The teams at a pair of New York City firms are teaming up to launch an A.I.-powered ETF, and they're officially prepping three more funds to launch, too.

Paul Sang Jin Kim Simplify Asset Management Inc. CEO, Co-Founder

Last Tuesday (September 24), David Berns, chief investment officer and co-founder of Simplify Asset Management, Inc. [profile], unveiled the debut of the Simplify Wolfe US Equity 150/50 ETF (WUSA), with quantitative research firm Wolfe Research Advisors LLC as subadvisor. The Simplify folks also filed for the planned creation of three more Wolfe-powered ETFs: the Simplify Wolfe Alpha Capture ETF, the Simplify Wolfe Market Neutral Quality ETF, and the Simplify Wolfe Market Neutral SHIELD ETF.

WUSA's inception date was last Monday (September 23), and the fund comes with an expense ratio of 75 basis points. By four days later (Friday, i.e. September 27), the fund had $2.498 million in AUM. The three planned funds don't yet have tickers, and their expense ratios will be 100bps.

SAMI subsidiary Simplify EQLS LLC serves as investment advisor of WUSA, while SAMI itself will serve as investment advisor to the three other Wolfe funds. All four ETFs will be actively managed, with the same PM team: Berns, who is also CIO of EQLS; David Jackson, vice president of EQLS and SAMI; and Sheng Wang, managing director and head of investment solutions at Wolfe.

The new ETF, WUSA, is powered by a long-short strategy that is designed to invest mostly in total return swaps and the two market neutral Simplify Wolfe ETFs will also be mostly invested in total return swaps. That strategy, in turn, is powered by a proprietary machine learning (i.e. artificial intelligence) process and model from Wolfe that analyzes more than 300 factors to detect patterns.

The planned Simplify Wolfe Market Neutral ETFs will also be invested mostly in total return swaps, while the planned Alpha Capture ETFs will be invested mostly in U.S. equities.

Berns lauds Wolfe, saying that "there is no firm more experienced or better qualified when it comes to the construction of sophisticated, differentiated models than Wolfe." He adds that WUSA is "a powerful new tool for investors and advisors looking for the opportunity to achieve capital appreciation from their equity exposures."

"When it comes to machine learning-powered investment approaches, the model matters," Berns states. "As the algorithm learns, it will identify those U.S. equities it has determined have the highest and lowest forward expected returns."

WUSA and the three planned ETFs will all list primarily on the NYSE Arca, Inc., and they will all be series of Simplify Exchange Traded Fuds. The funds' other service providers include: Bank of New York Mellon as administrator, custodian, dividend disbursing agent, fund accountant, shareholder servicing agent, and transfer agent; Cohen & Company as independent accounting firm; ACA's Foreside Financial Services, LLC as distributor; Foreside Fund Officer Services, LLC as chief compliance officer provider; and Thompson Hine LLP as counsel. 

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