Steve Cook
Commodity Hedging in an ETF: The Harbor Approach
Steve Cook is the head of ETFs at Harbor Capital Advisors, and he got his start in ETFs when NASDAQ launched QQQ. Bank of New York Mellon was selected as the trustee, and because early ETFs were registered as unit investment trusts, all the operational responsibility fell on the trustee. Cook got a firsthand look at the full ETF ecosystem: investment management, capital markets, trading, and basket creation. He's been in ETF-specific roles ever since, and now oversees product selection, capital markets, and operations for Harbor's growing ETF business.
On this episode, Steve talks with Brad about Harbor's 40-year history as a manager-of-managers, why moving ETFs to the NYSE floor made a measurable difference in execution quality, and HGER, their commodity ETF built for investors rather than corporate hedgers.
Harbor's Manager-of-Managers DNA
Harbor was formed 40 years ago as the pension management arm of Libby Glass and other Ohio manufacturing companies. The executive team believed their manager selection process was strong enough to offer publicly, so they spun it out into a professional mutual fund firm. For the first 35 years, Harbor was purely a mutual fund shop that sourced specialist managers in niche asset classes. They were the first to bring Pimco to market in a retail mutual fund structure and maintain a 50-plus year relationship with Jennison Associates, who manages their largest growth fund.
The firm launched CITs about four years ago for the retirement market, then entered ETFs in September 2021 targeting the wealth channel. The due diligence process for selecting sub-advisors focuses on two things: ensuring that whatever generated alpha historically is repeatable (not benchmark hugging with a lucky factor tilt that happened to work) and that managers have a genuine desire to continuously improve their process. Once selected, Harbor works with each manager for three to six months refining the strategy for the ETF structure, addressing trading approach, rebalance frequency, number of securities, and any exclusions needed for tradability in the daily create-redeem process.
Why the NYSE Floor Matters
Harbor was one of the first issuers to move ETFs to the NYSE floor, and Cook makes a detailed case for why. The core problem: advisors buying ETFs for multiple client accounts typically place market-on-open orders because their allocation systems work best with a single price across all accounts. But ETF opens are messy. All 150 or 500 underlying securities need to open individually, and computers widen ETF spreads dramatically during that price discovery process.
The result: advisors were seeing 30,000-share market-on-open orders execute 10 cents away from fair value. On a 30,000-share order, that's $3,000 in unnecessary cost. Across multiple orders per year, the drag becomes material. Moving to the floor inserts a human market maker (called a Designated Market Maker, or DMM) who can look at an incoming advisory order from Fidelity or Schwab, recognize it's not a professional trader trying to pick them off, do their own homework on the underlying securities, and open the ETF at two cents above fair value rather than letting the computer panic at ten cents.
Since moving to the floor, no Harbor ETF has had a market-on-open trade execute more than three cents from fair value. Cook calls it one of the best decisions they've made. They continue to move more products to the floor as volume warrants.
HGER: Commodities Built for Investors
HGER (Harbor All-Weather Commodity ETF) was born from a simple observation: every commodity product available to investors was based on indices (BCOM, GSCI, Bloomberg Commodity) originally created for manufacturers hedging their business, not for investors seeking inflation protection. The fund is managed by Quantix Commodities, whose leadership including Don Casturo ran the commodities trading desk at Goldman Sachs for over 20 years.
The Quantix Total Return Commodity Index can access up to 24 commodities including petroleum products, grains, softs, base metals, and gold. At the beginning of the year, the index committee examines each commodity's economic weight, liquidity, and roll yield. The key differentiator: based on scarcity and debasement indicators, the index dynamically increases or decreases gold exposure. Currently, gold sits at around 30% of the portfolio. This quarterly rebalancing mechanism means investors get a natural gold allocation during debasement periods without trying to time the market themselves.
