MutualFundWire.com: With $97MM From SMAs, a Cali Quant Seeds an ETF

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Monday, April 14, 2025

With $97MM From SMAs, a Cali Quant Seeds an ETF

The folks at a quantitative boutique in the Los Angeles area are teaming up again with an ETF-in-a-box near Philadelphia, launching a new ETF seeded with tens of millions of dollars from SMAs.

Mebane T. "Meb" Faber
Cambria
Co-Founder, CEO, Chief Investment Officer, Portfolio Manager

Last Thursday (April 10), Meb Faber, co-founder and chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management, and Wes Gray, majority owner and strategic advisor of ETF Architect, unveiled the impending launch of the Cambria Endowment Style ETF (ENDW on the Nasdaq). Manhattan Beach, California-based Cambria Investment Management, LP serves as sponsor and subadvisor for ENDW, while Havertown, Pennsylvania-based Empowered Funds, LLC (dba EA Advisers and ETF Architect) will serve as investment advisor.

ENDW debuted today and comes with an expense ratio of 29 basis points. The new fund has abotu $96.9 million in AUM, and the Cambria team credits that size to individual investors and advisors trading in SMA holdings for the new ETF.

(The launch of ENDW comes four months after the Cambria and ETF Architect folks rolled out another SMA-seeded ETF, TAX, which now has about $25 million in AUM. Cambria now offers 19 ETFs in total, with $2.6 billion in AUM.)

Faber and Jonathan Keetz, chief operating officer of Cambria, will PM ENDW. They also PM TAX, and they will PM a third planned Cambria ETF Architect ETF, AYLD.

Faber describes ENDW as offering individual investors access to "the potential benefits of an endowment-inspired investment strategy."

"Often, many US investors do not have exposure to many of the assets and strategies we incorporate into the ETF, such as global equities, real assets, and strategies such as value and trend following," Faber states. "ENDW incorporates these to provide a comprehensive portfolio solution designed to thrive across economic cycles."

Gray describes ENDW as "another step forward" in the ETF Architect and Cambria teams' efforts to make "sophisticated strategies traditionally reserved for institutional investors" more "widely accessible."

ENDW is an actively managed series of the EA Series Trust (fka the Alpha Architect ETF Trust). The new ETF's other service providers include:

SS&C's Alps Distributors, Inc. as distributor;

Practus, LLP as counsel;

Tait, Weller & Baker LLP as independent accounting firm;

U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, LLC (dba U.S. Bank Global Fund Services) as administrator, fund accountant, and transfer agent; and

U.S. Bank National Association as custodian and securities lending agent.