Barstool’s Dave Portnoy touts new ETF investment fund that tracks social media chatter – CNET [CNET]
![Dave Portnoy](https://i0.wp.com/cnet4.cbsistatic.com/img/V7Mt7l4NI1MX0ihkBWjMVZYdXzY=/1092x0/2021/03/02/b5dce687-e309-4da1-831c-843793588b8a/screen-shot-2021-03-02-at-2-37-56-pm.png?resize=800%2C0&ssl=1)
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy tweets regularly about his daily stock trades and was very active during the recent frenzy over GameStop stock. On Tuesday, he introduced an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that uses artificial intelligence to determine what stocks to trade based on positive online posts.
The VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF, or BUZZ, on the New York Stock Exchange, launched Thursday at a price of $24.40. It holds stock in 75 companies that have a market cap of $5 billion, and it’ll rotate these stocks based on social media posts, news articles and blogs.
Emergency Press Conference – Introducing $BUZZ ETF pic.twitter.com/sgTc4MUS8e
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) March 2, 2021
The top holdings in BUZZ are Twitter, Draft Kings, Ford, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, AMD, American Airlines, Netflix and Tesla.
Portnoy tweeted out a video Tuesday saying the ETF started up five years ago and has outperformed the S&P 500 by 40% in 2020.
On Wednesday, Portnoy tweeted another video explaining his involvement. He confirmed that he was not getting paid to promote BUZZ, but was given an ownership stake in the ETF.
A breakdown of $BUZZ and clearing up some misconceptions #DDTG pic.twitter.com/QS0944LQUd
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) March 3, 2021
Correction, March 2 3:54 p.m. PT: An earlier version of this article misstated what Portnoy said in the video he tweeted out. He said BUZZ outperformed the S&P 500 by 40% in 2020.