Cook recommends a 6-8% portfolio allocation to commodities, noting that HGER recently crossed $100 million in AUM and has outperformed almost every other commodity index and product over its roughly 18-month track record. He also walks through ETF distribution breakpoints: $25 million opens some advisory platforms, $50 million opens independent platforms, and $100 million unlocks the large national advisory networks like Merrill and Morgan Stanley. HGER has now cleared that final threshold.
Key Takeaways
- Harbor has a 50+ year relationship with Jennison Associates and was the first to launch Pimco in a retail mutual fund wrapper, bringing four decades of manager selection expertise.
- Moving ETFs to the NYSE floor eliminated market-on-open executions beyond 3 cents from fair value, down from 10-cent slippage on 30,000-share orders that was costing advisors thousands per trade.
- HGER's index dynamically adjusts gold exposure (currently roughly 30%) based on debasement signals, rebalancing quarterly across up to 24 commodities.
- The Quantix team behind HGER includes former Goldman Sachs commodities trading desk leadership with 20+ years of experience in the asset class.
- ETF distribution follows breakpoints: $25M opens some platforms, $50M opens independents, $100M unlocks large national networks. HGER recently cleared $100M.
Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Full Transcript
5,416 wordsMachine transcribed from Brad Roth's conversation with Steve Cook, with speakers identified automatically. Timestamps link to that moment on YouTube. Lightly cleaned, otherwise unedited.
Welcome to Behind the Ticker. I'm Brad Roth, Chief Investment Officer of Thor Financial Technologies and Portfolio Manager of THLV, the Thor Low Volatility ETF. Behind the Ticker uncovers the inner workings of the ETF industry. We will interview portfolio managers and ETF service providers to dive deep into their work lives and their businesses. We will learn the inner workings of their strategies and what drives them as they continue to grow their company. Many of these individuals are entrepreneurs and will have unique and compelling insights to share as much goes on behind the ticker. Please note, nothing in this show is investment advice and it is meant solely for educational and entertainment purposes only.
Welcome to Behind the Ticker. Today we have Steve Cook. He is the head of ETFs at Harbor Capital. We talk about the business. They got their start by sourcing investment managers, then dove into the fund management business, managing mutual funds, CITs, and a handful of ETFs. Steve has a ton of experience, so it was nice to talk to Steve. We talked about NYSE floor listing, and we also talked deeply about their product Hedger, which is an all-weather commodity ETF, a little bit more active and a little different take on commodity exposure. So without further ado, please welcome Steve Cook. Hey, Steve, welcome to the show.
Brad, good morning. How are you doing? Thanks for having me.
I'm great. So before we get started, can you talk a little bit about your background
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In kind of your current role at Harbor? Sure. So currently I'm the head of ETFs for Harbor Capital Advisors and kind of oversee product selection, capital markets, and operations for the ETF business. I got my start in ETFs a long time ago when the Nasdaq launched the QQQ. BNY Mellon was selected as the trustee. And back in the early days of ETFs before Reg NMS, exchanges created ETFs to drive volumes onto their exchange. But they didn't want to have the burden of a 40-act fund with a board and register as an advisor and all those sorts of things. So they registered the early ETFs as unit investment trusts, and they passed kind of all the responsibility for operating the trust in the ETF onto the trustee. And so Bank of New York was selected as a trustee. And I kind of got a firsthand
Look across the board. Operations of the investment management piece from an index perspective, of the capital markets and trading piece, because there was no centralized data repository. And so the folks trading these things on the floor would call you for information and updates on how, what changes the ETF may have made in the basket and those sorts of things. So you really kind of got immersed in the ETF ecosystem through that. And that's how I first got involved and then had a number of roles within the ETF industry ever since.
Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And before we kind of jump into more about Harbor and more about the ETF business, I always like to ask everybody, what do you like to do outside of the office?
Any hobbies or interests? So I enjoy playing golf. I'm a big beach guy. So oftentimes people talk about lakes and beach. If I'm not within like 20 minutes of the beach, I twitch because I really like to go and just hang out and enjoy it. So that's when I get free time. But most of the time right now, I drive my kids around to competitive soccer tournaments and games.
