- Retail Euphoria Turns Six-Week Fund Into Record-Busting AI Trade
May 16, 2026
(Bloomberg) -- Brian Emes manages a retail store in Lethbridge, Alberta, a small city on the Canadian prairie about a two-hour drive from the US border. On the morning of May 11, before opening the shop, the 43-year-old launched his brokerage app and bought 55 shares of an exchange-traded fund that hadn’t existed until early April.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Winners and Losers From Trump and Xi’s Beijing Summit Talks Hormuz Oil Flows Creep Higher as More Supertankers Exit What Is The Thucydides Trap and Why Did Xi Raise It With Trump? Iran’s Kharg Island Oil Jetties Empty Again Yesterday, Satellite Shows Nigerian Tycoon Femi Otedola Buys £53 Million London Mansion
The fund is the Roundhill Memory ETF or DRAM. It now accounts for roughly 7% of his portfolio — a concentrated wager, made on the strength of Reddit threads and YouTube videos, that artificial intelligence has turned memory chips into the trade he could not afford to miss.
Emes had never owned a memory stock. His investments largely sit, as they always have, in broad index products: mostly the iShares Core Equity ETF Portfolio fund. DRAM is his first real thematic bet.
“I’m thrilled I can directly invest in memory producers,” said Emes.
He is among a slew of retail investors who have piled into the fund — up some 84% since its April 2 launch — pushing it to about $10 billion in assets and into the top 10 US ETFs by year-to-date inflows, out of more than 5,000 listed products. By some measures, no ETF in history has grown faster.
DRAM is what fearless risk-taking looks like in the spring of 2026. In a year when nothing has been allowed to fall for long — when prediction contracts and zero-day options have all found their willing bidders — a six-week-old ETF built around three Asian chipmakers has become a mainstream retail trade.
Specialist products that once sat at the edges of the ETF industry are being pulled into its center, even as the lopsided options buying around DRAM gives some traders pause about how much further the wager can run. On Friday, DRAM fell 5% as rising bond yields threaten to knock the AI trade off its upward course.
Built by boutique firm Roundhill, the vehicle provides concentrated access to a handful of memory companies, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which trade primarily on the Korean exchange and have historically been difficult for North American investors to own directly. About half of DRAM’s portfolio is in SK Hynix and Samsung — and it is exactly this condensed exposure that makes it appealing, Emes said.
“The ETF reduces risk of relying on one company like Micron,” he said. At the same time, “it is direct exposure to the AI bottleneck.”
Story Continues
High-bandwidth memory is essential for the GPUs running AI training and inference workloads in data centers, and the market is dominated by a handful of producers, said Aniket Ullal, senior vice president and head of ETF research and analytics at CFRA. While funds like the tech-heavy Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 provide exposure to AI hyperscalers, gaining access to the South Korean companies that dominate the memory-chip industry is harder to come by. That makes DRAM “the most targeted vehicle for the memory trade,” Ullal said.
DRAM took 27 trading sessions to cross $6.5 billion in assets, which the previous top-spot-holding fund — BlackRock Inc.’s blockbuster Bitcoin ETF — took 30 days to achieve, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Over the past two weeks, it has steadily climbed up the ranks of most-traded ETFs, going from having the 34th-most volume at the start of the month to top 20 currently. It is already among the most-bought securities on retail-trader platforms like Interactive Brokers.
The memory fund is also commandeering the attention of options traders. It’s been one of the busiest ETF options markets over the past week, with more than $1 billion worth of options traded each day, according to Asym Research’s Rocky Fishman. That figure has grown so quickly that it has surpassed long-standing active option underlyings in some of the most-active full-sector ETFs, including the State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) and the State Street Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF). Both launched back in 1998.
“Activity has been very lopsided toward call options, presumably with investors buying calls to chase the rally,” he said. Heavily skewed call buying is a classic late-cycle signal in single-name and thematic trades, often preceding sharp reversals when sentiment turns.
The bull case is that AI has structurally rewired memory demand, locking in capacity contracts the cyclical industry never enjoyed before. The bear case is that the same story has been told at the top of every tech cycle since the 1990s, and that retail-driven flows tend to unwind faster than they accumulate.
