Alex Morris and his team are rolling out another passively managed fixed income fund and preparing to launch four actively managed ones.

Alexander Robert "Alex" Morris F/m Investments CEO, Chief Investment Officer

Last Tuesday (February 25), Morris, CEO of F/m Investments [profile], and Mark Spindel, senior advisor to F/m, unveiled the debut of the F/m Ultrashort Treasury Inflation-Protected Security ETF (aka the F/m Ultrashort TIPS ETF) (RBIL on the Nasdaq). The F/m team also build a quartet of other ETFs: the F/m Yield Curve Steepening Strategy ETF (USTP), the F/m Yield Curve Flattening Strategy ETF (UFLT), the F/m Rising Interest Rates Strategy ETF (URIZ), and the F/m Falling Interest Rates Strategy ETF (UFAL).

RBIL's inception date was February 24, while the other four ETFs have not yet launched. RBIL comes with an expense ratio of 25 basis points, and as of Friday (February 28) it had $50.02 million in AUM. UFAL, URIZ, UFLT, and USTP will each come with an expense ratio of 50bps.

Washington, D.C.-based F/m Investments LLC will serve as investment advisor to the new ETF and the four planned ones. All five ETFs will also have the same F/m trio as their PM team: Peter Baden, managing director and director of fixed income strategy; Marcin Zdunek, managing director, head of capital markets, and portfolio manager; and Morris.

While USTP, UFLT, URIZ, and UFAL will all be active ETFs, RBIL is designed to track the Bloomberg U.S. Ultrashort TIPS 1-13 months Total Return Unhedeged USD Index. Bloomberg Finance LP serves as RBIL's index provider.

According to the F/m team, RBIL is the first ETF ever that solely (and continuously) invests in TIPS with an average duration of less than a year (aka ultrashort TIPS).

"Any TIPS ETF with meaningful duration — even a so-called 'short duration' ETF — may have more interest rate risk than people realize," Morris states. "RBIL's ultrashort duration is designed to solve that problem."

Spindel puts the launch of RBIL in the context of investors "confronting meaningful inflation risks for the first time in decades."

"And for many of those investors, traditional inflation hedges — commodities, real estate, gold — are unsuitable as cash alternatives due to lack of liquidity and unwanted market volatility," Spindel states.

RBIL is a series of the RBB Fund, and USTP, UFLT, URIZ, and UFAL will be, too. The ETFs' other service providers include: Cohen & Company, Ltd. as independent accounting firm; Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP as counsel; ACA Foreside's Quasar Distributors, LLC as distributor; Securities Finance Trust Company (aka eSecLending) as securities lending agent; U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, LLC (dba U.S. Bank Global Fund Services) as administrator, dividend disbursing agent, and transfer agent; and U.S. Bank, N.A. as custodian. 

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