Yeah, I'm just entering in the world of soccer. I'm U7 girls right now. And I'm kind of dreading that step up into U8 where they start to travel and just consumes your entire weekend.
Yeah, I'm at U17 and U15 right now. And so we're going all up and down the East Coast and it's all kind of time consuming, but it's a lot of fun. I know it doesn't last forever. It goes by quickly,
Brad. So enjoy it while you're doing it. Yeah, I love it. I got baited into coaching this year. And I was like, I don't know anything about soccer, but I think I can motivate kids. And I tell you what, it's like the most fun I have all week is kind of not yelling at, but cheering for these girls during their games. It is a lot of fun. So can you talk about Harbor Capital and the types of services you all provide? Because it is a pretty interesting business as I kind of look into it. And so I'd love for you to kind of talk more deeply about Harbor and everything you guys do over there.
Sure. So Harbor was formed initially as kind of the pension management arm of Libby Glass and a few other Ohio manufacturing companies 40 years ago. And it really focused on manager selection to manage the pension assets. And the executive team at Libby felt like they were doing such a good job. And the manager selection was so on point that they said, why don't you spin out and become a professional mutual fund firm as a manager, manager selecting and finding asset management firms in niche areas and start mutual funds. And so they did that primarily for the first 35 years of Harbor's existence. They were a mutual fund shop that would go out and seek managers and specific asset classes and launch funds with them. And they had, we had a lot of success doing that. We found we were
The first to launch PIMCO in a retail, mutual fund structure. So if you wanted access to PIMCO, the only place you could get that was through a Harbor mutual fund. We have over a 50 year relationship with Jenison Associates, a fantastic growth manager that Harbor identified early on. And we have our largest mutual fund with them, capital appreciation. And so that's kind of the DNA of Harbor is to go out and seek really strong managers and specific asset classes where you as a retail investor may not be able to get access to them. And that's what we did for 35 years. And then, as kind of the retail brokerage environment changed and shifted, Harbor first launched CITs about four years ago for the retirement market,
And then made the decision to get into ETFs for more of the wealth market, as buyer behavior started to shift, you've seen a 10 year secular decline in investors' appetites for mutual funds and tilted more to ETFs. So we launched ETFs in September of 2021 with the same idea, bring really unique products to market for investors that they may not be able to get elsewhere. And certainly with managers, they may not have access to elsewhere.
Yeah. So that was the part that was interesting to me. So are you guys going out and sourcing managers or managers coming to you? And can you maybe talk a little bit about that due diligence process if you know what it looks like?
Sure. So it's a little bit of both. Initially, we were, we had to go out and seek managers, for our first few ETFs. once you've gained a little bit of success in the area, then you start to get managers who reach out to you with ideas. So it's a little bit of a both. But either way, the same due diligence process is undertaken. We have an investment research team that goes out and looks at manager ideas and overall managers and ensures that they have the capability and history of generating alpha for investors in any particular asset class. And so we're trying to look and make sure that whatever generated the alpha in the past is repeatable. It's not, wasn't just some sort of benchmark hugging where they got a little lucky and, and tilted by some
Factor. And, the other real thing that we want to see and ensure is that there's a constant process of improvement and that the managers have an underlying desire to continue to develop whatever, process they're utilizing to generate alpha to improve that over time. And so those are the two areas that we really dig in on and our IRT team seeks out and does a wonderful job looking at it. And so, either way, whether we decide that we want to have a product that's unique in the small cap space, or somebody comes to us with an idea that says, we've got the better way of providing access to commodities, we'll undertake either, but the research discipline is there in both respects.
So you can, can you talk about maybe the next steps there? So let's say you've sourced or, found a manager that can run a unique strategy for you. can you talk about that kind of ideation to actually getting the product to market and what that looks like?
