FMEFT halted due to broken price tracker

FMETF [FMETF 105.20, up 0.9%; 5% avgVol] [link], the PSE’s only exchange-traded fund, was halted by the PSE at 1 p.m. yesterday after it was discovered that its iNav had failed to update since 11:30 a.m. FMETF said that it would “coordinate” with its “service provider” to implement a fix, but as of this writing, FMETF has not advised that a fix has been implemented nor has the PSE lifted the halt.

MB bottom-line: This problem happened six times last year, and while it’s great that we made it into May before we had our first FMETF outage of this year, it’s still discouraging to see “iNav not calculating” as a problem that we need to contend with in 2024. For those who are unfamiliar, FMETF is an exchange-traded fund, so FMEFT’s per-share price is derivative of the per-share prices of all the shares that FMETF owns/represents. The “iNav” that keeps breaking is the number that represents the current value of FMETF’s holdings, expressed as a “NAV per unit” or “NAV per share”. So, if the iNav isn’t updating, then traders are not getting the kind of information they need to place FMETF stock trades. “We need more ETFs” is something that I’ve heard traders say for years now, and while I still count myself as part of that group, I wish we could see some forward progress in the maintenance of FMETF before we introduce anything more exotic to the market.

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