ETF Watch from Un-Herd Newsletter
Here is a summary of the 3 ETFs from our investment universe with the highest 1-month trailing return and the factors that contributed to that performance.
(The source for all return figures is EOD Historical Data as of 11/15/2025)
The past two months have been a relative seesaw for investor risk appetite as two months ago the most speculative assets were appreciating the fastest while over the past month that trend has generally reversed. This has played out amongst the top and bottom performing ETFs over that time period.
If there is one unifying theme amongst the top performing ETFs over the past month it would be commodity sensitivity.
1. Argentina (ARGT)
The top performing ETF was Argentina, which benefitted from its recent re-election of Javier Milei which importantly solidified financial support from the U.S. as he forges ahead with his plan to redistribute economic resources from government into the private sector. Argentina, like the rest of Latin America, is a large exporter of commodities. Commodities generally did well over the past month as global trade tensions generally eased allowing all of the Latin America ETFs in our pool to perform well (including the third-best performing ETF EWZ, Brazil).
This is a pattern our own models have increasingly gravitated towards over the year. Outside of Latin America more direct commodity-focused ETFs did well.
2. UNG (Natural Gas) +25.73%
The second-best performing ETF was Natural Gas. Rare Earth metals, a hot topic of late, also performed strongly, represented by the ETF LIT, Lithium and Battery Tech. There was a notable absence of AI-related equities at the top of the rankings over this past month.
3. EWZ (Brazil) +13.47%
The 3 ETFs with the lowest returns from our investment universe:
- NLR (Uranium and Nuclear) -18.11%
- VIXY (VIX Short-term Futures) -13.76%
- VNM (Vietnam) -10.44%
The bottom performing ETFs are more broadly distributed but a declining appetite for speculative equities seems to be a fair analysis of the weakest performers. The worst performing ETF was Uranium and Nuclear companies (NLR) which had been one of the hottest sectors for the market this year and generally trades on the prospective of large future data-center fueled growth. Recently IPO’d companies also fared poorly which often closely track investor risk appetite as well. Other notably weak sectors are those tied to Gold and Silver which had also been amongst the top performers just the month prior.
Our Decathlon Universe:
The AIM Decathlon strategies select from a carefully curated pool of ~230 ETFs representing nearly every asset class and geography — and everything in between.
Each ETF in the pool must offer distinct characteristics reducing overlap and increasing the opportunity for diversifying exposure.
We are independent and evaluate ETFs from any provider.
These are the five highest-returning ETFs drawn from the curated 230-ETF investment universe used in our Decathlon strategies. over the trailing 1-month period ending September 12th, 2025. We use this universe because we believe it captures all investable areas of the global markets while excluding derivatives, single-company ETFs, and overlapping exposures. We believe this makes it a better lens for highlighting the top five prevailing market themes than looking at all available ETFs on the market.
We are going to seek to post a summary like this each month as part of our newly launched monthly newsletter, Un-Herd. If you’d like to view our first issue of this newsletter and subscribe, click here.
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