Adaptiv Select ETF

ADPV

Market cap $169M

The Adaptiv Select ETF (ADPV) employs a proprietary model that either holds 25 high-momentum, high-beta U.S. large-cap stocks or switches its entire portfolio to U.S. Treasury bills. While its overall three-year performance has lagged some competitors like SPMO, ADPV has demonstrated a strong ability to capture upside momentum after market downturns. Despite its cash-switching mechanism designed to minimize losses, ADPV has shown higher volatility and steeper, faster drawdowns than its peers (MTUM and SPMO) in the past.

Adaptiv Select ETF is an actively managed ETF implementing a market-timing strategy. Its basis is rotation between Treasury Bills plus cash for the market downtrends and momentum stocks for the uptrends. ADPV's performance since its inception in November 2022 has been patchy. 2024 was a splash as it massively outperformed IVV, while 2023 and 2025 to date were drab. So its annualized returns are well below those of IVV, while the standard deviation is higher and the maximum drawdown is deeper.

The Adaptiv Select ETF is a Hold due to its high expense ratio and current cash position amid market uncertainty. ADPV excels in bull markets with momentum-driven strategies but struggles in choppy, mean-reverting markets like today. Despite strong past performance, ADPV's 1% expense ratio is costly when parked in cash compared to cheaper T-Bill ETFs.

Adaptiv™ Select ETF uses a market-timing strategy, switching between 25 high-momentum stocks and treasury bills. The momentum model has outperformed the benchmark and other momentum ETFs in 2024, but it has lagged them since February 2023. The timing model (simulated) shows a significant reduction in drawdown over the last 25 years, but it has led to underperformance for 10 years.

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