FAQ | Dawn Global

About Dawn

Dawn Global is dedicated to building the first active thematic ETF investment platform centered on ETF investment strategies, ETF infrastructure, and ETF data. Dawn Global’s investment strategies are focused on unpenetrated, differentiated, targeted, structurally growing, and expertise-led themes in strategic verticals such as next generation emerging markets, energy transition, and healthcare.

Dawn Global intends to make investing in active investment strategies affordable, accessible, transparent, inclusive, and easy to understand for the investor, marking an innovative approach to conventional active investment management.

Dawn Global was founded by Maurits Pot. Until 2021, Maurits was a public and private equity investment partner at Kingsway Capital, a leading emerging and frontier markets specialist with assets under management of more than $2 billion, where he has represented investors on the boards of several emerging market companies. Prior to this, Maurits worked in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs in London, and was a commodity trader at Vitol. Maurits earned a BA in Economics (Magna Cum Laude) from Middlebury College, Vermont.

Dawn Global seeks to leverage the best elements of ETFs, namely access and affordability, with the best elements of active investment management, namely research and risk management. The internal ETF product suite will be managed by professionals with years of relevant investment and industry experience. All research and publications relevant to the ETFs under their management, such as case studies, presentations, quarterly reviews, and podcasts, will be accessible through the website.

We believe our investment strategies will offer targeted, differentiated exposure to investors by focusing on less accessible regions, underpenetrated themes, and superior security selection.

About the Investment Process

An actively managed ETF is a form of exchange traded fund that has an investment manager or investment team making decisions on the underlying portfolio allocation. An active ETF does not adhere to any passive investment strategy or necessarily mirror or track an index.

Thematic investing seeks to capitalize on well-defined long-term trends, or themes. For an active thematic ETF, the investment manager will decide upon the theme and the portfolio of companies that are related to that theme. For example, a “robotics” theme can include companies involved in warehouse automation as well as self-driving cars.

Dawn Global’s CUBS ETF seeks to invest in the next generation of emerging markets.

Dawn applies an actively managed investment process combining quantitative top-down company screening with qualitative bottom-up company analysis. All ETFs are embedded with an ESG filter premised on an ESG exclusion policy.

For Dawn Global’s CUBS ETF, the top-down quantitative investment screen involves five layers: (1) ESG filter; (2) minimum size criteria; (3) minimum liquidity criteria; (4) minimum quality criteria; and (5) maximum risk tolerance criteria. The bottom-up qualitative investment review involves three layers covering: (1) bottom-up financial analysis via analysis of the companies’ three financial statements; (2) valuation analysis; and (3) governance and management analysis.

For CUBS, the portfolio construction process follows a systematic approach structured around two trading liquidity thresholds: 60% of the ETF [by security count / value] is equally weighted between the most liquid securities, while the remaining 40% of relatively less liquid securities is also equally weighted. These weights are semi-annually rebalanced. This portfolio construction process is designed to manage single country, company, and industry risk.

About CUBS ETF

CUBS ETF listed on NYSE on 17 June 2021.

CUBS ETF invests directly in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, and Vietnam. The ETF is allowed to invest up to 10% of its assets in American Depository Receipts (ADRs) from companies that earn a substantial portion of their revenue from the five CUBS countries. ADRs are issued by non-USA companies that wish to list their shares in the USA.

CUBS ETF does not have thematic industry restrictions, but CUBS ETF excludes specific industries based on its ESG policy. The ESG policy restricts CUBS from investing in companies earning over 50% of their revenues from industries including Defence, Fossil Fuels, Mining, and Tobacco.

CUBS ETF rebalances semi-annually in June and December of each year. A rebalancing results in CUBS ETF buying and selling certain of its portfolio company shares in order to maintain certain criteria such as maximum exposure to one country.

CUBS ETF is currently available on several brokerage platforms including TD-Ameritrade, E-Trade, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, and Schwab.

If you can buy US-listed stocks and ETFs, you should be able to access CUBS ETF. Please check your brokerage platform or with your financial advisor.

The current expense ratio is 0.99%.

CUBS ETF invests in the Diamond Vietnam ETF to give investors exposure to a selection of Vietnam-listed companies that are subject to direct foreign shareholder limits, and therefore are largely inaccessible to foreigners. These companies have historically been amongst the fastest growing and considered the most promising companies in Vietnam. The costs associated with the Vietnam ETF are absorbed by the CUBS ETF and therefore not passed on to CUBS investors.