Frequently asked questions

When did the fund launch?

August 1st, 2023.

Where does the fund trade?

Nasdaq

What is ROE?

The Astoria US Equal Weight Quality Kings ETF (ROE) is designed to provide exposure to the US large and midcap stock universe.  The ETF leverages Astoria’s quantitative stock selection research process.  We are equal weighting our stocks to help diversify risk, avoiding the concentration risk associated with market-cap weighting.

What’s the background behind the ticker, ROE?

ROE was chosen as the fund ticker as it indirectly stands for Return on Equity, a popular metric used to measure a company’s profitability.

What does ROE cost?

49bps.

Who is Astoria?

Astoria is an investment management firm that specializes in research-driven, cross-asset, ETF, and quantitative equity portfolio construction. Our core services include investment management, research, and sub-advisory services.

As of June 30, 2023, Astoria oversees approximately $1.3 bln in assets under management and advisement on behalf of its clients. This number includes assets under management of approximately $342.5mln in discretionary assets, $2.3 mln in non-discretionary strategies, and $60.0 mln in the AXS Astoria Inflation Sensitive ETF (PPI).

Additionally, Astoria oversees approximately $920.44 mln in advisory assets, which are non-managed strategies powered by Astoria’s research, investment management services, portfolio construction analytics, model portfolios, outsourced Chief Investment Officer support, or other non-managed investment assignments.

What role does Astoria serve?

Astoria serves as a sub-advisor for the ETF, and the fund resides in ETF Architect’s trust.

What role does ROE fit in a portfolio?

What are Astoria’s credentials?

Astoria has decades’ worth of experience in quantitative stock portfolio construction.  We apply a similar logic in managing our stock portfolios in Separately Managed Accounts (SMA) to the ROE ETF.  We believe ETFs are a more tax-efficient wrapper than SMAs.

The core of Astoria’s business is managing multi-asset ETF-managed portfolios for financial advisors. We have deep expertise in the ETF ecosystem.

Astoria is the subadvisor for the AXS Astoria Inflation Sensitive ETF (PPI), launched in 2021. PPI was ranked #1 out of 409 funds in the Morningstar Global Allocation category for the 12 months through 12/31/2022. For 2022, PPI returned 3.95% (based on NAV and 4.04% based on closing market price). The fund has $60 mln in assets as of June 30, 2023.

Does ROE invest in large cap US stocks?

No. We choose the highest quality stocks within the US large/midcap universe instead of solely large-cap stocks, which many of our peers focus on.

Why did you launch ROE?

The S&P 500¹ currently has the highest stock-specific and sector risk concentration in 30-40 years.  As of July 18th, Technology stocks (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia) make up approximately 30% of the large-cap broad market indices, while consumer discretionary and communication services combined (Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla, Meta) make up an additional 19%.

Many of the Smart Beta ETFs in existence are optimized against the S&P 500, so they will also carry concentration risk.

We compare this period to the late 1990s when the internet bubble constituted a large percentage of stocks in the broad US equity large-cap universe.  After this bubble burst, factor invested became prominent, with large-scale asset management firms entering the space.

What is the universe of stocks you select from?

All primary listings in the United States.  There are 3 additional criteria a stock must meet to get into the universe.

Percent of Free Float Shares > 25%

Current Market Value > $5bln

Average Volume Past 6 Months > $50mln

How many stocks are in ROE and how often is it rebalanced?

There are 100 equal-weighted stocks in ROE.  The fund is actively managed with an annual reconstitution and quarterly share rebalance.

I need more details on the screening process.  Can you share?

Astoria utilizes metrics that define Quality (focus is on quality), Valuation, Dividend, Growth, and Momentum across all 11 GICS sectors found across the equity market.

The metrics defining each factor are sector relative, meaning the metrics that have best historically captured the factor for that sector are used (Ex: Valuation: Fwd PE for Financials, P/Bk for Energy).

We then subtract each metric’s median, by sector, from the original metric in the screen. The resulting adjusted metric is used in the ranking process.

All ranking is done in deciles (1 = best, 10 = worst). Each stock is assigned a rank corresponding to each factor. A weighted average rank of the individual factor ranks is calculated and re-ranked to determine each stock’s final rank.

As the stocks are equally weighted, the number of stocks selected for each sector is based on the targeted sector composition relative to the benchmark. Active tilts may be implemented if there is macro data to support higher/lower convictions on specific sectors.

The portfolio is reconstituted annually and rebalanced back to equal weight quarterly. The ranking of each stock is also reviewed quarterly.

1. The S&P 500 Index is an unmanaged index generally representative of the U.S. market for large capitalization equities. This unmanaged index does not reflect fees and expenses and is not available for direct investment.