Fund or ETF that simulates the investment goals of an options “straddle” strategy?
I am not aware of a single instrument that encapsulates what you are after; but the components do exist. At least in Canada, there are many Options traded on the Montreal Exchange that are based on Toronto ETFs.  All the standard TSX ETFs are represented, as well as some of the more exotic.  With a regular investment account approved for Options you should be able to do what you want. In a parallel vein, there are also double down and up ETFs.  One such example are the Horizons BetaPro series of ETFs.  They are designed to return double the market up or down on a daily basis and reset daily.  They do need to be watched closely, however. Good Luck *Volatility and the VIX can be very tricky to trade.  In particular, going out longer than a month can result in highly surprising outcomes because the VIX is basically always a one month snapshot, even when the month is out in the future. "Why bother with the ETF? Just trade the options -- at least you have the ability to know what you actually are doing. The ""exotic"" ETFs the let you ""double long"" or short indexes aren't options contracts -- they are just collections of unregulated swaps with no transparency. Most of the short/double long ETFs also only attempt to track the security over the course of one day -- you are supposed to trade them daily. Also, you have no guarantee that the ETFs will perform as desired -- even during the course of a single day. IMO, the simplicity of the ETF approach is deceiving."
"I recommend avoiding trading directly in commodities futures and options.  If you're not prepared to learn a lot about how futures markets and trading works, it will be an experience fraught with pitfalls and lost money – and I am speaking from experience. Looking at stock-exchange listed products is a reasonable approach for an individual investor desiring added diversification for their portfolio.  Still, exercise caution and know what you're buying. It's easy to access many commodity-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on North American stock exchanges.  If you already have low-cost access to U.S. markets, consider this option – but be mindful of currency conversion costs, etc. Yet, there is also a European-based company, ETF Securities, headquartered in Jersey, Channel Islands, which offers many exchange-traded funds on European exchanges such as London and Frankfurt.  ETF Securities started in 2003 by first offering a gold commodity exchange-traded fund. I also found the following: London Stock Exchange: Frequently Asked Questions about ETCs.  The LSE ETC FAQ specifically mentions ""ETF Securities"" by name, and addresses questions such as how/where they are regulated, what happens to investments if ""ETF Securities"" were to go bankrupt, etc. I hope this helps, but please, do your own due diligence." (a) 5 funds for $15K is not too many or too few ? A bit high as I'd wonder if you've thought of how you'll rebalance the funds over time so you aren't investing too much in a particular market segment. I'd also question if you know what kinds of fees you may have with those funds as some of Vanguard's index funds had fees if the balance is under $10K that may change how much you'll be paying. From Vanguard's site: We charge a $20 annual account service fee for each Vanguard fund with   a balance of less than $10,000 in an account. This fee doesn’t apply   if you sign up for account access on Vanguard.com and choose   electronic delivery of statements, confirmations, and Vanguard fund   reports and prospectuses. This fee also doesn’t apply to members of   Flagship®, Voyager Select®, and Voyager Services®. So, if you don't do the delivery this would be an extra $100/year that I wonder if you factored that into things here. (b) Have I diversified my portfolio too much or not enough ? Perhaps I   am missing something that would be recommended for the portfolio of   this kind with this goal. Both, in my opinion. Too much in the sense that you are looking at Morningstar's style box to pick a fund for this box and that which I'd consider consolidating on one hand yet at the same time I notice that you are sticking purely to US stocks and ignoring international funds. I do think taxes may be something you haven't considered too much as stocks will outgrow most of those funds and trigger capital gains that you don't mention at all. (c) If not my choice of my portfolio, where would you invest $15K   under similar circumstances and similar goals. What is the goal here? You state that this is your first cash investment but don't state if this is for retirement, a vacation in 10 years, a house in 7 years or a bunch of other possibilities which is something to consider. If I consider this as retirement investments, I'd like pick 1 or 2 funds known for being tax-efficient that would be where I'd start. So, if a fund goes down 30%, that's OK? Do you have a rebalancing strategy of any kind? Do you realize what taxes you may have even if the fund doesn't necessarily have gains