Checking In: The Russell Aggressive Growth ETF

In the span of just eight days in May, Russell Investments, the firm that lends its name to so many indexes that a plethora of popular ETFs track, went from an issuing just one ETF to being the sponsor of 17 funds. Such is life when a firm rolls out an average of two news funds per day for eight days. One member of the new Russell suite of 16 new ETFs is the Russell Aggressive Growth ETF

, an ETF that does in fact focus on growth stocks, but not in the speculative fashion that some might expect. On its own, “growth” can be a misleading term. Throw in “aggressive” and some investors may be left thinking AGRG is an ETF that isn't for the faint of hear. Actually, that's not the case because AGRG's 271 holdings feature an average market cap of almost $82 billion and the top-10 holdings are familiar to say the least. AGRG is also diverse at the sector level as technology, consumer discretionary, producer durables, energy and healthcare names figure prominently in the ETF's mix. Sector diversity and a reasonable expense ratio of 0.37% might be two reasons why AGRG has attracted $4.94 million in assets under management in less than two months of trading. Again, this is not a speculative ETF as names like Apple

, Google

and Amazon

can be found among the fund's top-10 holdings. One quibble with AGRG would be that its name belies what the fund may actually deliver with some of its holdings. While fine stocks, top-10 holdings International Business Machines

and Occidental Petroleum

are not growth stocks. Nor is Cisco

, which in the Professor's opinion, should not be voluntarily included in any ETF at this point. To be sure, AGRG faces stiff competition in the form of more well-established market cap and style ETFs, but the focus on growth and the earnings stipulations the fund puts in place, could help it separate from the pack and the fund's composition makes it one even conservative investors can embrace.