Are you bullish on large U.S. banks? Or do you hate them . . . as in really, really hate them.

Either way, REX Shares LLC has covered the bases with its suite of five exchange-traded notes linked to the same equal-weighted index composed of 10 large U.S. banking companies. These are leveraged and inverse ETNs providing a range of exposures to the index from 2x and 3x bullish to 1x, 2x and 3x bearish.

This suite of products launched on Wednesday on the NYSE Arca exchange and comprises the following:

• MicroSectors U.S. Big Banks Index 3X Leveraged ETNs (BNKU)

• MicroSectors U.S. Big Banks Index 2X Leveraged ETNs (BNKO)

• MicroSectors U.S. Big Banks Index Inverse ETNs (KNAB)

• MicroSectors U.S. Big Banks Index -2X Inverse Leveraged ETNs (BNKZ)

• MicroSectors U.S. Big Banks Index -3X Inverse Leveraged ETNs (BNKD)

All five products have an expense ratio of 0.95 percent. The underlying Solactive MicroSectors U.S. Big Banks Index takes a 10 percent stake in the following 10 companies: Bank of America, BB&T, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, PNC, Charles Schwab, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo.

These five new ETNs expand REX Shares’ existing MicroSectors concept that includes the FANG+ series of five ETNs that range from three times bullish to three times bearish leveraged and inverse exposure to an index that tracks the four FANG stocks of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (i.e., its parent company, Alphabet), plus six other widely held technology stocks—Alibaba, Apple, Baidu, Nvidia, Tesla and Twitter.

The MicroSectors product line is a partnership between REX Shares and the Bank of Montreal, which is the issuer of these ETNs.

ETNs are unsecured debt instruments issued and underwritten by banks or other large financial institutions. They can be held to maturity or sold. Unlike exchange-traded funds, which are backed by their underlying basket of securities, ETNs are backed by the creditworthiness of their underwriters. In this case, the MicroSectors products are unsecured obligations of the Bank of Montreal.

All of the U.S. Big Bank ETNs are slated to mature on March 25, 2039. Investors who hold their ETNs until maturity would get a cash payment based on the leveraged participation in the performance of the index. 

But these aren’t buy-and-hold investments. As REX Shares states in the product literature, these ETNs are meant to be daily trading tools for sophisticated investors to manage daily trading risks in their portfolio.