The Highland Capital Management Fund Advisors [profile] team is about to massively increase their ETF lineup.

The Dallas-based mutual fund shop, previously known as Pyxis, launched its first ETF just over two years ago. Now Highland has filed to launch a whopping 17 more ETFs "across various alternative assets classes." Ethan Powell, chief product strategist for Highland, describes the planned explosion of offerings as Highland's reaction to a perceived "lack of access to hedge-fund-like strategies from a beta perspective."

Powell expects the first rollout of some of the 17 planned ETFs to take place within the next several months.

"We'll be rolling them out in phases," Powell tells MFWire.

Powell says that RIAs and institutions are sensitive to both price but have specific investment needs that alternative investments can address. When it comes to hedge funds, Powell says, "they're not shunning the strategies as much as they are the wrappers and the lack of liquidity and that two and twenty compensation structure." ETFs, with their real-time trading, sidestep or reduce all those problems.

In terms of product development, Powell expects to develop more non-traded investment vehicles, like the non-traded BDC Highland debuted last year. Yet he says that, beyond launching the new ETFs, he's "pretty comfortable with the open end lineup" at Highland. 

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