Corgi's 10% August S&P buffer is a 0.30% clone of a crowded slot
Corgi U.S. Equities 10% Structured Buffer ETF AUGC listed Tuesday, August 4, 2026, seeking SPY price return up to an 18.00% gross cap at a 0.30% fee.
Corgi Strategies listed a 10% S&P 500 buffer on Cboe BZX on Tuesday, August 4. By late morning Friday, September 11, AUGC still held $1.13 million and was turning over about 298 shares a day. The payoff it sells, a one-year cap on the price return of State Street's SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY with a buffer against the first 10% of losses, is the same defined-outcome design Allianz, First Trust, and Innovator have been listing for years.
The new term is the fee.
AUGC's 18% cap and 10% buffer
A defined-outcome, or buffer, ETF uses exchange-listed FLEX options to shape a one-year payoff: participate in the reference fund's price return up to a cap, and absorb a stated first slice of losses. Dividends are not part of the bargain. The stated cap and buffer are designed for a holder who buys at the start of the outcome period and stays to the end. Buy later, or sell early, and the remaining cap and buffer will differ.
AUGC seeks to match SPY's price return, excluding dividends, up to a gross upside cap of 18.00% (17.70% after the fund's fee), while buffering the first 10% of SPY losses, before fees, over August 1, 2026 through July 31, 2027. Those starting terms come from Corgi's August 4 SEC supplement. The fund is actively managed, does not track an index, and is not built to reset exposure each day.
The net expense ratio is 0.30%, after a 0.10-percentage-point contractual waiver on a 0.40% gross fee. The waiver can be pulled with board approval after the first year. The 0.30% is what a holder is being asked to pay now.
The buffer is not principal protection. Losses beyond 10% over the full period pass through, and a shareholder can lose the entire investment. FLEX options can be less liquid than SPY itself, with wider spreads when markets are stressed.
Allianz, First Trust, and Innovator already sell August buffers
The closest fund is Allianz's August 10% S&P 500 buffer AUGT, launched July 31, 2023, on the same August 1–July 31 calendar, the same SPY reference, and the same 10% first-loss buffer. First Trust's August 10% fund FAUG, from November 2019, uses the same collar on SPY with a 10% buffer; its current window runs August 24, 2026 through August 20, 2027, so the calendars do not match. Innovator's August fund BAUG, listed August 1, 2019, shares the August 1 start and the FLEX construction, with a 9% buffer and a 17.79% gross starting cap (17.00% net).
The S&P 500 9-12% buffer group already holds 62 listed funds. Corgi did not invent the sleeve. It repriced it.
Defined-outcome ETFs held $98.68 billion across 539 funds from 21 issuers as of early September. First Trust accounted for 48.92% of those assets, Innovator 36.40%.
At the end of 2025 the two firms' defined-outcome lineups still averaged 0.88% and 0.80% in annual fees, and 191 of 420 funds in the category sat below $50 million. A 0.30% fee is a new price in a channel that has not, on that evidence, been won on price.
Assets as of Friday, September 11, except FAUG on Thursday, September 10. Fees are the incumbents' current net expense ratios.
Against AUGT, the matching August 10% book, AUGC starts 0.90 percentage points higher on the cap, 18.00% gross versus 17.10%, and 0.44 percentage points lower on the fee. Against First Trust's FAUG the fee gap is 0.55 percentage points, $1.32 billion versus $1.13 million. Versus BAUG, 0.49 percentage points on the fee and 0.21 on the cap, on a 9% buffer.
First Trust, unlike Corgi, publishes live remaining terms. As of 11:21 a.m. ET Friday, FAUG showed a remaining cap of 16.89% gross / 16.09% net and a remaining buffer of 9.72% gross / 8.93% net. That is what a mid-period buyer can actually underwrite. Corgi's page still lists remaining cap, remaining buffer, fund return, and SPY return as "TBD." The outcome period began Saturday, August 1; the shares listed Tuesday, August 4, so they were not exchange-tradable on Monday, August 3, the first session of the fund's own clock. Anyone buying AUGC today is not being offered the starting 18.00%/10.00% package from their purchase price, and Corgi has not published the package that is on offer.
AUGC holds FLEX options on SPY, not stocks
The portfolio is a collar, not a stock book. As of Friday the largest line was a purchased SPY July 30, 2027 $151.53 call, 80.5% of assets, the deep-in-the-money contract that creates the synthetic long. A 2.75% U.S. Treasury note due July 31, 2027 was 17.0%. A purchased SPY $757.67 put was 4.9%. Written against those were a SPY $681.90 put at −2.6% and a SPY $894.05 call at −0.9%. There are no common stocks.
That is the category-standard construction: a deep call for exposure, a put spread for the buffer, a short call for the cap, cash and Treasuries for the rest. Sector weights that data vendors print for AUGC are SPY's mix showing through the options, not a stock-picking sleeve.
Corgi's April 29 prospectus says the Trust generally anticipates cash creations and redemptions rather than in-kind. Six shares had printed by late morning Friday, against an average of roughly $7,500 a day. FAUG turns over about $2.74 million a day. Average daily volume measures turnover, not the size a holder can transact without moving the price, and a handful of prints is not a market.
Corgi listed nine August-series buffer ETFs on the same morning, including a 15% sister fund CAUG that holds about $1.00 million. The firm's buffer shelf now lists 36 funds across nine monthly series. AUGC is one ticker in that stack, not a one-off.
Thirty basis points is a real discount. In this sleeve it has not been the term that gathers assets. First Trust and Innovator still take most of the books at 0.79% to 0.85%. The discount would start to matter when FAUG or BAUG started losing assets to AUGC. They have not.
Frequently asked
What does the fund promise?
It seeks SPY's price return, excluding dividends, up to an 18.00% gross cap while buffering the first 10% of SPY losses over a one-year outcome period.
Is the 10% buffer principal protection?
No; losses beyond 10% over the full period pass through, and a shareholder can lose the entire investment.
Do I get the stated cap and buffer if I buy now?
No, the stated terms apply to a holder who buys at the start of the outcome period and holds to the end, and Corgi still lists remaining cap and buffer as "TBD."
What does the fund actually hold?
FLEX options on SPY plus a Treasury note, a deep in-the-money call for exposure, a put spread for the buffer and a written call for the cap, and no common stocks.