Wedbush files for a 50-stock analog ETF that excludes AI, chips and data centers

Three days after a September 1 filing to register a 2x daily version of its AI Revolution index, Wedbush Series Trust put a different paper on the file: a preliminary prospectus for a fund whose index is built to stay out of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, data centers, and the power plants that feed them.

The Form 485APOS, accepted Friday at 5:12 p.m. Eastern, names the Wedbush Analog Economy ETF as a new series of the trust. The cover is marked “SUBJECT TO COMPLETION, SEPTEMBER 4, 2026.” Ticker, listing exchange, and management fee are left as blanks. The index is named the Solactive [Analog Economy] Index, brackets included. The paper selects the 75-day clock under Rule 485(a)(2), the slower path used to add a new series, and it says shares may not be sold until the registration statement is effective. A public offering, it adds, would come “as soon as practicable after the effective date,” not on a calendar date the filing sets.

What the analog-economy prospectus actually proposes

The fund would seek to track, before fees and expenses, that Solactive index. Wedbush Fund Advisers, LLC, is the named adviser. Foreside Fund Services LLC is the distributor.

The paper defines the analog economy as industries whose business models depend on “human labor, physical assets, and tangible output.” The list it gives is building products, construction and engineering, construction materials, packaging, forest and paper products, industrial machinery, vehicle and equipment manufacturing, industrial distribution, and environmental and commercial services. A third-party industry classification system, not a Wedbush score, assigns the sectors.

Under normal circumstances the fund would invest at least 80% of net assets plus borrowings in index components, with 60 days’ written notice before any change to that policy. The index itself is designed around approximately 50 U.S.-listed names. Eligible companies are ranked by free-float market capitalization; the 50 largest make the cut. The methodology, the paper says, “does not rank or score eligible companies on fundamental quality or growth criteria.”

Weights would use a modified free-float approach based on the square root of each name’s free-float market cap, a formula that damps the largest holdings, subject to single-name and industry caps the methodology still has to specify. Rebalance and reconstitution are set for the last trading day of “[March, June, September and December]”: even the calendar is still in brackets.

Screens that still sit in brackets

Eligibility starts with membership in the Solactive United States 3000 Index, free-float market capitalization of at least $500 million, and average daily traded value of at least $5 million over six months. Asset-intensity and labor-intensity screens are in the methodology; their levels are still placeholders.

Then comes the AI Exposure Screen, the rule that gives the product its shape. The index “excludes companies whose principal business is the development or provision of artificial intelligence technology, semiconductors, data center infrastructure, or power generation and utility infrastructure.” The tests are specific. A name is ineligible if it sits in one or more third-party reference indices the methodology enumerates, each designed to track AI, semiconductor, or data-center exposure. It is also ineligible if its AI relevance score, generated by ARTIS, Solactive’s natural-language system that reads public filings, exceeds a threshold the methodology has not yet filled in.

If ARTIS produces no score for a company, that test does not drop the name. The methodology “may” add supplemental exclusions for power-generation equipment, utility or grid infrastructure, data-center construction, or semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials.

CIVES and DIVEP sit on the other side of the screen

Wedbush’s listed lineup is four funds. The one that matters for this filing is the Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF CIVES, a 30-stock AI tracker that held $1.05 billion as of August 20 and charges 0.75%. Microsoft and Nvidia are the top two holdings. The April product, the Dan CIVES Wedbush AI Power & Infrastructure ETF DIVEP, is built for the other half of the same trade: power generation, grid, and data centers. Its largest positions include Constellation Energy, Equinix, and NextEra Energy, names whose principal businesses sit inside the analog index’s primary exclusion. Quanta Services, also among the top holdings, is a grid-infrastructure services firm the methodology only “may” catch under a supplemental exclusion it has not specified.

Dan Ives, whose name is on both tickers, left Wedbush on Wednesday, July 1, to start a new venture. The firm said it would keep managing CIVES and DIVEP. The analog series does not carry his name. The September 1 filing for the 2x AI fund still does. Two papers in one week is not a pivot; it is the same trust proposing both a leveraged version of the AI index and a fund defined as its photographic negative.

Industrial ETFs already sell the physical economy

The analog-economy sleeve, described without the AI wall, is a crowded industrial and infrastructure trade. Fees in that field run from 0.08% to 0.69%. Assets run from tens of millions to tens of billions.

The iShares U.S. Infrastructure ETF is 42% utilities, a sector the analog index would screen out.

The iShares U.S. Manufacturing ETF holds Vertiv, a data-center equipment name, at 3.5%. Global X’s infrastructure fund holds Eaton and Quanta, names that sit in DIVEP as well. The paper’s claim to a distinct book is the intensity tests plus the AI Exposure Screen, not the idea of owning construction, machinery, and manufacturing.

Analog Economy Company Risk, a principal-risk heading of its own, warns that if the screens “do not perform as intended, the Index may include companies with greater artificial intelligence exposure, or exclude companies with analog economy characteristics.” The fund is defined by exclusion, in a market where industrial and infrastructure products already hold the data-center and grid names the analog index would keep out. The paper discloses in advance that the wall may leak.