| | Good morning and happy Monday. That's quite an endorsement. Boutique asset manager Akre Capital Management jumped into the ETF business late last year, when it swapped a nearly $12 billion mutual fund for the exchanged-traded fund structure. It was one of the biggest ETF conversions ever. And that got at least one big investor's attention. Mesirow Financial Investment Management reportedly scooped up more than 2 million shares of the Akre Focus ETF (AKRE) during the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Form 13F filings. That represented a stake of nearly $132 million, or 2.7% of Mesirow's assets under management. But maybe it isn't an endorsement as much as a leap of faith. AKRE, which seeks out companies managed by "individuals who have a history of treating public shareholders like partners," returned just over 1% last year, vastly lagging the S&P 500, and year to date, it has a negative return of nearly 15%.
| | | | | | *Presented by Motley Fool Asset Management. Stock data as of market close on February 20, 2026. | | | | | | | | | Save it for later. That's the message the Securities and Exchange Commission is sending to asset managers with a proposal issued last week that would extend some reporting timeframes for mutual funds and some ETFs from monthly to quarterly. The agency also appears to be primed to reverse an update to the Names Rule that it passed in 2024, a move made partly to curb possible greenwashing. The agency last year extended compliance dates for reporting rules updated during the Biden administration, and in notices it issued last week, it pushed those out as far as mid-2028. "This proposal provides registrants additional time to file the form, refines reporting items and reduces the frequency of public reporting of fund portfolio holdings — all the while retaining insight into funds' portfolio-related issues," SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in a statement. What Would Dr. Seuss Do? Former Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, who advocated strongly for the update to the names rule, referenced "20th-century philosopher Theodor Geisel [Dr. Seuss]," noting that "one is required to say what they mean and to mean what they say," at the time the rule was being modified. The SEC has long required that 80% of holdings reflect a fund's name, if the name suggests a particular focus, though the rule updated in 2023 expanded that to more fund categories, including those purporting to use environmental, social and governance criteria, or ESG. Crenshaw likened the need for an update to the necessity of consumers having an ingredient list for a jar of peanut butter. (As anyone who's read the list on a jar of "peanut spread" knows, there's more than just peanuts in there. ) Fund companies have also been working to comply with the SEC's new Form N-PORT requirements, which reduced the time that funds have to give holdings data to the SEC and changed public reporting from quarterly to monthly. Last week's proposal gives funds 45 days from month end to report, rather than 30, and would "remove or streamline certain reporting items, including modifications to portfolio-level risk metrics and return information and removal of reporting requirements," the agency noted in a release. "There were technical obstacles that fund groups were working on, and this will be very well received," Dechert partner Corey Rose said. "It appears to be a situation where the SEC certainly seems to be anticipating that it will issue a final rule that it will eliminate these requirements."
  Need Input: The changes will ultimately mean less information available to fund investors, said Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy for Better Markets. "The commission really hasn't yet explained why it is making the change," he said. " Investors need timely disclosures so they can make better investment decisions … There's just no indication the commission is accounting for how this is going to affect investors." Written by Emile Hallez | | | | | | | | | | | The stakes couldn't be higher. BlackRock is expanding its Ethereum lineup and making moves to launch a new fund, the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB). The asset manager submitted an updated S-1 filing last week disclosing who will receive staking rewards from the fund, having initially submitted a proposal in December. BlackRock is already the largest Ethereum ETF provider, with its iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) sitting at $9.1 billion in assets, and it's intending to build on that lead. The proposed launch also reflects an increasing willingness of big-name issuers to offer staked products, which some in the industry pointed out are not for everyone. "I don't believe in staking the coins because it takes on risk for the holder," said Mike Willis, CEO of Cyber Hornet ETFs. "The minute you loan shares out or stake them, you're giving up some sort of rights on them." Make No Mi-stake Spot crypto ETFs that use staking allow investors to pledge a certain amount of the currency to the platforms and blockchain networks that validate transactions. Although these types of products can seem appealing for their high rewards, Willis said, not all firms can mitigate the risk. "If there was a run on the market, and nobody could find their shares because they're all lent out, you've got an issue there," he said. "In extreme cases, [that] could come back to bite shareholders." In BlackRock's case, Coinbase is the staking platform that will receive a cut of the rewards, while shareholders will get around 80%, according to the latest filing. BlackRock isn't the only staker on the turf, though: Just last week, Grayscale and Canary launched products staking the cryptocurrency SUI. Some of the staked products now available include: - The Canary Staked SUI ETF (SUIS), which has attracted $23 million in its first three days of trading.
- The Rex-Osprey SOL + Staking ETF (SSK), which launched in July and has $126 million.
- The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), which launched in October and has $471 million.
Like Your Life Depends On It. Spot crypto products can provide a way for the "bitcoin-curious" to get into the digital asset space, Willis said. But if a client doesn't understand what they're invested in (as many with staking products don't), they can't "HODL," or hold on for dear life. "Crypto fanatics, they can hold through 70% drops because they understand the underlying tech and will buy more when it's down," Willis said. "But the general public does not understand crypto, and they can't hold through those big drops." Written by Lilly Riddle | | | | | | | | | All investors love a bull market, but some don't want to have a cow. Vegans, who avoid eating, wearing or using animal-based products, don't have a lot of options to make their portfolios fauna-free. There is currently one vegan-themed ETF in the country, the US Vegan Climate ETF (VEGN), though the advisor to that fund, Beyond Investing, filed last week for an international version. It would give vegans (an estimated 1% of the US population) another investing choice that seeks to avoid animal cruelty. "That is really handy for a lot of my clients that are vegan or vegetarian, or at least want to invest that way. It basically tracks the S&P 500, so it's not way off on a risk deviation," said Tom Nowak, advisor at Quantum Financial Planning; he has 20 to 30 clients who are vegan, most of whom include VEGN in their portfolios. "Even though it's not a super low-fee fund … it seems to be a fair price to filter out oil and animal cruelty." Vegan as Apple The passively managed VEGN ETF avoids "large-cap problem companies," the company states on its page. At first glance, its top holdings look a lot like those of other large-cap funds: It has nearly 7% of its assets allocated to Micron Technology, 5% to Alphabet, 5% to NVIDIA, 4% to Mastercard, 4% to Visa and 4% to Apple. The fund has about $135 million in assets and charges 60 basis points on the first $150 million in assets in the portfolio and 50 bps on everything thereafter. Some indicators of demand: - VEGN pulled in $13 million in flows last year after just $3 million in 2024 and 1 million in 2023, per data from Morningstar Direct. It started trading in 2019, and its highest annual flows were in 2021, at $27 million.
- A fund that took a different approach, the VegTech Plant-Based Innovation & Climate ETF (EATV), launched in 2021 and shut down last year. That actively managed fund focused on companies working on plant-based products or mitigating climate change.
What Clients Want: "I don't advertise, and people keep finding me. So there is demand," said advisor Brenda Morris, whose firm Humane Investing caters to vegans. "I work with people I love, and wherever they are in their journey, they're looking at their portfolio and saying, 'I want to do more.'" Morris had used EATV in portfolios before it shuttered, as it was unique. She has started mutual fund and ETF portfolios on Charles Schwab's platform and has a goal of making those available to other advisors this year, she said. It's hard to pick winners on an individual stock basis but easy to spot losers on a macro level, Nowak said, referring to fossil fuels and animal agriculture potentially trending downward in the future. "People are going to become vegan for cost reasons, which is the reason people get motivated to do a lot of things," he said. But, "to me, the large play is the environmental play." Written by Emile Hallez | | | | | | | | | |
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