This is the working specification for the desk: what is in it, where every figure comes from, the arithmetic that produces it, what is checked every night, and what it cannot tell you. It is written to be checkable by someone who does not trust it.
Scope
245 defined outcome ETFs from 3 issuers: AllianzIM, First Trust, Innovator. A fund is in scope when its issuer publishes current outcome-period values for it on a public page, which is what makes a daily figure possible at all. Funds whose issuers do not publish daily values are not carried, because ETFIQ will not interpolate an outcome-period figure between filings.
236 of 245 funds carry their SEC series id and CIK, resolved by ticker and then by name against the SEC series and class file. Ticker alone is not an identifier: tickers are reused after a fund closes.
Sources
| Source | What it provides | Read | Spec |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuer outcome-period pages | Starting cap, remaining cap, buffer, downside before buffer, period start and end, fund and reference return | Every trading night | · |
| Prospectus supplements (SEC 485BPOS) | Buffer geometry and participation terms at period start | On filing | document |
| SEC series and class file | Series id and CIK for each fund | Weekly | document |
| Prospectus XBRL | Expense ratio | Weekly | document |
Definitions and arithmetic
Two figures on this desk are the issuer’s and one is ETFIQ’s. The distinction is on every page.
- Can still gain (issuer)
- Remaining cap in fund-price terms, net of fees, as the issuer publishes it. It is what the fund can still return from today to the end of the outcome period if the reference index rises enough.
- Fall before buffer (issuer)
- Downside before buffer in fund-price terms, as the issuer publishes it. It is how far the fund can fall from today before its buffer begins absorbing losses.
- Protection left (ETFIQ)
- The part of the buffer still below today’s reference level, in index points. Where the buffer runs from bstart to bend in reference-return space and the reference has returned R since the period started, the buffer consumed so far is max(0, min(B, bstart − R)) where B = bstart − bend, and protection left is B minus that. It is reported in index points, not fund-price points, because the buffer is defined on the index.
- The outcome band (ETFIQ)
- One axis per fund running from the buffer floor to the cap in reference-return space, with two markers: where the reference index sits, and where the fund sits. Putting every fund on the same axis is what makes funds with different buffers and different period start dates comparable at all.
- Outcome period
- The issuer-defined window over which the cap and buffer apply, from period start to period end. Every figure on this desk is meaningless outside its own period, which is why the period dates appear beside every fund.
What is checked every night
pipeline/census.py recomputes each published figure from the issuer pages with independent code and exits non-zero on any discrepancy. On this desk it re-derives protection left from the buffer geometry and the reference return, re-derives the band position, and confirms every fund’s published issuer reproduces from a curated rule or a confirmed SEC registrant rather than from the fund name.
What this desk cannot tell you
- It is a daily snapshot, not a forecast. Every figure describes where a fund stands today inside its outcome period, and says nothing about where it will finish.
- Buffers apply only over a full outcome period. An investor who buys mid-period does not get the stated buffer; they get what is left of it, which is what protection left measures.
- Buffer funds hold FLEX options rather than shares, so there is no holdings look-through for them and no overlap between two of them to report.
- Figures are as of the issuer’s own publication, which for most issuers is the prior close.
How to check any of this
Every published figure is available as JSON at a stable address on the open data page, free to use with attribution and the as-of date. Every number is recomputed nightly from the raw sources by independent code and the result is published on the statistics page. Where ETFIQ has published a figure that turned out to be wrong, it is recorded on the corrections page rather than quietly changed.
ETFIQ is an independent publisher of exchange-traded fund data. It is not a fund issuer, broker-dealer or investment adviser, takes no payment from issuers, and makes no recommendations. A figure marked ETFIQ is one ETFIQ computed; every other figure is the issuer’s or the exchange’s, and is labelled as such on the page it appears on.