ProShares Global Listed Private Equity ETF

PEX

Market cap $13.7M

Private equity investment in defense swelled in early 2025, even as the investment landscape is quickly shifting in both the US and Europe. Recent policy decisions are changing the field of play for private equity defense investors.

The tried and trusted 60/40 portfolio allocation model has prevailed time and time again. But investors are increasingly looking to include private assets as part of the pie.

The private equity market will likely drive IPO volumes higher than 2024, but the strength of the PE market could cap the size of deals brought to the market. Activity in the US IPO market started off as a trickle, but a flurry of activity in the last week of January brought the YTD total to $3.6 billion. The weighted average equity price performance of U.S. IPOs by sector shows that every sector was higher on average by day 50 post-issuance, with information technology being the highest at 30.7%.

As the global private equity industry took tentative steps toward recovery in 2024, Japan raced ahead. The value of private equity investment in Japan jumped nearly 41% over the prior-year total in 2024, far outpacing the 25% year-over-year gain in global private equity deal value, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

The world's largest asset managers are scrambling to devise new ways to package private investment opportunities into a passive ETF wrapper. Private assets are the fastest-growing market in the financial world — but could also prove the most challenging field for ETF providers to penetrate.

Bloomberg published an article on March 11 about the GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NASDAQ: NVDL ). Without further reading, I immediately thought this was one of the exchange traded funds (ETFs) to avoid as the S&P 500 hits all-time highs.

Several readers have asked me for an update on ProShares Global Listed Private Equity ETF. PEX is a private equity ETF that provides portfolio diversification and a high yield of 13.2%. Concerns about private equity valuations and declining assets under management make PEX an unattractive investment option.

The industry closed out November maintaining its pace of growth, rolling out another dozen new ETFs during the week. The launches included products from Goldman Sachs, Innovator, SP Funds, Counterpoint, YieldMax, Aztlan, and ETF newcomer Macquarie.