Both the bid and the ask on PGIM's October Max Buffer ETF sat below the NAV
The 0.46% discount PGIM published Thursday was the midpoint of the quote, not the ask a buyer would have paid.
Key takeaways
On Thursday, Oct. 22, both the bid and the ask on PGIM S&P 500 Max Buffer ETF - October, PMOC, sat below the fund's net asset value. The fund uses options to seek the S&P 500's price return up to a cap, and to cushion losses over a year.
PGIM's page showed a 0.46% discount. That figure is how far the midpoint of the highest bid and the lowest ask sits from the NAV, measured when the NAV is calculated, normally 4 p.m. Eastern time. It is not the price a buyer pays.
The spread was 0.26%, against a 30-day median of 0.23%. Over the same day the NAV rose 4 cents, or 0.16%, and the midpoint fell 4 cents, or 0.15%.
Thursday's discount was the widest PGIM shows for the fund in October, wider than 0.18% on Friday, Oct. 16, and 0.05% on Monday, Oct. 19. PGIM has not published a premium for Friday, Oct. 23.
The bid was $26.57 and the ask was $26.64, against a NAV of $26.73, so a buyer paying the ask would have paid 9 cents under the NAV, not the 0.46% discount PGIM published.
The fund held $7.2 million, and PGIM reported volume of 118 shares.
Under the premium, PGIM prints a warning.
"There is no guarantee you will receive the stated Premium/Discount and additional fees may result from individual broker fees and transaction costs in the secondary market."
On the Nasdaq-100 fund, the ask was over the NAV
The same afternoon, the ask on PGIM Nasdaq-100 Buffer 12 ETF - October, PQOC, sat above the NAV even though PGIM reported a 0.09% discount. The bid was $31.42 and the ask was $31.65, against a NAV of $31.56. The spread was 0.73%, against a 30-day median of 0.25%, and the fund held $28.7 million.
A buyer paying the ask would have paid 9 cents over the NAV, and a seller hitting the bid would have received 14 cents under it. On PMOC the ask itself was under the value. On PQOC the ask was over it, and the 0.09% PGIM reported was only the middle of the quote.
On both funds, that published discount was a 4 p.m. midpoint. The price of the order was the ask, or the bid for a seller.
While Hong Kong was closed, the official discount was 0.39%
A published discount is only as good as the value it uses.
Hong Kong's securities market was closed on Monday, Oct. 19, the day following the Chung Yeung Festival, on Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing's 2026 holiday schedule. iShares China Large-Cap ETF, FXI, a fund of large Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong, kept trading in New York. It traded 24.4 million shares and closed at $33.53.
iShares put the NAV at $33.66 and the discount at 0.39%. That NAV fell 16 cents, or 0.47%, from $33.82 on Friday, Oct. 16, on a day the Hong Kong market did not trade.
Daniel Prince, in an iShares note dated Sept. 10, wrote that BlackRock applies a fair-value adjustment when it sets the NAV of international stock funds. The case he described is a U.S. fund that keeps trading after the local market has closed.
The adjustment often produces a more precise NAV, he wrote, and a premium that can look different from the premium on a fund that does not adjust, so an investor has to know the method well enough to tell a true gap to the value of the holdings from an optical one.
iShares also publishes a NAV without fair value, the figure that leaves that adjustment out. It was $33.93 on Monday, and $33.94 on Friday, Oct. 16.
The New York close was 1.2% under Monday's NAV without fair value. That comparison is not the discount iShares published. The published discount, against the NAV the fund used, was 0.39%.
By Friday, Oct. 23, the NAV and the NAV without fair value were the same figure, $32.42. iShares put the discount at 0.35%, about where Monday's official discount had been.
Want more of our stories in Google’s Top Stories? Add etf.net as a preferred source on Google