Yeah. So, once we've determined that the idea, the thought process, the manager has the chops to deliver that alpha, then we work with them to understand what it takes to manage an exchange traded fund. It is slightly different than either a non-registered product or a mutual fund. So we partner with them. We'll refine the idea. maybe you have to make a few tweaks in order to perfect the process within the ETF structure. whether that's the way they trade, the way they might rebalance, the number of securities that they hold, maybe you have to exclude an aim in order to make it more tradable, those sorts of things. And so we'll go back and forth generally for a few months, trying to perfect the process. And in that time, we're
Also helping them to understand and update their technologies and their systems to be able to accommodate, the ETF exchange of information and data that goes on. We're working with our service provider to pull them in. And then we're updating the necessary regulatory filings and exchanging information. And so all that generally takes, three to six months working kind of behind the scenes. And, then towards the end of the process, we're out seeking a partner from a liquidity standpoint and an AP standpoint. Somebody has to help launch and see the initial day one ETF.
And so we have a number of partners that we try and focus on. We do try and keep that narrow, though. from an ETF perspective, as you well know, you don't want to have 15 market maker relationships for 15 products. It becomes unwieldy and very difficult. And so we seek partners for that. And then we prepare for launch. And then we start thinking about, how are we going to market this? How are we going to get the word out to advisors and the investing community that this product is coming or when it does show up? what makes it unique? why did we launch it? How does it fit into an investor's portfolio? And why we really think that there's a need for it?
Yeah. And I definitely want to talk a little bit about that later, about how you guys are handling distribution and marketing. But you, Harbor was one of the first to decide to move to NYSE floor. I don't know if you remember, but you and I actually had a phone conversation because I saw the move and I wanted to make, I wanted to, I was exploring that move as well. We eventually did it. So can you talk about why you decided to make that move to the NYSE floor and why we're seeing more ETFs do it?
Yeah. So, it's funny after 25 years in the ETF space, you look back and you think, okay, there are certain things that everybody already understands about ETFs. And you take that for granted as somebody who lives and breathes it every day. And I think one of the more emphatic things that we see currently is folks still don't understand how to trade some of these vehicles and don't understand necessarily the whys. Right. And so, the constant preaching, you don't, you want to avoid the first 15 minutes of trading in an ETF. You want to avoid the last 15 minutes of trading in an ETF and throughout the course of the day for more thinly traded ETFs as best you can. If you're not using a block order, you want to use limit orders to avoid
These wide spreads occurring in the product. And what happens is in the morning, as all of the underlying securities in ETF, let's say your fund owns 150 names, all those 150 names, the markets for those individual securities and those equities has to open. And as it's opening, there's price discovery going on. And each one of those individual equities could have, a three cent swing in its opening price. Well, you put all that together and the broader swings for the actual ETF can be 15. And it's nobody's fault. It's just the way the kind of market opens, particularly when you're utilizing computers to come up. The computer's going to assess the market and they can say, wow, these three equities are having a hard time open. We need to widen out this ETF to
Protect ourselves against somebody who might be trading it actively or professionally to protect ourselves. And so, those first 15 minutes can be difficult. However, when you're introducing new advisors into the ETF space that may not be used to trading ETFs, they're looking at the best way for them to buy a block of 20,000 shares for 100 clients and then allocate those 20,000 shares into those 100 client accounts. Well, it becomes very difficult for them if they have 100 different prices on those 20,000 shares and they're trying to allocate all that stuff down. And so the way advisory systems work, it's easier if they put in a market on open trade, right? Because they're trying to buy in bulk for a number of clients and then allocate it. So those two things are in conflict,
Right? The way an ETF opens and the way an advisor through their platforms would normally buy shares. And so one of the real major benefit to going to the floor is you're taking the computer out of it and you're inserting a live individual back into it. And so if I'm Steve Cook, who is the ETF issuer and you're Brad and you're the market maker on the floor in the morning, you can look and say, okay, I know there's an advisory trade coming out of Fidelity or Schwab or Commonwealth or one of these other platforms. I know it's not a professional trader trying to pick me off. This is just a person trying to buy 20,000 shares of an ETF at a fair price for their investment. I'm going to then do my own homework. Brad's
