Will Rhind

Will Rhind has been in the ETF business for over 20 years, stretching back to the early 2000s when he was helping launch the first ETFs in Europe with iShares (then Barclays Global Investors, now BlackRock). He went on to run the World Gold Council as CEO , overseeing GLD, the largest gold ETF in the world , before founding GraniteShares in 2016. Today, his firm has grown significantly, largely on the back of a product category that barely existed in the U.S. market a few years ago: single-stock leveraged ETFs.

High Conviction ETFs for High Conviction Investors

GraniteShares positions itself around what Will calls "high conviction ETFs for the high conviction investor." The logic is straightforward: the generic, Walmart-style, ultra-cheap index fund space is dominated by giants. "If you're starting a company in this space, you can't do something along those lines," he explains. "You have to offer a solution to a problem that exists and capture a new segment of the market." That meant commodity plays, income products, and ultimately leveraged single-stock ETFs.

The firm started the single-stock leveraged business in Europe, where it's been popular for years. Bringing it to the U.S. required regulatory work , "it's always difficult to get things approved when you're doing something for the first time, so you need somebody to build the railway before you can then land" , but their European track record helped pave the path. They operate in all major markets in Europe, so the operational expertise was already in place.

The Single-Stock Lineup: Tesla, NVIDIA, Coinbase

The product strategy targets stocks with built-in conviction communities. GraniteShares launched leveraged ETFs on Coinbase when there was no leverage crypto play in the ETF market , "a proxy for crypto, proxy for Bitcoin, but providing leverage when no solution existed." They've done Tesla, and their biggest winner in 2023 was the leveraged NVIDIA product, which "caught the whole AI wave" as the stock surged.

When asked whether they have an internal radar scanning for the next hot name, Will's answer is more pragmatic than you'd expect: "I think for us, it's less about the stocks themselves, because I think we have a very good idea of what might be popular. The boring answer is that it's really more about managing costs from a business perspective." Running these funds is expensive, and over-expansion is a real risk. "We've just got to be careful that it's not like a fast-food franchise whereby we just over-expand."

Scaling the Business: People and Technology

Growing from launch to significant scale required adapting on two fronts. First, people , hiring across stewardship functions to support growth. Second, technology. GraniteShares built its tech stack from day one, led by a chief technology officer from a previous company. "It's probably very overused, but it is true that we use technology to enable everything that we do," Will says. That infrastructure investment paid dividends in scalability.

Will also highlights global expansion beyond the U.S. and Europe. India has been their biggest success this year, providing leveraged exposure to Indian equities , a market with enormous retail investor enthusiasm. Their NVDL leveraged NVIDIA product was the best-performing ETF year-to-date at one point, driven by investors who "believed in the company and the AI story from the beginning of the year." The short interest dynamics are notable too: on any given day, 20 to 30% of shares might be short , reflecting the two-sided conviction these products attract.

On the distribution side, GraniteShares leans heavily into marketing over traditional sales , a deliberate strategic choice given their audience. "Our audience is a global community of high conviction investors. Those investors are typically mobile, they have access to online platforms." The strategy is about eyeballs and awareness rather than boots-on-the-ground wholesaling, which fits the retail-heavy nature of their product set.

The Art of Product Selection

Will acknowledges that hot stocks rotate , what's popular today won't necessarily be popular tomorrow. But the art isn't in picking the names; it's in timing the launches sustainably and managing the cost structure. Each new fund adds operational overhead, and the business can't support unlimited expansion. "We know where we want to go , it's just a question of doing it in a sustainable way."

His background gives him rare perspective. Having been at the inception of European ETFs, having run the world's largest gold fund, and now building a leveraged single-stock business, Will has seen the ETF industry from virtually every angle. The common thread: identify an underserved investor need, build a product that precisely addresses it, and then scale intelligently without outrunning your infrastructure.

What makes GraniteShares interesting in the ETF space isn't just the leveraged products , it's the approach to building a business around a specific type of investor. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, they've identified a niche audience of high-conviction traders who want targeted, powerful exposure to specific names. It's a narrower thesis than most ETF issuers pursue, but the growth numbers suggest it's working.

Key Takeaways

• Will Rhind has been in the ETF business for over 20 years, stretching back to the early 2000s when he was helping launch the first ETFs in Europe with iShares (then Barclays Global Investors, now BlackRock).
• He went on to run the World Gold Council as CEO , overseeing GLD, the largest gold ETF in the world , before founding GraniteShares in 2016.
• market a few years ago: single-stock leveraged ETFs.
• GraniteShares positions itself around what Will calls "high conviction ETFs for the high conviction investor." The logic is straightforward: the generic, Walmart-style, ultra-cheap index fund space is dominated by giants.

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