Non-profit exchange-traded fund (ETF) platform Impact Shares has rolled out the Impact Shares YWCA Women's Empowerment ETF, which offers exposure to companies that have aligned their business practices with gender-equality standards. The ETF will track the Morningstar Women's Empowerment Index, representing 200 companies derived from 1,200 of the biggest US-listed firms. Impact Shares will donate the net advisory proceeds back to the collaborating non-profit partner, which for this fund is YWCA. The organisation has been a leader in women's advocacy for more than 100 years.

The women's empowerment ETF follows the recent debut of the Impact Shares NAACP Minority Empowerment ETF and comes as part of the platform's efforts to partner up with leading non-profit organisations that are willing to leverage capital markets to raise their social impact. The partnership is backed by the Rockefeller Foundation's Zero Gap Portfolio. A new ETF in collaboration with the United Nations Capital Development Fund is set to be launched next month.

Global X Funds, the New York-based ETFs provider, has launched the Global X Adaptive US Factor ETF, tracking the Adaptive Wealth Strategies US Factor index. The index allocates to sub-indexes representing three factors - value, momentum and minimum volatility - and is designed to mitigate downside risks while attempting to generate outperformance with a built-in mean-reversion mechanism. This means, the fund will track an index that rotates its weightings to underperforming factors. The index adjusts its factor exposures on a quarterly basis and is introduced by Carroll Financial,

'The lesson that we've learned keenly over the last year has been that market environments can change rapidly, leaving investors seeking dynamic strategies that can adjust to a changing landscape,' said Jay Jacobs, senior vice president at Global X Funds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has once again disapproved several proposals for a bitcoin ETF. The latest rejection involves a total of nine bitcoin ETF filings from three companies - ProShares, GraniteShares and Direxion. ProShares filed for two ETFs that would track bitcoin futures contracts and be listed on New York Stock Exchange ETF exchange, NYSE Arca, while Direxion attempted for five leveraged and inverse ETFs, also for listing on NYSE Arca. GraniteShares filed two applications for listing on Cboe. The disapproval comes on the heels of the commission's rejection of the Winklevloss ETF in July.

As cited in its previous rejections, the commission said the underlying bitcoin market remains too opaque and is prone to fraud and manipulation. SEC underscored though that the rejection is not derived from its evaluation of whether bitcoin or blockchain technology has value as an innovation or investment. Yet, there are applications still awaiting for SEC's approval such as the one filed by Bitwise and the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust. The commission has postponed its decision on whether to approve or disapprove the VanEck ETF until the end of next month.

However, last week, Fidelity Investments started offering investors Bitcoin exchange traded notes (ETNs) offered by XBT Provider on Sweden's Nasdaq exchange, after the US SEC approved its listing in the US market. The Bitcoin Tracker One, which started trading on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange in 2015, is now quoted in US dollars.

The ETN is to be considered as a security, so that could have implications for institutional investors such as pension funds which are limited to around only 10% of their investments being in non-securities or other assets, according to XBT. OTC FX markets, which offers some 10,000 securities through a network of broker dealers has also begun listing the ETN in dollars under the ticker of CXBTF.

Mirae Asset Global Investments is seeking approval from Securities and Exchange Board of India to launch the Mirae Asset Nifty 50 ETF, an open-ended scheme tracking the Nifty 50 index. The index is the flagship index on the National Stock Exchange of India and tracks behaviour of the country's blue chip companies. The new fund will allocate 95% of its assets in securities included in the Nifty 50 Index, while the remaining 5% will invest in other money market instruments, debt securities, instruments and/or units of debt/liquid schemes of domestic mutual funds.

Exchange Traded Concepts (ETC), a provider of white label ETF solutions, has teamed up with The Perth Mint, Australia's largest precious metals refining, minting and depository enterprise, to launch the Perth Mint Physical Gold ETF.

This fund is the first ETF offering exposure to physical gold that is backed by a sovereign entity. It is also the only gold ETF with vaults in Asia, offering investors an alternative to traditional vault centres which is recommended for institutions holding more than US$20m in physical gold. The Perth Mint Physical Gold ETF shares are backed by physical gold with a purity of 99.5%, which is secured within The Perth Mint's network of central bank grade vaults in Western Australia. The Perth Mint may, on rare occasions, store the gold in other highly secure vaults. All the gold held on behalf of the ETF is guaranteed by the Government of Western Australia. Additionally, the new ETF will pay all of its expenses in gold ounces and will not hold any cash, minimizing the potential for tracking errors.