ETF shop founded by Vivek Ramaswamy tops $1bn in assets

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Strive Asset Management, the activist ETF shop founded by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, crossed the $1bn in assets under management marker on September 1, roughly one year after launching its first ETF, the company announced.

The largest of the firm’s 11 ETFs, its flagship $362mn US Energy ETF, attracted $18mn in net inflows during the year ended August 31, according to data from Morningstar Direct.

The fund was launched with $1mn in assets.

In February, Ramaswamy stepped down from his position as Strive’s executive chair to run for president. Two months later, the company named investment chief Matt Cole as its first chief executive officer.

Strive’s ETFs recorded net inflows of $603mn between August 2022, when the first Strive ETF was launched, to February 2023, when Ramaswamy left the firm, Morningstar data shows.

Since then, between March 1 and August 31, investors piled $311mn into the ETFs.

The $267mn Strive 500 ETF added $1.4mn in net inflows on August 24, the day after the first Republican presidential debate, according to Morningstar’s database.

In all, investors poured $18mn into the ETF last month.

Although Ramaswamy has departed the firm and “yielded his operational responsibilities”, he remains the company’s majority owner, a regulatory filing shows.

He owned between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of Strive’s shares through a separate company called Strive Enterprises as of August 25.

Overall, the executive changes have been “pretty seamless,” Cole said, noting that Ramaswamy’s departure had allowed the firm to “home in” on wealth managers across the country.

“Vivek running for president has actually given [wealth managers] some comfort to have asset managers with asset management experience at the top of the helm,” Cole said.

Cole rejected the common characterisation that Strive is an anti-ESG firm.

Ramaswamy stated, when Strive launched its US Energy ETF that “the largest US asset managers have shackled US energy companies with so-called Scope 3 emissions caps and other destructive mandates that contributed to the American energy crisis today. The right answer isn’t to complain about it but to solve the problem”.

However, Cole argued that the firm’s primary focus is to maximise returns by prioritising its fiduciary responsibility to investors.

Nonetheless, Strive factors environmental, social and governance-based risks into its investment strategy when those factors are applicable, he said.

“I’m a portfolio manager, and, to me, anytime you constrain anything, whether you’re constraining an investment set to force it to invest in ESG companies or force it to exclude considering certain risk factors, modern portfolio theory would say that they’re constraining your risk-adjusted return potential,” Cole said.

Strive has nine equity, index-tracking ETFs and last month launched two actively managed fixed-income ETFs: the $40mn Total Return Bond and $28mn Enhanced Income Short Maturity ETFs.

Cole co-manages both fixed-income ETFs, prospectuses show.

Strive in March began rolling out a pooled employer plan for small and midsized businesses.

*Ignites is a news service published by FT Specialist for professionals working in the asset management industry. Trials and subscriptions are available at ignites.com.