First up, on Thursday I’ll be interviewed for the PI World online radio show with Tamzin Freeman on Thursday lunchtime. Its easy to access and free – here’s the attendee link for Thursday at 1pm.

https://bit.ly/AdInvestor5_6_20

Feel free  to forward on !

Next up, returning to my recent riffs on over priced tech stocks I noticed this aside from Andy Lapthorne at SocGen.

Apparently we’ve all been missing the main tech show which is the Japanese Mothers index (Market Of The High-growth and EmeRging Stocks), which says Andy is “an index rarely mentioned in the press which is a shame given the efforts the acronym builders at the TSE went to create it. But it’s has been catching a few headlines recently as it’s up 80% from the trough! We tend to only highlight its performance as symptomatic of a euphoric stock market, as long-term it has been a poor way to make returns”.

I have to say I’d only just about heard of the Mothers Index many moons ago but its worth reading a recent (Monday) report on Bloomberg, HERE – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-01/biotech-heavy-nasdaq-of-japan-is-asia-s-best-performing-index

According to this news report “ the index is up 27% in the past month, the most of any equity gauge in Asia. A surge in shares of AnGes Inc. on the back of hopes for its coronavirus vaccine candidate is among the reasons — but far from the only one. The outbreak has been an unexpected boon for shares in many of the larger firms on the board, including flea market app operator Mercari Inc. and drug maker Sosei Group. Several companies that listed just in December, including cloud accounting firm Freee KK and telemedicine provider Medley Inc., have also benefited as the virus changes work and lifestyle habits in Japan.”

Which leads us nicely into a new ETF from the folk at HANetf. If trying to make big profits on a very niche country specific tech exchange strikes you as a tad high risk, then why not try and diversify your tech holdings by investing in a basket of tech ETFs powered by global disruption trends?

Cue the new HANetf fund of fund ETF which gives investors access to six equally weighted tech themes; Cloud, Cybersecurity, Future Cars, Genomics, Robotics & Automation and Social Media , all via the HAN-GINS Innovative Technologies UCITS ETF (ITEK).

I have to say that I think this is a quite smart idea. There has been a profusion of thematic ETFs in recent years, trying to capture every big trend imaginable. The sheer range of ideas has probably left most investors slightly confused, thus a fund of fund of big trends is a nice and easy vehicle. It is also a reasonably decent way of diversifying your tech holdings away from just a small handful of FAANGs and Chinese tech superstars.

I suppose one criticism of such a fund might be that you already have plenty of diversification in say a broad diversified US tech sector ETF (and much cheaper in TER), but in reality these are still market cap weighted creatures. I suppose one could also just say bugger the complexity of equal weighting a fund of fund – why not invest in Scottish Mortgage!

That said the giant investment trust isn’t really that focused, specifically, on stuff like robotics and cyber security as such, so this ETF does allow for more specific targeting on the cutting-edge trends. As for returns from the index that powers the ETF, according to the HANetf note in 2018 this combined index would have lost 9.24%, gained 30.7% in 2019 and lost 2.19% so far in 2020. Top ten holdings at the moment would include the following: The Meet Group 1.68%, Biontech 1.50%, Facebook 1.47%, Exelixis 1.47%, Pinterest 1.47%, Amazon 1.46%, Zscaler 1.43%, Sina Corp 1.43%, Alphabet 1.39% and Seattle Genetics 1.34%. US stocks account for 59% of holdings, Europe 13%.

Fund information