TipRanks, a financial data platform known for aggregating analyst recommendations, has launched its first exchange-traded fund. The DefianceKSM TipRanks Analyst ETF (RANK) debuted in collaboration with Defiance ETFs and VettaFi, offering exposure to 50 large-cap companies that score high on both analyst enthusiasm and recent price momentum. Brian Coco, chief product officer at TMX VettaFi, and Julie Gillespie, marketing manager and head of TipRanks TV, discussed the fund in a video released alongside the launch.
Whether the ETF can deliver on the promise of combining two popular signals — analyst ratings and momentum — remains to be seen, but the methodology behind it is built on a decade of back-tested data. Coco explained that the depth of TipRanks’ historical data allowed the index team to run simulations before going live.
How the RANK Index Is Built
The index starts with the VettaFi US Equity Large-Cap 500 Index, the top 500 U.S. stocks by market size. From there, the team screens for the 100 companies with the highest TipRanks scores, which are based on analyst recommendations. Finally, those 100 are ranked by momentum, and the top 50 make the cut.
Coco emphasized that the index includes caps to prevent overconcentration. Individual stocks are capped at 6% of the portfolio, and any single sector cannot exceed 40%. That rule, he said, reduces exposure to tech names that often dominate momentum strategies.
“It really brings down some of those tech names, to get back down to that 6% cap,” Coco said. “It also has brought down the tech sector. If we look at this index against other popular momentum indices that are usually about half tech, ours is around 40% tech. So, it’s still giving you where the buy recommendations are, but ultimately a little bit more diversified.”
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This approach is not entirely new. Several ETFs already blend analyst consensus with price trends, but RANK’s reliance on a proprietary scoring system from TipRanks — a platform many advisors already use — gives it a different starting point. The index team is betting that the combination of analyst sentiment and momentum, rather than price signals alone, will produce more consistent results. Some analysts view small caps as an undervalued opportunity, contrasting with the large-cap focus of this fund.
Who Should Consider the RANK ETF
According to Coco, the fund’s natural audience includes existing TipRanks users who trust the platform’s data. He also sees a wider opportunity among financial advisors who currently use momentum strategies based solely on price movements.
“There’s quite a few financial advisors that use other momentum strategies that are really just based on those price signals and don’t have the other buy and sell recommendations built into them,” Coco noted.
The video covered other topics — including how the index has behaved historically and the collaboration with Defiance ETFs — but the core pitch is straightforward. RANK offers a rules-based way to own stocks that analysts like and that are already moving up.
VettaFi, which provides the index for RANK, receives a licensing fee. The fund is not issued, sponsored, endorsed, or sold by VettaFi, and the company has no liability in connection with its trading or administration.
