By Suzanne McGee and Svea Herbst-Bayliss
(Reuters) -Asset manager VistaShares has selected high-profile investor Bill Ackman as the fund manager to mimic in its newest exchange-traded fund.
The VistaShares Target 15 ACKtivist Distribution ETF made its debut on Tuesday amid a boom in such funds either overseen by or designed to replicate the portfolios of top managers like Ackman.
It follows the success of VistaShares’ first such offering, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF, which tracks legendary investor and billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett’s holdings and has pulled in some $475 million in assets in the six months since its debut.
“We analyzed dozens and dozens of other managers who had high-conviction positions” before settling on Ackman, VistaShares CEO Adam Patti told Reuters.
The new ETF will mirror Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management’s holdings, as disclosed in quarterly 13F filings with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and other regulators. It will use a covered call options strategy to generate income of 15% annually. Ackman’s current portfolio includes bets on Amazon, Nike and Uber.
Neither Ackman nor Pershing Square has any link to the new ETF. A spokesperson for Ackman declined to comment.
Ackman launched Pershing Square in 2014 and oversees some $30 billion in assets for pension funds, endowments and wealthy investors, invested in about a dozen companies. One of Wall Street’s best known activist investors, he has spearheaded a board overhaul at Canadian Pacific and helped find a new CEO for Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Ackman said three years ago he planned to abandon high profile activism. The hedge fund has generated a total return of 121% over the last five years, compared to a total return of 84.5% from the Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the same period. While 2025 got off to a tough start, Ackman’s portfolio swung from a double-digit loss to a gain of 18% in the first eight months of the year.
The VistaShare ETFs are part of a broader trend, as investors seek to track or replicate the holdings of investment stars. Wedbush Securities has $498 million in an ETF overseen by its technology research analyst Dan Ives, while Fundstrat Global Advisor founder Tom Lee is the name behind the $2.5 billion Fundstrat Granny Shots Large Cap ETF.
Roxanna Islam, head of sector and industry research at VettaFi, said investors should not expect to generate the same kind of returns from “star-inspired” ETFs as the hedge funds those managers oversee.
“There is a problem with the lag between when those stars invest and the disclosure” of those positions, Islam said. That delay can amount to weeks or even months.
Patti said he is not worried this will dampen enthusiasm for the products, noting that options income makes the fund distinctive.
Still, he added, “I’d never tell anyone to sell their core portfolio holdings and just buy this fund. It’s a diversifier.”
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee and Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Richard Chang)
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