J.P. Morgan's $1.5 Trillion Dollar Plan: Everything You Need to Know

Okay, Steve, one last thing before you take off here. Government investment in critical materials has been in the headlines, and private investment is following suit. JP Morgan announced a $1.5 trillion initiative related to industries that are critical to the economic security of the United States. What should investors know about this initiative?

Yes, this was one that again really moved markets for critical materials when it was announced about a month ago. It's been a busy six or eight weeks as critical materials are concerned. JP Morgan stepped up and said it would finance, facilitate, or invest directly in a number of different industries that are critical to national economic security. Within this, they have 27 areas that they're willing to invest. Specifically, they call it nuclear energy, as well as critical materials mining and processing.

So what we've really seen from investors as we start to see these investments come out, this is by far the largest that we've seen from the private sector. It's been many, many years now that we've started to see hyperscalers or those AI data centers really turn to nuclear energy. We've seen, as I mentioned, GM and other auto makers invest directly in battery metals or the supply chain as it relates to battery metals.

But what we've seen in this case is investors now are really starting to take notice. We've seen record flows actually in the Spat Critical Materials ETF ticker SETM, and also our newly launched active metals and miners ETF ticker METL both provide significant critical materials exposure, whereas the active strategy has a little bit more diversification in it as it relates to the buildout of the grid and the infrastructure required for really bringing in the supply chains as it relates to all things critical materials.

I think this is a noticeable shift where we've seen investors, still in cases, focusing on uranium and copper, but it's a much more broad approach, and what we hear from advisers is that they like that approach because they don't necessarily have to pick any one market that will have winners and losers. I think the main takeaway that we've seen from all of these announcements is it's not just rare earths, it's not just uranium, or just copper where we're seeing investment come in, it really is across the critical material spectrum.