Harbor Capital Advisors is looking to expand its product lineup through ETFs, according to the firm’s managing director and head of ETFs Steve Cook.
Speaking with ETF Trends Editor-in-Chief Lara Crigger for ETF Leaders, powered by the New York Stock Exchange, at Exchange: An ETF Experience 2022, Cook explained that Harbor is “really looking to round out” the firm’s offerings.
“It’s important for us to bring solution-oriented products for investors,” Cook said. “We think offering Harbor’s long active management expertise in the ETF vehicle is… a great opportunity to bring our core alpha generating philosophy in a new vehicle for investors, so we’re really looking to expand our product lineup… to allow [investors] to diversify their portfolios.”
Harbor Capital launched its first two ETFs last year: the Harbor Scientific Alpha Income ETF (SIFI) and the Harbor Scientific Alpha High-Yield ETF (SIHY), which provide access to the fixed income space.
Cook also noted that inflation is “top of mind for every investor, every advisor,” and described it as “a big danger to the long-term growth and health of investors’ portfolios.” So, Harbor looked at the products being provided to investors to help them with inflations “and saw an opportunity to bring a better solution for investors.”
Harbor worked with Quantix Commodities “to design an index that was purpose-built to fight inflation.” Unlike other commodities indexes like BCOM or GSCI, which “were really built to provide a broad performance of commodities,” the Quantix Inflation Index is not only designed to allow investors “to protect themselves against inflation over the long term,” but it also “has the ability to rotate based on the type of inflation that we’re seeing,” according to Cook.
For example, if Harbor is seeing debasement, they “can allocate more to metals and gold.” If the inflation is more demand-driven, then Harbor “can allocate more towards metals, copper… oil and gas.”
Though he admitted Harbor’s new ETFs were “like children, you can’t pick a favorite,” Cook did mention a few options he was proud of, including the recently launched Harbor Long-Term Growers ETF (WINN) and the Harbor Corporate Culture Leaders ETF (HAPY). He also mentioned the Harbor All-Weather Inflation Focus ETF HEGR, another fund Harbor launched in February seeking to address the two different types of inflation that can occur: that which is driven by scarcity and demand and that which is driven by debasement of currency.
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