MutualFundWire.com: Patti Starts the WILD Next Stage of Leveraged ETF Evolution

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Patti Starts the WILD Next Stage of Leveraged ETF Evolution

Adam Patti and his team are partnering with a familiar ally to launch a focused, leveraged ETF. They're prepping an unleveraged version, too.

Adam Scott Patti
VistaShares
President, CEO

Today, Patti, CEO of VistaShares, unveils the launch of the VistaShares Animal Spirits 2x Daily Strategy ETF (WILD on the NYSE Arca, Inc.). The VistaShares team also filed to launch the VistaShares Animal Spirits Strategy ETF (ANIM). Delray Beach, Florida-based VistaShares Advisors LLC serves as subadvisor to ANIM and WILD, while Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Tidal Investments LLC [profile] serves as the funds' investment advisor.

WILD's inception date is today, while ANIM has not yet debuted. ANIM will come with an expense ratio of 75 basis points, while WILD's expense ratio is 129bps.

The PM team for WILD and ANIM includes three people:

Stephen Foy, portfolio manager at Tidal;

Christopher Mullen, PM at Tidal; and

Patti himself.

BITA GmbH serves as index provider to both ANIM and WILD. Both ETFs are tied to the BITA VistaShares Animal Spirits Index, a focused portfolio of stocks in "companies that are garenting outsized attention from traders." ANIM is designed to roughly track that index, while WILD is designed to offer twice the daily performance.

"Using a systematic process, WILD provides 2x leveraged daily exposure to a portfolio of five widely traded stocks exhibiting the strongest investor sentiment and buying momentum," Patti states. "The portfolio composition is adjusted monthly to reflect changing sentiment among these popular trading stocks."

"It offers a more diversified approach to investing in high-beta securities, and we believe it is the next stage in the evolution of what a leveraged ETF can be," Patti adds.

Patti puts the launch of WILD (and perhaps the upcoming launch of ANIM) in the context of the recent rise of single-stock leveraged ETFs.

"The attention different funds in that category attract can tell us much about how the market is viewing a specific company. With that information, we can build an actively managed, concentrated portfolio of those stocks that are generating the most momentum and fueling the most investor optimism, seeking to deliver 2x daily performance for the resulting basket of equities," Patti states. "It's an approach long favored by institutional traders and now available to all investors for the first time."

Both WILD and ANIM are series of Tidal Trust III. The two ETFs' other service providers include:

ACA's Foreside Fund Services, LLC as distributor;

Sullivan & Worcester LLP as counsel;

Tait, Weller & Baker LLP as independent accounting firm;

Tidal ETF Services LLC as administrator;

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

U.S. Bank National Association as custodian.