US-based asset manager REX Shares has launched a novel exchange-traded fund (ETF) that bundles leveraged covered-call strategies tied to nine individual stocks, including crypto-linked giants Coinbase and MicroStrategy. The fund, trading under the ticker GIF on Cboe Global Markets, is designed as a single income-focused product.
The GIF fund holds equal-weighted positions in REX's existing suite of single-stock Growth & Income ETFs. Each underlying ETF targets approximately 1.25x exposure to its respective equity while writing covered calls on a portion of the portfolio. This strategy generates option premium income, which the fund seeks to distribute to investors on a weekly basis. Covered call premiums are upfront payments collected for selling options on owned stocks, creating income in exchange for capping some of the shares' potential upside.
The ETF's portfolio provides equal-weighted exposure to nine companies: Nvidia (via NVII), Tesla (TSII), MicroStrategy (MSII), Coinbase (COII), Robinhood (HOII), Palantir (PLTI), CoreWeave (CWII), Eli Lilly (LLII), and Walmart (WMTI). This spans sectors including crypto-linked equities, technology, artificial intelligence, healthcare, and retail.
The launch occurs during a week of significant activity for MicroStrategy-linked securities. On Wednesday, 21Shares introduced an exchange-traded product (ETP) on Euronext Amsterdam, giving European investors exposure to MSTR, MicroStrategy's variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, under the ticker STRC NA. Furthermore, companies including Prevalon Energy and crypto-focused bank Anchorage Digital announced they had allocated portions of their corporate treasuries to MSTR, though the sizes of the positions were not disclosed.
MicroStrategy describes MSTR as a digital credit instrument with an 11.25% annual dividend, part of its broader strategy to issue fixed-income securities tied to its substantial Bitcoin holdings. Since adopting its Bitcoin treasury strategy in August 2020, MicroStrategy has become the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, reporting ownership of 717,722 BTC, which represents about 3.4% of Bitcoin's fixed 21 million supply.
Despite the demand for securities linked to MicroStrategy, the company's stock price has suffered alongside Bitcoin's decline. According to Yahoo Finance data, MicroStrategy shares are down more than 60% over the past six months and approximately 50% over the past year. The company has also emerged as the most heavily shorted large-cap U.S. stock on Goldman Sachs' latest ranking, based on short interest relative to market value.
