Social-media sentiment ETF backed by Dave Portnoy scores $280 million in inflows on first day of trading

• The BUZZ social-media sentiment ETF backed by Dave Portnoy saw big inflows in its first day of trading.
• Despite falling 4% on Thursday, the VanEck ETF saw $280 million in inflows, according to data from Bloomberg.
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The VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF fell 4% in its first day of trading on Thursday, but that didn't stop investors from piling into the fund.

According to data from Bloomberg, the ETF, which trades under the ticker symbol "BUZZ" and is backed by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, saw $280 million in fund inflows on Thursday. That's a stark comparison to the first iteration of the ETF, which launched in 2016 but shut down three years later due to its inability to attract assets.

It's been a perfect storm for the ETF to be relaunched this year, following a surge in new retail investors amid the pandemic and the outsized influence of Reddit's WallStreetBets forum on so-called meme stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.

The ETF aims to capitalize on the growing use of online platforms as a sounding board for trade ideas. The fund tracks an index that scrubs websites like Reddit, StockTwits, and Twitter to determine which stocks are garnering the most positive sentiment online. Holdings are then weighted accordingly.

With thousands of ETFs to choose from, and hundreds of new ETFs launching every year, it's tough competition to attract new assets, especially for a specialty ETF that is not tied to a passive index. But the BUZZ ETF did just that.

According to Bloomberg, the first day of inflows for the ETF "probably ranks it among the 12 best debuts on record."

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