In the AFR today: Wall Street set for new ETF gold rush as single-stock era begins

Note I'm actually a very strong proponent for ETF's (of the more general index tracking variety - the bulk of my investing outside of super is in ETF's of this form)

From the article...

A new ETF-for-everything era may have just begun on Wall Street, swelling an industry that already boasts almost 3000 products and $US6.2 trillion ($9.12 trillion) in assets

The booming world of exchange-traded funds is about to get even more crowded after the first single-equity ETFs launched last week despite a torrent of regulatory warnings over their risks, as retail investors continue to reel from the crash in speculative trades of crypto and meme stocks

The eight products from AXS Investments appear to be the start of a coming invasion of amped-up strategies that will seek to enhance or invert the performance of volatile companies such as Tesla, Nvidia and PayPal. Another proposed lineup from Toroso Investments offers to layer on a bullish options strategy to boost returns

All told, at least 85 more such ETFs are planned, according to filings tracked by Bloomberg, covering some 37 companies

That’s just the start. With a never-ending fee war taking costs on index-tracking ETFs to rock-bottom levels, the arrival of single-stock products opens up a lucrative avenue for issuers, with leveraged or inverse trades tracking major companies up for grabs

“So I think we’re gonna see ETF issuers blanket the market with all varieties of these ETFs: leverage, inverse, options overlays, you name it”

...

The AXS TSLA Bear Daily (ticker TSLQ) charges an expense ratio of 1.15 per cent, while the spot borrowing rate for shares of Tesla – a measure of the cost of shorting the stock – stands near 0.3 per cent, according to data compiled by S3 Partners. However, the appeal of an ETF such as TSLQ was more about the convenience rather than the cost, Bloomberg Intelligence’s James Seyffart said

“If you don’t have a margin account or even if you do, it might be easier to just buy TSLQ,” he said. “You click buy, and done”

Another concern for novice traders is that the tickers for the single-stock funds are very similar to the tickers for the stocks themselves