All change

It’s been quite the year so far – is it still only early February? We took a look at the fallout from the DeepSeek drama this week, with Gill Wadsworth looking at the effect of the arrival of Chinese rival DeepSeek R1, which offers AI for a fraction of the price and, as she puts it, introduces new competitive dynamics in the industry, prompting discussions about the future of global tech leadership.

The Magnificent Seven kind of fell off their horses, with US tech giant Nvidia’s loss of 17 per cent in a single day particularly hitting leveraged ETFs, with Morningstar reporting that one leveraged Nvidia ETF lost 51 per cent as result of its three times enhanced exposure to the company.

We talked to the team at Cboe this week, both Rob Marrocco, Vice President and Global Head of ETP Listings and Rob Hocking, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Product Innovation, about their options offerings on crypto ETFs. Hocking says that bitcoin brings diversity to portfolios, adding that the development of crypto products has brought in more and more ETF issuers. "It grows our sandbox for new product development," he says.

"We now have more than 10 different ETPs tracking bitcoin performance, which allows us to design products to expand the tradable product ecosystem. We expect the evolution of the listed market for bitcoin will evolve much like it did for the equities space, with single names coming first, then index products, followed by other products. And now, we’re asking: ‘How do we create that ecosystem for a different asset class, like bitcoin?"

News this week, as yet unconfirmed, came that there may be some consolidation ahead for our fragmented European exchanges, with Euronext discussing a single trading venue for its ETPs, possibly Amsterdam. This will have a significant effect for ETF issuers listing in Europe. Watch this space.

Today is the last day of voting for the ETF Express European ETF awards – put down that Valentine’s card and vote for what matters!

Beverly Chandler, Managing Editor

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