The team at a startup fund firm near San Francisco is preparing to shutter their third fund.

Bruce Ivins Lavine NightShares / AlphaTrAI Funds, Inc. CEO

The NightShares [profile] team plans to liquidate the NightShares 500 1x/1.5x ETF (NSPL on the NYSE Arca, Inc.) on or about September 8, according to a filing today. Per that filing, the board of Unified Series Trust approved the liquidation plan today, and the fund's last day of trading on the NYSE is expected to be August 31.

Corte Madera, California-based NightShares launched NSPL last October, about 10 months ago. As of last Friday, August 11, 2023, the ETF had grown to $14.93 million in AUM and had an expense ratio of 67 basis points (including a 10-bps fee waiver).

NightShares sibling AlphaTrAI Funds, Inc. serves as investment advisor to NSPL, and Exchange Traded Concepts, LLC (ETC) serves as subadvisor. The actively managed fund's PM team includes four ETC portfolio managers; Todd Alberico, Brian Cooper, Andrew Serowik, and Gabriel Tan. Bruce Lavine, CEO of NightShares and AlphaTrAI Funds, also joined the fund's PM team last December.

NSPL's other service providers include: Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. as custodian and transfer agent; Cohen & Company, Ltd. as independent accounting firm; Northern Lights Distributors, LLC as distributor; Ultimus Fund Solutions, LLC (parent of Northern Lights Distributors) as administrator and fund accountant; and Northern Ligths Compliance Services, LLC (NLCS, an Ultimus affiliate) as chief compliance officer provider.

Since entering the ETF space in June 2022, the NightShares team's ETFs have included: the NightShares 500 ETF (NSPY), the NightShares 2000 ETF (NIWM), the NightShares 100 ETF (NQQQ), the NightShares 100 1x/1.5x ETF (NQQL), the NightShares 500 Covered Call ETF (NCC), and NSPL. All of NightShares' ETFs were designed to capture what the team calls the "night effect," i.e. the overnight performance of the markets when the exchanges are closed.

The NSPL liquidation decision comes a month after the NightShares team filed to liquidate NSPY and NIWM, effective July 31, 2023. Lavine told ETF.com last month that the firm's ETFs' launch timing was "colossally unlucky."

"It just turned out that the day has been performing well of late and certainly better than the historical period that we've seen," Lavine told the publication. "Advisors are finding it a bridge too far to be totally out of the market during the day."

Looking ahead, Lavine hinted to ETF.com that the NightShares team is prepping a new fund, NightShares Select, for a fall launch, with an eye towards incorporating both nighttime and daytime gains, plus artificial intelligence. 

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