As lump-sum money floods into a U.S.-listed exchange-traded fund (ETF) whose portfolio is made up roughly half by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, Wall Street is calling it unusual.
According to market research firm FactSet on the 22nd (local time), the net inflow into the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), which listed on the New York Stock Exchange on the 2nd, totaled $1.11 billion (about 1.6 trillion won) through the 21st.
Total assets under management, which were only $250,000 (about 370 million won) at listing, surpassed $1 billion (about 1.5 trillion won) on the 17th, two weeks after listing, and swelled to $1.22 billion (about 1.8 trillion won) on the 21st.
DRAM is a thematic fund that invests in global memory semiconductor corporations. It consists of 11 stocks in total, and as of the 21st, the weights of SK hynix (26.9%) and Samsung Electronics (23.4%) alone exceed half. The third-largest holding by weight is U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology (20.9%).
On Wall Street, there is a view that it is unusual for new money to flow so quickly into a thematic ETF launched by a small manager without much publicity. ETF.com said it "delivered an astonishing run as a niche product," calling it "one of the smartest products launched by a small to mid-sized manager this year."
ETF.com noted that "while memory stocks have been among the biggest beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, investors had no clean way to target these names because two of the three major producers of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, are listed only in Korea and thus were not included in major U.S. semiconductor funds."
Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg Intelligence also said of DRAM that it had "crazy volume for a newborn fund," posting on X (formerly Twitter) that it was "the most underpriced AI play."
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) also said the rapid growth of DRAM is "rare to see in any ETF," calling it "an unprecedented performance for a small asset manager."
However, WSJ pointed out that thematic ETFs that concentrate investments in a few names tend to launch when the value of the related theme has peaked in the market, and as a result, they often underperform.