URNJ closed 1.57% below the value of its miners Friday
Sprott Junior Uranium Miners ETF URNJ closed Friday, September 11, 2026, at a 1.57% discount to NAV after a 10.6% four-session drop; KMLM finished 1.04% above NAV.
The widest same-session gap on Friday's board was Sprott's junior uranium miners fund URNJ. The last sale was $23.22 against a net asset value of $23.59, a 1.57% discount, both legs dated the September 11 session, after dropping 5.1% Thursday and 5.6% Friday. Sprott's own page, which prices the share at the 4 p.m. bid/ask midpoint rather than the last sale, printed $23.19 and a 1.70% discount to that same NAV. Vanguard's total US stock market fund VTI closed on the same print as its NAV: $376.31. The week's disagreements sat in wrappers whose holdings do not all print when New York does.
US equity and options markets were shut Monday for Labor Day, so Friday ended a four-session week. Nothing in the public record showed a creation or redemption halt.
URNJ's Australian names and a New York close
URNJ is a $363 million Nasdaq-listed fund that tracks mid-, small-, and micro-cap uranium miners. Five Australian-listed names, including Paladin Energy and NexGen Energy, were 39% of the portfolio. Three US-listed miners, Denison Mines, Energy Fuels, and Ur-Energy, were another 26%. The rest of the top ten sits in Canada and Hong Kong. Australian cash markets had been closed for hours by the time the ETF's 4 p.m. Eastern close was struck. The New York share price kept moving.
The fund's own documents warn that last prices from closed foreign markets can leave shares at a wider premium or discount than a domestic book. Friday the last sale and the NAV were $0.37 apart on 535,000 shares, after a 10.6% drop from the prior Friday's $25.96 close. Sprott's 4 p.m. midpoint was $0.40 below the same NAV, the 1.70% the issuer reports. This is not a fund nobody traded. Sprott's frequency table, updated as of September 12, counts 104 sessions at a discount and 141 at a premium in 2025. It does not say how often the gap has been this wide.
The broader Sprott uranium miners fund URNM, which holds larger producers plus a physical-uranium trust, finished Friday at a 0.89% discount, $52.38 against a $52.85 NAV, and was down 8.2% on the week.
URNJ fell 10.6%, more than the broader book
- URNJ · 23.22
- URNM · 52.38
Last week's 0.44% premium on that fund flipped sign. The junior book, with more of its weight in names that close on the other side of the date line, showed the wider gap.
KMLM's 1.04% premium on global futures
KraneShares' managed-futures fund KMLM went the other way. It closed Friday at $31.01, 1.04% above a $30.69 NAV, a $0.32 gap, on 432,000 shares. The fund is a $499 million trend-following book: 22 futures contracts across commodities, currencies, and global bonds, held through a Cayman subsidiary and collateralized with cash and Treasury bills that made up 98% of the disclosed holdings. Those contracts do not all stop when the New York share does. The NAV is a 4 p.m. mark on that package. The share is whatever printed on the exchange. The shares rose 3.5% this week, to within 10 cents of their 52-week high.
The United States Oil Fund USO, a $2.08 billion near-term WTI futures pool, is the direct crude wrapper. West Texas Intermediate settled Friday at $100.05 a barrel, down 2.4% on the day. USO closed at a 0.50% premium, $154.90 against a $154.13 NAV, while its shares fell 2.2% with the pullback after a 9.1% rise from the prior Friday. A half-percent gap is the residual of a futures close against a share close.
The Friday board, last sale against NAV from completed sessions with both legs dated the same day:
The US equity index wrappers were a rounding error. The gaps that cleared half a percent were the funds whose assets keep a different clock.
Silver's official value arrived a day later
The iShares Silver Trust SLV is the large, liquid version of a related timing problem. The trust values its metal off each day's London silver price. US shares trade into the New York afternoon. iShares' Thursday figures, dated September 10, show a 3.13% discount: NAV $59.36 against a $57.50 midpoint. On Friday the trust showed a 0.78% premium: NAV $57.67, midpoint $58.12, on 15.7 million shares, with $31.43 billion in the trust. Friday's official value dropped $1.69, or 2.85%. The shares had already done most of that work on Thursday, when they fell 5.3%. The NAV followed a session later. That is a $31 billion product doing what a London print and a New York close always do when they disagree. It is not a 0.78% that an authorized participant failed to close.
A $100 million Zcash ticket, and a fund that is being wound up
Grayscale's Zcash fund ZCSH closed Friday 0.21% above NAV, $94.40 against $94.20, after a week in which the shares rose 21% and swung from a 10% drop Thursday to a 4.8% gain Friday. On Tuesday, DCG International Investments Ltd. acquired about $100 million of the shares through an authorized participant, exchanging 85,705 Zcash tokens. The buyer is a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which the filing names as the indirect parent of Grayscale Investments Sponsors, LLC, the fund's sponsor; the investor is an affiliate of both the sponsor and the fund. The shares have no preference features. That is a nine-figure affiliate purchase in a fund that listed on August 25.
Sophus Capital Emerging Market ETF EMEM, a $60.5 million fund that listed in May, closed Friday at a 0.38% premium. After the close on Tuesday, Empowered Funds said EMEM and its small-cap sibling EMSC would stop trading after September 25 and liquidate on or about September 28. Creation and redemption orders will be accepted until that last session. The sponsor is winding the funds up. Until it does, the arbitrage window is still open, and Friday's price was within 10 cents of NAV.
Invesco's Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ closed 0.02% below NAV. VTI closed at NAV. If you were about to buy the US stock market, the price on the screen was the value of what you were buying.
A seller who hit Friday's last print on URNJ took $23.22 for miners marked at $23.59. That $0.37 is what the New York close paid when Australian names that were 39% of the fund had already gone dark. Sprott's 4 p.m. midpoint was three cents worse.
Frequently asked
Why did URNJ trade below its NAV?
Five Australian-listed names were 39% of the portfolio and those markets had been closed for hours when the fund's 4 p.m. Eastern price was struck, so the New York share price kept moving while the marks did not.
Was anything broken in the fund?
No: nothing in the public record showed a creation or redemption halt, and the fund traded 535,000 shares on the day.
Why did the silver trust show a discount one day and a premium the next?
The trust values its metal off each day's London silver price, so the shares fell first on Thursday and the official value followed a session later.
What happened with the Grayscale Zcash fund?
An affiliate of the fund's sponsor bought about $100 million of shares through an authorized participant, exchanging Zcash tokens, in a fund that had listed weeks earlier.