“All thematic ETFs should be thought of as hot sauce,” said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. But “even if you have a selloff, it’s not like this trade will go away. AI isn’t going away.”
DRAM’s success is already catching the attention of other ETF issuers. In recent days, T-Rex has filed for a 2x inverse DRAM fund. Leverage Shares has filed for a long 2x memory ETF. Defiance has submitted paperwork for an options-income vehicle based on DRAM.
“The monumental success of DRAM has surprised even me,” said Jane Edmondson, head of index product strategy at TMX VettaFi and an 11-year veteran of the ETFs space. “Now we are seeing levered, inverse, and income-enhanced versions of DRAM,” she said, adding “how quickly this has all occurred is unprecedented.”
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Behind the Claude Frenzy That Ate Up All the Mac Minis America Is Addicted to Disposable Work Disney Is Banking on Baby Yoda to Revive the Star Wars Franchise The Woman Selling Longevity to Women Left Out of the Boys Club At China Summit, Trump Has CEOs, But Xi Has Leverage
©2026 Bloomberg L.P.
View Comments
- Royal Caribbean Cruises and Other Consumer Discretionary Stocks to Sell
May 15, 2026
The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary Exchange-Traded-fund is down 13% from its record high in January, while the S&P 500 has risen to new highs this month.
Continue Reading
- Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc. May 2026 Dividend Announcement and April Financial Update
May 14, 2026 · prnewswire.com
ATLANTA, May 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc. (NYSE: IVR) (the "Company") today announced that the Company declared a cash dividend of $0.12 per share of common stock for the month of May 2026. The dividend will be paid on June 12, 2026 to stockholders of record at the close of business on May 26, 2026, with an ex-dividend date of May 26, 2026.
- INVESCO MORTGAGE CAPITAL INC. MAY 2026 DIVIDEND ANNOUNCEMENT AND APRIL FINANCIAL UPDATE
May 14, 2026
ATLANTA, MAY 14, 2026 /PRNEWSWIRE/ -- INVESCO MORTGAGE CAPITAL INC. (NYSE: IVR) (THE "COMPANY") TODAY ANNOUNCED THAT THE COMPANY DECLARED A CASH DIVIDEND OF $0.12 PER SHARE OF COMMON STOCK FOR THE MONTH OF MAY 2026. THE DIVIDEND WILL BE PAID ON JUNE 12, 2026 TO STOCKHOLDERS OF RECORD AT THE CLOSE OF BUSINESS ON MAY 26, 2026, WITH AN EX-DIVIDEND DATE OF MAY 26, 2026.
- Invesco CEO on Private Assets, QQQ Growth and Nasdaq Partnership
May 14, 2026 · youtube.com
Invesco President and CEO Andrew Schlossberg says clients are leaning into market volatility and sees the QQQ as a key US bellwether. Speaking with Katie Greifeld on "Bloomberg Open Interest," Schlossberg also discusses private markets and the firm's partnership with the Nasdaq.
- AI Bond Binge Overwhelms Wall Street, Pushes Alphabet Abroad
May 14, 2026
(Bloomberg) -- Bankers were still putting the final touches on Alphabet Inc.’s blockbuster $17 billion of bond sales when word started to spread Monday morning on Wall Street: the company is already hawking more debt.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Iran’s Kharg Island Oil Jetties Empty Again Yesterday, Satellite Shows Ambani’s Cola War With Coke, Pepsi Spurs Fridge Bonanza in India Nvidia’s CEO Joins Trump in China With AI in the Spotlight Trump Lands in China for Xi Trade Summit With Iran War in Limbo
This time, it was in yen. Alphabet’s executives had stayed up through the night to get on with Tokyo investors and pitch the deal. The week prior it had been in euros and Canadian dollars, and, a few months before that, dollars, pounds and Swiss francs. In all, Alphabet will have raised close to $60 billion by the time the yen sale is finalized, a four-month run that ranks as one of the greatest corporate borrowing binges ever.
Both the sheer scale of the fundraising — quadruple the amount of bonds Alphabet had sold in its first 26 years in business — and the span-the-globe approach it took to pull it off has put the tech giant at the forefront of a race to fund an artificial intelligence buildout expected to cost nearly $5 trillion by the end of 2030. All told, tech companies have already sold more than $300 billion of debt to US investors to fund AI spending.
