Introducing 17 Thematic Indexes

In March, we announced the launch of Thematic, the modern platform for building, launching, and managing custom investment products at scale. By building a SaaS, collaborative technology stack from the ground up, our goal is to provide customized investment products from the best and brightest around the world at the lowest cost.

Today we are excited to announce the launch of 17 proprietary indices that showcase how easy it is to both develop and follow customized public market products that are either unavailable or difficult to track with available service providers. 

Leading Venture Capital and Hedge Fund Firm Indices

We’ve developed 12 easily trackable and automatically updated Thematic VC & Hedge Fund family of indices that each follows the public market portfolios of Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Pershing Square, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global. As public, growth, and private investments continue to converge and venture capital firms are increasingly becoming Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), we believe that indexing firm performance over time to be a meaningful and insightful exercise. To date, there is not a convenient, centralized, and automated way to track, compare, and maintain the underlying performance of these various leading asset managers.

For venture capital firms, the constituent securities are portfolio companies that the firm was the lead investor in in their Series A and/or Series B private round of financing beginning from 2015, according to Pitchbook, that have since become public companies.

For hedge funds, the constituent securities and their weights are automatically updated from quarterly 13F filings. Hedge fund indices are custom weighted to best match the fund’s publicly disclosed portfolio.

You can read further information and detail about our approach and methodology in this blog post. 

Thematic Altimeter US Total Return Index (TALTI): The Thematic Altimeter Index tracks the public security portfolio of the hedge fund, Altimeter Capital Management, automatically updated to reflect the latest quarterly 13F filings. 

Thematic AtoZ US Total Return Index (TATOZ): The Thematic AtoZ US Total Return Index tracks the market cap weighted public security portfolio of venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Known as "a16z,” the firm invests in seed to venture to late-stage technology companies, across bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, and companies building toward American dynamism.

Thematic AtoZ US Equal Weighted Total Return Index (TATOZEQ): TATOZEQ tracks an equal weighted basket of the publicly listed securities of venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz.

Thematic Coatue Total Return Index (TCOAT): The Thematic Coatue Total Return Index tracks the public security portfolio of the hedge fund, Coatue Management, automatically updated to reflect the latest quarterly 13F filings. The firm manages ~$70 billion in assets and focuses on high growth investments in the technology, media, and telecommunications space in both the public and private markets.

Thematic Founder Focus US Total Return Index (TFOFO): The Thematic Founder Focus US Total Return Index tracks the public security portfolio of leading venture capital firm, Founders Fund. Founders Fund invests at all stages across a wide variety of sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health and consumer Internet. Formed in 2005, the firm has more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management.

Thematic Founder Focus US Equal Weighted Total Return Index (TFOFOEQ): The Thematic Founder Focus US Equal Weighted Total Return Index tracks an equal weighted basket of the publicly listed securities of venture capital firm, Founders Fund.

Thematic Generalyst US Total Return Index (TGEN) The Thematic Generalyst US Total Return Index Index tracks the public security portfolio of General Cataylst. General Catalyst looks for active company building at every stage and backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies and market leading businesses. The firm has $33B under management. 

Thematic Generalyst US Equal Weighted Total Return Index (TGENEQ): The Thematic Generalyst US Equal Weighted Total Return Index Index tracks an equal weighted basket of the publicly listed securities of venture capital firm, General Catalyst.

Thematic Pershing Square US Total Return Index (TPERS): The Thematic Pershing Square Index (TPERS) tracks the public security portfolio of the hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, automatically updated to reflect the latest quarterly 13F filings. Founded in 2004 by Bill Ackman, Pershing Square is a concentrated, research-intensive, fundamental value investor in the public markets.

Thematic Redwood Tree US Total Return Index (TREDW): The Thematic Redwood Tree US Total Return Index tracks the market cap weighted public security portfolio of venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital. Founded in 1972, Sequoia is a venture capital focused on energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile startups. With $85B under management, Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. 

Thematic Redwood Tree US Equal Weighted Total Return Index (TREDWEQ): The Thematic Redwood Tree US Equal Weighted Total Return Index tracks the market cap weighted public security portfolio of venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital. 

Thematic Tiger Global Management Total Return Index (TTIGR): The Thematic Tiger Global Management Index (TTIGR) tracks the public security portfolio of the hedge fund, Tiger Global Management. Tiger’s public equity business, founded in 2001, conducts deep fundamental research on its focus industries and geographies and seeks to make long-term investments in the companies believed to be best positioned to offer the highest returns.

Dividends

With Thematic, we seamlessly handle dividend-bearing securities and reinvestments so anyone can track the total return of holding a basket of securities over time. In order to achieve this aim, a gross total return basket considers payments made in respect of the basket components, such as dividends, without the deduction of any withholding tax or other amounts an investor holding the basket component would typically be exposed to.

Dividend Aristocrats (DIVAS): The Dividend Aristocrats Index (DIVAS) tracks companies in the S&P 500 that have paid and increased dividends every year for at least 25 years in a row. The index is equally weighted, and rebalanced every quarter. To qualify for membership in the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index, a stock must: Be a member of the S&P 500, have increased dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years, have a market capitalization of at least $3B, and at least $5mm in daily trading volume. The list is well diversified across sectors and can be tracked with the ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF.

Dividend Champions (DIVCHAMPS): The Dividend Index OG. The Original Dividend Champions Index was created by David Fish in 2007. A dividend champion is a company which has a 25 year record of annual dividend increases. There are only 137 such companies in the US today.

Dividend Kings (DIVKINGS): The Dividend Kings Index (DIVKINGS) is comprised of Dividend Royalty- the rarest of the rare companies that have been able to increase dividends to shareholders for 50 or more years in a row. Dividend Kings are members of the S&P 500 that have increased their dividends for at least 50 consecutive years. There are only 38 such Kings in the US. They are world-class dividend growth stocks and today there aren't any exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that focus exclusively on Dividend Kings.

Academic Research Supported Themes

Thematic Stadium Naming Rights Index (ARENA): The Thematic Stadium Naming Rights Index is based on years of research showing companies that spend on naming sports stadiums make other poor business decisions. Bad sports stadium naming right deals are an indication of other poorly allocated marketing decisions and wasteful spending. According to research and analysis in 2007 by Michael Leeds, a sports economist at Temple University, and more recently, Nicholas Rossolillo, President and Investment Advisor at Concinnus Financial, in 2016, and Patrick Nave at Axiom Alpha in 2021, independently showed support for this investment thesis. These companies tend to underperform their peer group and the broader market.

Industry-Specific Insights and Know-How

Thematic Payments Innovation Index (TPAIN): The Thematic Payments Innovation Index tracks the performance of the best-in-class payments products created by the most innovative payments companies all over the world. Developed by experienced product developers in the payments space, having built the global payment and commerce systems at Airbnb, PayPal, Eventbrite, Brex, and Plaid.

Read more detail about TPAIN in our blog post.