Final Results - Fall 2017 ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge

Wednesday, December 13, 2017 - For all those participants that will be continuing their studies, we invite you to take part in next semester’s competition, which will be opening on Monday 12/18! Registration is free and on the contest website at www.etfportfoliochallenge.com

Five young collegians displayed investing acumen beyond their years and established themselves as the winners of the Fall 2017 ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge. Students pursuing 86 different majors from 220 schools, 34 states, 25 countries and 6 continents competed in this semester’s competition, underscoring the wide-ranging appeal that ETFs have among emerging investors. With a record number of participants from a diverse range of geographic, cultural and academic backgrounds, it was clear that there would be no shortage of competition.

Our contestants began the semester with a virtual balance of $100,000 and with the task of constructing the best performing portfolio of ETFs. Students were afforded weekly rebalancing opportunities and were allowed to invest in 4 to 10 ETFs from the universe of U.S listed ETFs. The Fall 2017 portfolio challenge officially kicked off Monday, September 25^th and concluded on Friday, December 8^th. After 11 weeks of competition marked by frequent change atop our leaderboard, these 5 students emerged with the top performing portfolios -

Fall 2017 ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge Winners

Name	School	Class	Return
Ryan Hannifan	U of Wisconsin - Madison	2017	22.90%
Patrick Michael	Saint Joseph’s University	2018	21.52%
Edwin Lee	Rutgers University	2018	19.64%
Berenice Andaur	Pace University	2018	19.22%
William Zhu	U of California, Santa Barbara	2020	19.10%

The Fall 2017 winners were propelled to victory by a variety of timely and astute investment choices. As volatility continued to plumb new lows, technology and semiconductor stocks soared to record highs, oil prices rebounded and financials surged on the prospects of pro-growth tax reform during the course of our Fall competition, our winners shrewdly identified these trends and constructed their portfolios to take advantage of these developments. Investments in products such as ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (SVXY), Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3x Shares (SOXL), ProShares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQ), VelocityShares 3x Long Crude Oil ETN (UWT) and Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3x Shares (FAS) enabled our winners to capture these trends and generate outperformance.

As the Top 5 Winners of this semester’s challenge, these students will be featured and recognized during the ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge Awards Ceremony at the upcoming Spring 2018 ETP Forum (www.etpforum.org) on Tuesday, April 24 at the New York Athletic Club. These students will also be joined by the rest of our top 25 finishers, who are all awarded free passes for their performance –

Fall 2017 Final Leaderboard 6-25

Name	School	Return
Si Young Choi	Hong Kong U of Science and Technology	17.84%
Brian Toy	Binghamton University	16.54%
Christopher Martinez	University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley	16.52%
Priyanka Saha	University of Houston	14.49%
Adam Ross	University of Detroit Mercy	13.73%
Mengqin Huang	Hong Kong U of Science and Technology	13.29%
Christopher Tie	University College London	13.06%
Paige Fairchild	University of Detroit Mercy	12.96%
Carolina Luna	Pace University	12.32%
Spiro Pliakos	University of Detroit Mercy	12.06%
Huarui Qin	University of Manitoba	11.88%
John Matthew Garcia	Fresno City College	11.64%
Luke Palmer	University of New Hampshire	11.60%
Anthony Calderone	Arizona State University	11.16%
Rafael Kusuma	Monash University Malaysia	11.13%
Holly Hedemark	University of Detroit Mercy	11.09%
Connor Pritchard	Arizona State University	10.85%
Ryan James	University of Wisconsin – Madison	10.83%
Huy Thang Chu	Erasmus University	10.68%
Ho Fan Wu	University of Buffalo	10.63%

An analysis of our students’ investments reveals an extremely research-intensive and knowledgeable group, as their investments ventured far outside the mainstream of the ETF ecosystem. Among the 2,000+ U.S. listed ETPs from 122 fund sponsors, our students invested in 813 products from 56 issuers. Of these 813 products, 67 were ETNs, 67 were inverse and 129 were leveraged based products. Their investments cut across blended, developed, emerging, and frontier markets. From an asset class perspective, our contestants favored equity-based products with investments in 578 equity ETPs or 71% of the total products invested in. Their asset class allocations were rounded out with 12% to fixed income products, 8% commodities, 4% multi asset, 3% currency, and 2% real estate.

Using our taxonomy, we were able to further examine how granular our students were with their product selections. In category, the first level of our taxonomy, our contestants invested in everything from broad equity and sector products to Swedish krona and Chinese renminbi based products. In focus, the second level of our taxonomy, our students’ ETF investments ran the gamut from financials and high yield to esoteric livestock and coffee focused products. Overall, here were the most traded securities in our fall competition -

With each successive edition of the portfolio challenge, we continue to be more and more impressed by the ETF knowledge and investment skills of our student contestants. We look forward to hosting our sixth edition of the portfolio challenge in the Spring and continue to observe the enthusiasm for ETFs and investing talent our next group of students bring to bear.

Registration for the Spring 2018 competition will open on Monday, December 18.  For more information and to sign-up for the challenge, please visit: etfportfoliochallenge.com.

Thank you for reading ETF Global Perspectives!

ETFG 21 Day Free Trial:  https://www.etfg.com/signup/quick

_____________________________________________________________

Assumptions, opinions and estimates constitute our judgment as of the date of this material and are subject to change without notice.  ETF Global LLC (“ETFG”) and its affiliates and any third-party providers, as well as their directors, officers, shareholders, employees or agents (collectively ETFG Parties) do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, adequacy or timeliness of any information, including ratings and rankings and are not responsible for errors and omissions or for the results obtained from the use of such information and ETFG Parties shall have no liability for any errors, omissions, or interruptions therein, regardless of the cause, or for the results obtained from the use of such information. ETFG PARTIES DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, SUITABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR USE.  In no event shall ETFG Parties be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, incidental, exemplary, compensatory, punitive, special or consequential damages, costs, expenses, legal fees, or losses (including, without limitation, lost income or lost profits and opportunity costs) in connection with any use of the information contained in this document even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

ETFG ratings and rankings are statements of opinion as of the date they are expressed and not statements of fact or recommendations to purchase, hold, or sell any securities or to make any investment decisions. ETFG ratings and rankings should not be relied on when making any investment or other business decision.  ETFG’s opinions and analyses do not address the suitability of any security.  ETFG does not act as a fiduciary or an investment advisor.  While ETFG has obtained information from sources they believe to be reliable, ETFG does not perform an audit or undertake any duty of due diligence or independent verification of any information it receives.

This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security or other financial instrument. Securities, financial instruments or strategies mentioned herein may not be suitable for all investors.  Any opinions expressed herein are given in good faith, are subject to change without notice, and are only correct as of the stated date of their issue.  Prices, values, or income from any securities or investments mentioned in this report may fall against the interests of the investor and the investor may get back less than the amount invested.  Where an investment is described as being likely to yield income, please note that the amount of income that the investor will receive from such an investment may fluctuate.  Where an investment or security is denominated in a different currency to the investor's currency of reference, changes in rates of exchange may have an adverse effect on the value, price or income of or from that investment to the investor.