Going to do his own homework, look at all the underlying ETFs in there. And he's going to say, okay, I know this is a good trade. I'm going to open it and I'm going to trade it at two cents above what I think the fair value is right now. And so you've taken away the whole mystery of avoiding the first 15 minutes market on open and the last 15 minutes market on close. And you're providing a fair price because there's somebody who's manually inserted in that process and can look to make a fair
Market for folks. Yeah. for us, I think it was one of the best things we've done. the only thing that kept me up at night about this business was those opens and closes. And we were halted once. You got wild swings and somebody was throwing in over the counter market on close orders and just throwing us around. And I can say, at least for myself, it was probably one of the best decisions we've made. And looking at your products as well,
It seems like it's, it's, it really has. we were seeing some advisors put in 30,000 share orders and get the execution 10 cents away from where it should. Right. So immediately, the order of magnitude there, you get a number of the, you're talking, you're costing investors tens of thousands of dollars a year in, in market making spreads and there's, it's not necessary. And so if we could pay a little bit more to have a human being inserted in the middle of that trade and save our investors money and make it easier for advisors to get in and out, because we have to meet advisors where they are. Obviously it's better for them to trade that way. It's easier for them to trade that way for their clients. So we got to make sure that if they put in at 931,
A market on open order, or at 359, a market on close order, that they're going to get good execution. And by moving down to the floor, it really has done that. And we've seen it. Well, there's been no trade that's done market on open above three cents on any of our ETFs that are on the floor now. And so I think if we start to encounter those trades more frequently in our other products, we'll continue to move more and more of our ETFs to the floor for, for a better
Client experience. Yeah. That's really what it's about. A better client experience. And, I couldn't see us launching anything that wasn't floor traded just because of how our products are and in the size. And, but let's pivot. We're here to talk about Hedger, HGER, which is a commodity all weather ETF. So can you talk about what the ETF is trying to accomplish in the strategy?
Sure. So, this is one of those firms that after we had launched a few products, we had our president, Christoph Gleisch, had a relationship previously with some of the senior folks at Quantix. And they reached out and said, we've been looking at all of the products that are available to investors that invest in commodities and are meant to protect investors from it. And they're all based on BCOM or GSCI, Bloomberg Commodity Index or Goldman Commodity Index. And those particular indices weren't created for the purpose of protecting investors against inflation or giving investors exposure to these to help them during periods of inflation. They were created for manufacturing and other firms that use commodities in their daily business to hedge their businesses against, swings in commodity. And so everything
That's out there, wasn't purpose built for the reason it's being utilized. And we think there's a better solution that we can create for investors to give them exposure to commodities during periods of inflation that will protect portfolio. And so that was kind of the genesis of the why. Now, the folks at Quantix Commodities, Don Castoro, Matt Schwab, and a number of other folks have a long history. Don ran the commodities trading desk for Goldman Sachs for 20 plus years. And all the people at Quantix were principals and partners or managing directors at Goldman Sachs from a commodities perspective. So these folks have a long history in trading and understanding the commodity market. And so they went about and tried to create the Quantix Total Return Commodity Index in order to, again, create an investable product that gives
Investors exposures to commodities, but does so in a way that's going to take the best advantage of kind of the economic cycle and the commodities that get included in the index and the weightings so that they're protected against inflation.
So can you talk about some of the holdings that are in the portfolio and what investors will generally see it invested in?
Sure. So the index can have access to up to 24 commodities. at the beginning of the year, the index committee at Quantix looks at kind of the economic weight of a commodity in the market, understands kind of the role yield associated with all the contracts that are there in the index itself, and tries to develop the index to optimize both the exposure and the liquidity along with the role yield of the prevailing commodity included. And then the last piece is based on either scarcity or debasement indicators, they will increase or decrease exposure to precious metals, in particular gold. And so in general, you're getting broad exposure to petroleum and energy, heating oil, Brent, West Texas immediate, gas oil, some smaller but certainly present
In grains and soybean products like corn and wheat, soybeans, soil, some softer commodity exposure in cotton and sugar. Right now there's no livestock exposure, but there is a habit. And then in base metals, copper, aluminum, nickel, zinc. And then as I said, there's about a 30% current exposure to gold. And all of these things can be increased or decreased, again, depending on the outlook, the scarcity of those commodities, and whether there are signals of debasement or not.
