exposure, but don’t invest in household names like Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter due to an indexing change that reclassified those companies into communications services. (Those stocks can be found in XLC and VOX instead.) Another long-term option is the Invesco QQQ Trust, which invests in non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq. (QQQ includes all the FANG stocks except Twitter, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.)

FNGU’s management fee of 95 basis points might seem like a high price to pay for a passive investment, but that shouldn’t be a major concern for short-term trading. For traders who want the leverage but prefer broad exposure to tech, there’s products like TECL from Direxion, which uses leverage to juice returns of the same stocks as XLK.