And Wall Street bankers say they will, one by one, follow Alphabet’s lead and tap overseas markets because they can’t depend on America alone to finance those sorts of ambitions — not without overwhelming demand and sending funding costs sharply higher. Some signs of stress are already emerging. While tech stocks keep soaring — lifting benchmark equity indexes — returns on their debt have been lagging those generated by the investment-grade market as a whole.
“The reality is that there’s so much need for depth, they have to tap every single source of liquidity that they can,” said Nanda Kamat, global head of project finance at Royal Bank of Canada, which helped lead Alphabet’s C$8.5 billion ($6.2 billion) bond sale last week, the country’s biggest ever.
For overseas bond markets, the deals could prove disruptive, too. As hyperscalers fan out across the globe in search of funding, some analysts and investors are warning that the coming wave of issuance into foreign-currency markets risks crowding out local companies that have spent decades relying on relatively steady access to funding at home.
“All this AI issuance makes you wonder at what point there are just too many bonds,” said Jim Fitzpatrick, head of US investment-grade research at Allspring Global Investments. “No one wants to do that one deal that goes badly.”
Story Continues
That need to tap global liquidity has been on full display in Alphabet’s yen deal this week. Bankers have worked around the clock to execute the unprecedented eight-part sale.
Debt capital markets desks and the company’s finance team were up as early as 3 a.m. in the US to launch into the Japanese market Monday, kicking off a multiday process in which order books are handed from Tokyo to London to New York and back again, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction.
The deal, which could close as soon as Friday, marks Alphabet’s fourth bond sale in a new currency this year alone, and its sixth overall. Depending on the final size, the company could eclipse Anheuser-Busch InBev for the largest global corporate borrowing spree ever over a half-year span.
And Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has overnight become a dominant player in several foreign debt markets.
Its pile of euro-denominated debt — now at about €22 billion ($26 billion) — ranks as the eighth-largest among non-financial issuers, putting it ahead of mainstays including BMW AG and Mercedes-Benz Group AG. By week’s end it could be the second-biggest corporate issuer in Japan.
Only about 55% of Alphabet’s bond debt is now in US dollars, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.
Earlier this week Amazon.com Inc. raised more than $3 billion in its first-ever Swiss franc deal, making it the market’s sixth-largest issuer.
A representative for Alphabet declined to comment on the company’s future financing plans, while an Amazon spokesperson said the company regularly evaluates its operating plans and makes financing decisions accordingly.
Bankers say they’re pushing tech executives to look abroad for funding in part to avoid a glut in the US market. Nearly 40% of high-grade US corporate bond sales this year have come from tech companies including hyperscalers, according to a Barclays Plc analysis of issuance excluding the financial industry. If that proportion holds for the year, it would be a record share.
Historically, that kind of rapid growth has worked out poorly for investors. Tech companies, for example, went through another growth period from 2015 through 2017, and lagged non-financials by about 0.16 percentage point over that time, according to Barclays strategists.
Pursuing a diverse mix of currencies helps maintain “scarcity value in the US market,” said John Servidea, global co-head of investment-grade financing at JPMorgan Chase & Co., which has helped lead bond sales for both Alphabet and Amazon this year.
Still, the rapid rise in overseas issuance is already raising questions about how much these markets can absorb. Historically, multinational bond sales across several currencies were typically one-time financings tied to major acquisitions. Now, companies are poised to return to foreign-currency markets repeatedly as AI spending accelerates, creating what investors expect will be a steady pipeline of new debt supply.
“There’s some uncertainty at the moment in terms of the degree of supply that’s coming to market and how that will be digested,” said Rory Sandilands, a portfolio manager at Aegon Asset Management.
One concern is that the surge of new issuance could start weighing on bonds already trading in the market, particularly if investors begin demanding bigger concessions to absorb the supply.
“The worry is always, is there another deal around the corner,” said Stuart Chilvers, a fund manager at Rathbones. “If you have one of them come to market shortly after the other’s just come, it’s not that surprising if you see them drag the existing deal wider.”
Most observers say that, for now at least, there’s ample demand among investors for more deals, particularly because hyperscalers still make up only a sliver of major bond indexes. In euro, sterling and Swiss franc credit benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg, tech accounts for less than 5% of the market, for example.
