IndexLabs is building ETFs around themes that shape markets over the medium to long term. Each fund holds a basket of liquid securities chosen to move with one theme, so you can take a view on that theme through a single ETF.
Escalation: energy and defense stocks rise on higher war risk.
De-escalation: they give those gains back.
Energy stocks, oil futures and defense stocks.
Positioned for: Escalation.
Hike: yields rise, so Treasuries, small caps and gold fall.
Cut: yields fall, so they rally.
3.50–3.75%
fed funds target range
Federal Reserve, Aug 2026
Front-end and long Treasuries, cash, regional banks, small caps, gold.
No Fed-policy ETF exists today.
Yes: issuers, card networks and custodians gain as supply grows, and T-bill demand rises.
No: they give those gains back.
$300.7B
stablecoins outstanding
DefiLlama, Aug 2026
Issuers, card networks, custodians, brokers, and T-bills.
The T-bills are the point: they're what issuers earn on.
Positioned for: Yes.
Normal: brokers, exchanges, sportsbooks and crypto venues keep earning on record trading volume.
Top: trading slows and those stocks give back their gains.
61%
of S&P 500 options volume expiring the same day, a record
Cboe, 2026
About 18 brokers, exchanges, sportsbooks and crypto venues.
We are not aware of an existing ETF that holds all of them.
Positioned for: Normal.
Yes: power producers, turbine makers and gas pipelines gain from a decade of rising demand.
No: forecasts get cut and those gains reverse.
17%
EPRI's high-case forecast for datacenters' share of US electricity by 2030
EPRI, Powering Intelligence
Power producers, turbine and electrical makers, utilities, gas pipelines.
Positioned for: Yes.
Yes: regulators cap what utilities can charge and the AI power trade cools.
No: bills rise unchecked and the AI power trade keeps going.
71%
of Americans oppose a datacenter in their area (a poll of sentiment, not a price series)
Gallup, Mar 2026
Utilities facing rate cases, consumer staples, Treasuries.
Designed as the other side of Watts for Intelligence.
Readings are the latest figures from each source (one is a forecast and one is a poll), not fund performance. Holdings are research models and will change before filing.
Will the US–Iran war escalate or wind down? No one publishes a series for that, so we start from the closest public read we can find, the market-priced risk of a US invasion before 2027, which has had a price every day since late 2025.
The yardstick is that market-priced read on invasion risk. The contracts behind it are too thin to trade at size, so the fund has to hold liquid assets that move with it.
We tried eight liquid assets: four defense primes, energy futures, energy stocks, gold and VIX futures. The best fit over 121 trading days:
| Energy stocks (XLE) | 60% |
|---|---|
| Energy futures (USO) | 24% |
| Lockheed Martin (LMT) | 16% |
Before a fund files, the basket has to move on the news the theme is about. The chart below shows four of its biggest days and what happened on each.
What $1 held in the fitted basket would have been worth. Numbered markers are four of the basket’s biggest moves and the news behind each one.
All four of these big days were war and energy news, the news this theme is about.
IndexLabs research. The yardstick series and Yahoo Finance closes, 11 Nov 2025 to 2 Sep 2026. Long-only, fixed weights. News on marked days from NPR, the EIA, Bloomberg, CNBC and TheStreet.
We screened 1,003 trends. Each one needed a public data series to follow, a basket of liquid securities that can track it, and real disagreement about where it goes. These 50 made the cut. Six are in development; the rest are candidates, not commitments.
One email when a fund files with the SEC, one when it lists.