(Bloomberg) -- A long-shot bid to launch double-leveraged, single-stock exchange-traded funds tracking the notoriously volatile Tesla Inc. has been filed with US regulators after past attempts have failed.
The T-Rex 2X Long Tesla Daily Target ETF would trade under the ticker TSLT and use derivatives to track twice the daily returns of Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker, according to a Tuesday filing. Its sister fund, the T-Rex 2X Inverse Tesla Daily Target ETF, would trade under the ticker TSLZ and follow the reverse performance of Tesla stock by the same magnitude.
If launched, TSLT and TSLZ would be the first double-leveraged Tesla-focused single-stock ETFs to trade in the US market. Previous attempts ended up lowering the leverage amount during the regulatory review, Bloomberg reported last year. So far, the highest leverage available on a single-stock Tesla fund is 1.5 times.
“We think we have figured out a way to get to 2x, but if asked to dial back, it would just depend on how much,” Matthew Tuttle of Tuttle Capital Management, which along with REX Shares applied to create the ETFs, said in an email.
We “want to be different than what’s out there — launching the exact same thing doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense,” said Tuttle, who is behind ETFs that short Cathie Wood’s equity bets and follow CNBC anchor Jim Cramer’s stock picks.
In addition to the Tesla ETFs, Tuttle and REX Shares also applied for funds that track the performance of chipmaker Nvidia Corp. — the T-Rex 2x Long Nvidia Daily Target ETF and the T-Rex 2x Inverse Nvidia Daily Target ETF.
All four ETFs would carry a 1.05% management fee.
Leveraged single-stock ETFs debuted last year, even as US Securities and Exchange Commission officials sounded the alarm. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said the products “present particular risk,” while Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw called for the agency to adopt new rules that would address potential dangers.
Even still, nearly 30 US single-stock funds have launched since last July. Of the roughly $900 million in assets, the bulk of that haul is sitting in ETFs tied to Tesla thanks to the stock’s unique volatility. On any given day, the carmaker reigns as the most-actively traded stock in the US, while Tesla’s 90-day volatility clocks in at about 71%.
Yet previous applications for 2x-type funds were likely set to break SEC volatility rules and may have been dialed down for that reason. The regulator asks that a fund’s value-at-risk, or VaR — a risk-assessment measure — to not exceed 20% of the value of its net assets.
It’s not immediately clear how Tuttle’s proposed ETFs would manage to comply with the rules.
“I would be surprised if the Tesla 2x ETF gets approved,” said Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart. “I can’t imagine them approving this after denying this exact level of leverage in the past, even if TSLA’s volatility has decreased somewhat.”