So is the portfolio active, or is it more of a rules-based kind of passive portfolio?
So it's a rules-based passive portfolio, in theory, but in practice, the underlying index itself is what we would call actively managed. So Harbor, has a history and believes in management. We do have some index-based ETFs, but even the ones that we look at that are index-based structurally, we think of them as active because we're actively managing the underlying rule set within the index. And I think that's important, particularly with Hedger. Although it's rules-based, there's enough dynamism in the underlying construction of the index, and there's enough input into the rules that define it that you're going to get quasi-active management within the
Index structure. So how often is that index kind of reconstituting itself and making changes?
So it'll reconstitute in terms of the actual commodities that get included in the index on an annual basis, but it will rebalance itself on a quarterly basis. And so, the rules that govern debasement or scarcity get looked at on a quarterly basis, and you will dynamically increase or decrease allocations to all the commodities and gold based on what's happening in the market at that particular time and how the rules are interpreting on a cycle.
Got it. So when you're sitting down and you're talking with advisors about this product, where are you trying to fit this in terms of an overall model portfolio allocation?
We think that investors and advisors, for a number of different reasons, have a structurally underweighted allocation to commodities in the portfolio most of the time. And in particular, over this last inflationary cycle, advisors and investors have been really underweighted to commodities. But there's a lot of reasons for that, right? Again, I think you look at the choices that traditionally advisors had to allocate to commodities, and there weren't really a lot of good solutions. There certainly weren't many solutions that allowed them to allocate to one product and get dynamic exposure to gold. And none of the other offerings really took into account the potential for roll yield within the underlying commodity allocation. And so, for those reasons in the past, advisors have a lot of bad memories and nightmares of previous allocations to
Commodities for their clients. And so they generally tried to shy them a little bit. And so, our conversations are all around, this is why this is a better product. This is why we kind of constructed it the way we did. You're going to get a natural allocation to gold when you need it for your clients. You don't have to worry about trying to time the market. The index itself will increase during periods of debasement, decrease when there's really scarcity, which means, not enough commodities to go around. But it will provide you with the comfort to know that you're going to get that allocation of commodities to protect your investors' portfolios against inflation. And it really has worked, right? If you look at the last, 18 months of
Hedger being, it's done what it says it's going to do. It's outperformed almost all other commodity indices and products that are on the market and done so in a way where it's dynamically increased or decreased its allocation to gold. That's kind of helped them. And so our argument is, you should probably have an allocation of around 6% to 8% of your client's portfolio in commodities, maybe a little bit higher right now because of the inflation. It doesn't always mean you have to, but you can continue to hold this throughout other cycles because of some of the other base metal and manufacturing that are in there.
Yeah. it's a really interesting product. And, you've recently crossed the $100 million mark. So congratulations. Look at what the distribution efforts had to look like in order to get there and some of the behind the scenes. Because we talked to a lot of ETF issuers here and, the easy part is getting to market. The hard part is finding your market and growing. So I do see you guys are pretty active out there telling your story. So can you talk about what
Your distributes have looked like? Yeah. So, as well as anybody that there are kind of stages to the distribution process for an ETF, right? As you articulated, the launch is the easy part. getting the first couple million bucks in there is a great seeding. It's very easy. And then it just really becomes a challenge to get to certain breakpoints or levels where your product can become more available across more platforms. And so, the magic is trying to identify advisors who don't have cumbersome gates that won't allow them to invest in a product early on in its life cycle, if they think it's a good product, and if it adds something. And so you have to work to find investors and advisors who will jump in early on your products. that's zero to 25 million
In assets because many of them simply won't talk to you if there's, two million dollars that's yours in there and it trades, two shares a day. And so you just kind of have to continue to tell the story. we've launched our ETF products and built out our sales team kind of at the same time. we had a much smaller wholesaling team, an internal wholesaling team, and we've kind of built that out as we've launched the product and it's been good. we've identified some of those early advisors who are willing to jump in early.