itself? In not stating a goal, I wonder how well do you have a strategy worked out for how you'll sell off these funds down the road at some point as something to ponder. Wealthsimple lists their prices as follows: Those are the fees you pay over and above what you pay for the underlying ETFs' management fees. But why not just invest in the ETFs yourself? The Canadian Couch Potato website shows some sample portfolios. The ETF option has an average Management Expense Ratio very similar to that of the ETFs used by Wealthsimple, but without the additional management fee. Rebalance once or twice a year and you cut your fees from approximately 0.57% (if investing mid-six-figures) to 0.17%, for very little work. Is it worth it to you? Well, that depends on how much you have to invest, and how much effort you are willing to put in. Wealthsimple isn't particularly unreasonable with their fees, but the fees do look a bit high once you are in to the six figures of investing. On the other hand, I often recommend Tangerine's mutual funds to my friends who are looking at investing for retirement. Those mutual funds, last time I checked, cost 1.09%. That's about twice what Wealthsimple is charging. But they are easy to understand and easy to invest in; a good choice for my friends looking to invest $1,000 - $50,000 in my opinion. So, and understanding this is just my personal opinion, I think Wealthsimple fits in a niche where Tangerine mutual funds carry too high a cost for you, but you don't want to do all the management yourself, even if this is just an hour or so of work, a couple of times a year. I wish they were cheaper, but their pricing makes sense for a lot of people in my opinion. Do they make sense for you? If you are looking at investing less than $10,000, I'd stick with an option like Tangerine, only because that's an easier option. If investing more than $100,000 or $200,000, I think you are paying a bit much for what they offer. But, many people pay much, much, much more for their investments. Here is a simple example of how daily leverage fails, when applied over periods longer than a day. It is specifically adjusted to be more extreme than the actual market so you can see the effects more readily. You buy a daily leveraged fund and the index is at 1000. Suddenly the market goes crazy, and goes up to 2000 - a 100% gain! Because you have a 2x ETF, you will find your return to be somewhere near 200% (if the ETF did its job). Then tomorrow it goes back to normal and falls back down to 1000. This is a fall of 50%. If your ETF did its job, you should find your loss is somewhere near twice that: 100%. You have wiped out all your money. Forever. You lose. :) The stock market does not, in practice, make jumps that huge in a single day. But it does go up and down, not just up, and if you're doing a daily leveraged ETF, your money will be gradually eroded. It doesn't matter whether it's 2x leveraged or 8x leveraged or inverse (-1x) or anything else. Do the math, get some historical data, run some simulations. You're right that it is possible to beat the market using a 2x ETF, in the short run. But the longer you hold the stock, the more ups and downs you experience along the way, and the more opportunity your money has to decay. If you really want to double your exposure to the market over the intermediate term, borrow the money yourself. This is why they invented the margin account: Your broker will essentially give you a loan using your existing portfolio as collateral. You can then invest the borrowed money, increasing your exposure even more. Alternatively, if you have existing assets like, say, a house, you can take out a mortgage on it and invest the proceeds. (This isn't necessarily a good idea, but it's not really worse than a margin account; investing with borrowed money is investing with borrowed money, and you might get a better interest rate. Actually, a lot of rich people who could pay off their mortgages don't, and invest the money instead, and keep the tax deduction for mortgage interest. But I digress.) Remember that assets shrink; liabilities (loans) never shrink. If you really want to double your return over the long term, invest twice as much money. "The problem with daily-rebalanced ""inverse"" or ""leveraged"" ETFs is that since they rebalance every day, you can lose money even if your guess as to the market's direction is correct. Quoting from FINRA'S guide as to why these are a bad idea: How can this apparent breakdown between longer term index returns and ETF returns happen? Here’s a hypothetical example: let’s say that on Day 1, an index starts with a value of 100 and a leveraged ETF that seeks to double the return of the index starts at $100. If the index drops by 10 points on Day 1, it has a 10 percent loss and a resulting value of 90. Assuming it achieved its stated objective, the leveraged ETF would therefore drop 20 percent on that day and have an ending value of $80. On Day 2, if the index rises 10 percent, the index value increases to 99. For the ETF, its value for Day 2 would rise by 