It may be only a matter of time before Alphabet, Amazon and others push even further afield in search of financing, with Australia and Taiwan viewed as potential sources of capital. Bankers say there are advantages to moving early: companies that establish themselves in smaller, niche currency markets first can lock in investor relationships and funding access, while latecomers risk finding those markets already crowded by rivals.
“There’s a bit of game theory to this,” said Teddy Hodgson, global co-head of investment-grade debt capital markets at Morgan Stanley, which is helping lead Alphabet’s yen-denominated deal. “None of these names have exhausted the US market,” he added, but “if you just stick to US dollars, you might saturate that market, and by then, your peers will have built a durable and diverse funding profile globally.”
--With assistance from Issei Hazama, Michelle Cheng, Dan Wilchins, Yue Qiu, Michael Gambale, Ronan Martin, Chunzi Xu and Takahiko Hyuga.
(Adds chart, Alphabet’s currency mix in 13th paragraph.)
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Behind the Claude Frenzy That Ate Up All the Mac Minis The Tiny, Essential Building Blocks Powering the AI Boom At China Summit, Trump Has CEOs, But Xi Has Leverage Trump Is Losing the Voters He Needs Most Undersea Internet Cable Projects Are Getting Tangled in the Iran War
©2026 Bloomberg L.P.
View Comments
- T. Rowe Price April AUM Rises 6.7% Sequentially Despite Net Outflows
May 13, 2026
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. TROW announced its preliminary assets under management (AUM) of $1.83 trillion for April 2026. The figure reflected an increase of 6.7% from the prior month. The company experienced net outflows of $10.6 billion in April 2026, primarily driven by a few large redemptions.
Breakdown of TROW’s AUM Performance
At the end of April, T. Rowe Price’s equity products totaled $882 billion, an increase of 8.9% from the previous month. Fixed income (including money market) grew 1.4% to $218 billion. Furthermore, multi-asset products totaled $665 billion, an increase of 6.4% from the previous month.
Alternative products, valued at $60 billion, remained stable from the prior month.
T. Rowe Price registered $599 billion in target date retirement portfolios in April 2026, which rose 6.8% from the prior month.
Our Take on TROW
T. Rowe Price continues to benefit from favorable market performance and strength across equity and multi-asset products, which supported AUM growth in April 2026. The company’s strong investment track record, diversified product portfolio and retirement-focused offerings are expected to support long-term asset growth. However, significant client redemptions and continued reliance on advisory fees remain concerns amid volatile market conditions.
T. Rowe Price’s Zacks Rank & Price Performance
Over the past six months, TROW shares have risen 1.1% against the industry’s 4.4% decline.Zacks Investment Research
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Currently, T. Rowe Price carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Performance of Other Asset Managers
Franklin Resources, Inc. BEN reported a preliminary AUM of $1.74 trillion as of April 30, 2026, which increased 3.6% from the prior month.
The increase in preliminary AUM reflected the positive impact of markets and long-term net inflows of $4 billion, inclusive of $1 billion of long-term net outflows at Western Asset Management. Excluding Western Asset Management, BEN’s preliminary long-term net inflows were $5 billion.
Invesco IVZ announced preliminary AUM of $2.34 trillion for April 2026, representing an 8.3% increase from the previous month.
In the reported month, IVZ’s net long-term inflows were $18.2 billion. Money market net inflows were $2.2 billion. AUM was positively impacted by favorable market returns, which increased the AUM by $151 billion. FX increased the AUM by $8.2 billion.
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Story Continues
Franklin Resources, Inc. (BEN) : Free Stock Analysis Report
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (TROW) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Invesco Ltd. (IVZ) : Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
Zacks Investment Research
View Comments
- Invesco Ltd. to Participate in Bernstein's Annual Strategic Decisions Conference
May 13, 2026
ATLANTA, May 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Invesco Ltd. (NYSE: IVZ), a leading global asset management firm announced today that Andrew Schlossberg, President and Chief Executive Officer will participate in a fireside chat at Bernstein's Annual Strategic Decisions Conference at 2:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, May 27, 2026.(PRNewsfoto/Invesco Ltd.)