You got it to 25 million. Then you add, more advisors who really like the story and you're telling it constantly in the market and just going back to them and say, okay, when you hit 25 million, come back, I'll be interested in doing it. And they might allocate a little bit at that point, right? And then it's hand-to-hand combat to the 50 million. And then once you get the 50 million, more of the independent platforms and, we'll allow you to talk to their advisory network about it and then you'll start showing up. And so, you just add a little bit and then as the kind of the magic number is a hundred million dollars. Once you've reached that
Hundred million dollar threshold, now all of a sudden you can get on some of the larger, more nationally recognized distribution and advisory platforms. And then you really have a chance to that, that story that you've been telling 18 months, all of a sudden becomes a little bit more real. And these folks have been saying, okay, I've told you, yeah, when, when you get to certain levels, you can come back and talk to me. And now all of a sudden, the pipeline, the opportunity pipeline kind of explodes because, you've been telling the story for 18 months, people see it working, but they're waiting for that period of time where they're able to actually go in and now you're starting to see that. So this is where it really
Gets exciting, Brad, you know what I mean? You're starting to see kind of folks say, okay, you got to the hundred million dollar number. Now I'm going to allocate and our opportunity pipeline
Has really grown quickly. Yeah, no, that's great. we're kind of at that same threshold now. And it's funny, trying to solve the business scale, scale issues as you start to grow, right. And institutionalize the business a little bit more and trying to find salespeople. So it is a fun business. But again, congratulations. And before I kind of let you go, you guys have a full suite of products. There's a lot of them, so we don't need to go through them all. But what other ETFs or products may be set up well kind of currently that advisors should be looking at the environment that we're in? Yeah. So we have an international equity product,
Ticker's OCSEA, run by a firm out of Europe called Sea Worldwide. Interesting international ETF. They have a defined process. they have a competition for capital, as they call it, they will only ever own 30 stocks in the portfolio. So it's a nice concentrated. These are large global businesses that when you look at it, really want to own. You want to have exposure to as folks are seeking out returns and uncorrelated returns, looking at international products that are owned businesses that you want, not just for diversification, but because they're really well run.
And Sea Worldwide looks at it as international compounders. So folks and management teams that kind of compound the success of their business over time by reinvesting the capital or the stewards of capital. So that's a really interesting portfolio. Showed really strong returns over the last 12 months and we just hit a whole month mark there. So we're really excited about OCSEA as a product. And then our two other larger equity portfolios, WIN, which is a large cap growth ETF that we've launched with Janison Associates and GDIV, which is a growth dividend portfolio that we launched with our partners at Westfield. That was actually a mutual fund that we converted. So it's a long track record there. But if you combine those two ETFs in the investor's portfolio to offer kind of the growth
Aspect along with the defensive equity portion of it, those are really nice compliments when you kind of put the portfolios together in a client's portfolio. So we're really excited about, as all the ETFs that we have. But we think those four in general provide a really nice set of core holdings for investors as they look out the next 24 months through the various kind of business cycles that we could see, whether it's higher for longer or, a soft landing, combining those four in the right allocations provides investors with a unique set of returns that we think are going to be really good for investors' portfolios.
Yeah, that's great, Stephen. We'll have to have either you or somebody else from your team or one of your asset managers back to talk about a couple of those products. And you guys keep innovating, so I'm sure we'll have you back. But before I let you go, I just want to say thank you for doing this. And where can people learn more about funds over there at Harbor?
Brad, again, thanks for having me on. It's always a lot of fun to talk about ETFs. We all have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the space. And so, I constantly love to talk about it. But you can find out all the products that we have listed on both the ETF and mutual fund
Side at harvardcapitaladvisors.com or harvardcapital.com. Great. Well, again, Steve, thanks so much and hope to see you soon. Thanks for having me.
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