It has an expense ratio of 0.75 percent, assets under management of $97 million, and was launched in March 2016. It’s up almost 13 percent this year, and has an annualized three-year return of 20.8 percent despite almost 18 percent in 2018.

GAMR is trailing the SDPR Technology Select Sector ETF’s (XLK) year-to-date return of 18 percent, but has bettered XLK on three-year annualized basis by a scant 20 basis points.

The U.S. has the highest geographical weighting, at 26 percent, followed by Japan at 24 percent and South Korea at 17 percent. Toys and juvenile products is the top sector at 32.8 percent, with internet services at 27 percent and software at 12 percent. The top holdings are NHN Entertainment at 3.2 percent, Zynga at 3 percent and Glu Mobile at 2.9 percent. The fund has 79 holdings.

The ESPO fund tracks the MVIS Global Video Gaming & eSports Index, a market-cap-weighted index of video gaming and esports firms. The fund launched in October 2018, and has $15.6 million in assets under management and an expense ratio of 0.55 percent.

Holdings must derive at least 50 percent of total revenues from video gaming and/or esports to be initially eligible for the index, which includes game development, streaming services and league operators. Although it is market-cap weighted, the largest holdings are capped at 8 percent and the index is rebalanced quarterly. It has 25 holdings.

Geographically, the U.S. represents 33 percent of the fund, with Japan at 28 percent and Hong Kong at 11.5 percent. The top three sectors are internet services at 33 percent, toys and juvenile products at 32 percent, and semiconductors at 13 percent. Its top holding is NVIDIA at 9 percent, followed by Tencent Holdings at 7.5 percent and Activision Blizzard at 7 percent.

ESPO is up 16.7 percent this year, which trails XLK by one-and-a-half percentage points.

GAMR and ESPO overlap by weight by only 45 percent, according to ETF Research Center, although 96 percent of ESPO’s holdings are in GAMR. That makes sense since GAMR has nearly three times the holdings. Both funds have less than 10 percent overlap by weight compared to XLK.

The Cloud

GAMR and ESPO are thematic funds, meaning they’re best suited as satellite positions in the equity portion of a portfolio. Robert Saffer, global head of ETF sales at ETFMG, which issues GAMR, says the fund is designed to offer global exposure to a high-growth industry. “It fits into what I would call opportunistic investments,” he says.