20 percent, which means the ETF would have a value of $96. On both days, the leveraged ETF did exactly what it was supposed to do—it produced daily returns that were two times the daily index returns. But let’s look at the results over the 2 day period: the index lost 1 percent (it fell from 100 to 99) while the 2x leveraged ETF lost 4 percent (it fell from $100 to $96). That means that over the two day period, the ETF's negative returns were 4 times as much as the two-day return of the index instead of 2 times the return. That example is for ""just"" leveraging 2x in the same direction. Inverse funds have the same kind of issue. An example from Bogleheads Wiki page on these kinds of funds says that over 12/31/2007 to 12/31/2010, The funds do exactly what they say on any given day. But any losses get ""locked in"" each day. While normally a 50% loss needs a 100% gain to get back to a starting point, a fund like this needs more than a 100% gain to get back to its starting point. The result of these funds across multiple days doesn't match the index it's matching over those several days, and you won't make money over the long term. Do look at the further examples at the links I've referenced above, or do your own research into the performance of these funds during time periods both when the market is going up and going down. Also refer to these related and/or duplicate questions:" index ETF tracks indented index (if fund manager spend all money on Premium Pokemon Trading Cards someone must cover resulting losses) Most Index ETF are passively managed. ie a computer algorithm would do automatic trades. The role of fund manager is limited. There are controls adopted by the institution that generally do allow such wide deviations, it would quickly be flagged and reported. Most financial institutions have keyman fraud insurance. fees are not higher that specified in prospectus Most countries have regulation where fees need to be reported and cannot exceed the guideline specified. at least theoretically possible to end with ETF shares that for weeks cannot be sold Yes some ETF's can be illiquid at difficult to sell. Hence its important to invest in ETF that are very liquid. So, couple of things. Firstly, every international ETF includes risk disclosure language in the prospectus covering both market disruption events as well as geopolitical risk, so the sponsor would be pretty well insulated from direct liability for anything. If the Russian market were truly shut down there are true-up mechanisms in place but in the scenario you're describing the market is still open, it's just only a few participants can trade in it.  First thing to do is shut down creates- that is, allow no new money to come into the fund. This at least prevents your problem from getting bigger.   Second you're going to switch all redemptions to in kind only. MV itself can't trade in the underlying so they're kind of jammed here. An ETF sponsor can't really refuse your redemption request (can delay, but only for a short time), but they can control the form in which they respond to it.    What theoretically should happen here is an AP not subject to sanctions will step in and handle redemptions.  Issue is, they'll probably charge for this so you should expect the fund to start trading at a discount to NAV (you, as an investor, sell to them cheaply, they submit a redemption request, then sell the stocks locally). Someone else has pointed that market makers will start stat arbing the fund using correlated/substitute instruments, which totally will help keep things in line, but my guess is that you'd still see the name trading away from NAV regardless. Driver of this will be the amount of money desperate to get out - if investors are content to wait the sanctions out who knows. "ETFs are well suited to day trading, but you should be mindful of the bid-ask spread. See article: Commission-free ETFs are a great way to save money, but watch the bid-ask spread too. Bid-ask spread is largely a function of liquidity, or the volume of   buyers and sellers for an asset during a particular moment in time.   ... It may be more difficult to trade certain assets that are less   liquid, where bid-ask spreads can be higher. Think some penny stocks. If you have the choice, compare the spreads of the ETF and the target stock. Longer-term ""keep & hold"" trading on ETFs tracking futures can be somewhat disadvantageous.  Futures contracts roll-over every month.  Exchange traders have to sell and buy in on the next contract.  ETFs don't reflect the price differential between the futures contract. See here for more detail on that: Positioning For An Oil ETF Rebound? Watch For Contango Contango occurs when the price on a futures contract is higher than   the expected future spot price, which creates the upward sloping curve   on future commodity prices over time. Essentially, the phenomenon   reflects a current spot price that is lower than the futures price.   ... While this phenomena is a normal occurrence in the futures market,   contango can have a negative effect on ETFs."