Is the ETF market at a turning point in its history? After approval was granted by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) for non-transparent ETFs a few days ago, a Swiss startup is working to develop an alternative to tracker funds based on a quantitative approach, the Swiss website finews reports. Systematic Investment Management, or Simag, a spinoff from the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Zurich (ETH), led since November 2018 by Christian Gast, known as “Mr. ETF,” who has been distributing ETFs on the Swiss market for 18 years, first at UBS and then at BlackRock, is developing a kind of anti-ETF on the Swiss market. The startup is supported by Credit Suisse and the University, with the personal support of Didier Sornette, a physics professor who has been doing research into financial markets for several decades. Simag also has access to ETH supercomuting resources, which have provided the basis for the development of the product. The quantitative strategy is based on lessons from physics, autonomous systems, deep learning, and behavioural finance. The founders of Simag have spent three years developing their approach, and the startup will now move into the practical stage, in an effort to win over investors that the approach has solid foundations. In a few words, the approach aims to outperform the market by 2%, not including costs. The commission is 0.25%, which is very low by comparison with ETFs. Although the firm is still very young, Simag is offering a product which does not cost more than an ETF, but which returns slightly higher performance. “We hope to see institutional clients trading in a part of their tracker funds,” says Gast, on the hunt for clients. From his perspective, the ETF market is becoming saturated, after annual growth of about 19% between 2008 and 2018. According to Gast, this growth rate can be expected to be halved in the future. The startup uses computers to study the performance of 7,500 stocks worldwide, to analyse trends and build portfolios of 150 stocks on the basis of a point system. From there, the system selects 10% of the most promising stocks, the 10% with the strongest potential to fall, and assigns these a negative weighting. The procedure is conducted daily, and can help to avoid market pitfalls. Simag has already attracted CHF100m for its two funds, and inflows are expected to continue to rise, according to Gast, given the good results thus far.