A link to the live audio webcast will be available on the Investor Relations section of invesco.com/corporate. For those unable to listen to the live audio webcast, a replay will be available following the event.
About Invesco Ltd. Invesco Ltd. is one of the world's leading asset management firms serving clients in more than 120 countries. With US$2.2 trillion in assets under management as of March 31, 2026, we deliver a comprehensive range of investment capabilities across public, private, active, and passive. Our collaborative mindset, breadth of solutions and global scale mean we're well positioned to help retail and institutional investors rethink challenges and find new possibilities for success. For more information, visit www.invesco.com.
Investor Relations Contacts: Greg Ketron 404-724-4299 Jennifer Church 404-439-3428 Media Relations Contact: Andrea Raphael 212-323-4202Cision
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/invesco-ltd-to-participate-in-bernsteins-annual-strategic-decisions-conference-302770515.html
View Comments
- T. Rowe Price April AUM Rises 6.7% Sequentially Despite Net Outflows
May 13, 2026 · zacks.com
TROW's April AUM climbed 6.7% to $1.83T as gains in equity and multi-asset products offset $10.6B in net outflows.
- Should You Invest in the Invesco Aerospace & Defense ETF (PPA)?
May 13, 2026
Looking for broad exposure to the Industrials - Aerospace & Defense segment of the equity market? You should consider the Invesco Aerospace & Defense ETF (PPA), a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on October 26, 2005.
Retail and institutional investors increasingly turn to passively managed ETFs because they offer low costs, transparency, flexibility, and tax efficiency; these kind of funds are also excellent vehicles for long term investors.
Additionally, sector ETFs offer convenient ways to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors. Industrials - Aerospace & Defense is one of the 16 broad Zacks sectors within the Zacks Industry classification. It is currently ranked 8, placing it in top 50%.
Index Details
The fund is sponsored by Invesco. It has amassed assets over $8.02 billion, making it one of the largest ETFs attempting to match the performance of the Industrials - Aerospace & Defense segment of the equity market. PPA seeks to match the performance of the SPADE Defense Index before fees and expenses.
The SPADE Defense Index is comprised of approximately 50 U.S. companies whose shares are listed on a U.S. Exchange. These are companies that are principally engaged in the research, development, manufacture, operation and support of defense, military, homeland security and space operations.
Costs
Since cheaper funds tend to produce better results than more expensive funds, assuming all other factors remain equal, it is important for investors to pay attention to an ETF's expense ratio.
Annual operating expenses for this ETF are 0.58%, making it on par with most peer products in the space.
It has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 0.39%.
Sector Exposure and Top Holdings
While ETFs offer diversified exposure, which minimizes single stock risk, a deep look into a fund's holdings is a valuable exercise. And, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
This ETF has heaviest allocation in the Industrials sector -- about 92.9% of the portfolio.
Looking at individual holdings, Boeing Co/the (BA) accounts for about 8.21% of total assets, followed by Rtx Corp (RTX) and General Electric Co (GE).
The top 10 holdings account for about 57.51% of total assets under management.
Performance and Risk
The ETF has gained about 8.33% and is up roughly 32.91% so far this year and in the past one year (as of 05/13/2026), respectively. PPA has traded between $128.26 and $185.59 during this last 52-week period.
The ETF has a beta of 0.72 and standard deviation of 17.36% for the trailing three-year period, making it a medium risk choice in the space. With about 62 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.
Story Continues
Alternatives
Invesco Aerospace & Defense ETF holds a Zacks ETF Rank of 2 (Buy), which is based on expected asset class return, expense ratio, and momentum, among other factors. Because of this, PPA is an excellent option for investors seeking exposure to the Industrials ETFs segment of the market. There are other additional ETFs in the space that investors could consider as well.
Global X Defense Tech ETF (SHLD) tracks GLOBAL X DEFENSE TECH INDEX and the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (ITA) tracks Dow Jones U.S. Select Aerospace & Defense Index. Global X Defense Tech ETF has $7.70 billion in assets, iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF has $13.91 billion. SHLD has an expense ratio of 0.5%, and ITA charges 0.38%.
Bottom Line
To learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Invesco Aerospace & Defense ETF (PPA): ETF Research Reports
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
Zacks Investment Research
View Comments
