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How Are Sentiment-driven ETFs Doing?

Steve LeCompte | | Posted in: Sentiment Indicators

Guide Market Indicators Sentiment

Key Insight

An equal-weighted average of three sentiment ETFs (BUZZ, MOOD, NEWZ; monthly rebalanced) underperformed VTI (1.0% vs 10.7% CAGR; MaxDD -51% vs -25%; sample periods vary, through Mar 2026), with all three highly correlated to VTI.

Do exchange-traded funds (ETF) designed to exploit sentiment indicators beat the market? To investigate, we consider three such ETFs, all currently available, as follows:

    • VanEck Social Sentiment ETF (BUZZ) - invests in common stocks of U.S. companies with the most "positive insights" collected from online sources including social media, news articles, blog posts and other alternative datasets.
    • Relative Sentiment Tactical Allocation ETF (MOOD) - invests based on "relative sentiment" factors in other ETFs that hold equities, bonds, commodities, currencies and gold.
    • Stocksnips AI-Powered Sentiment US ALL Cap ETF (NEWZ) - invests in securities of U.S.-listed large, mid and small capitalization firms based on a proprietary, AI-derived News Media Sentiment Signal.

We use Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (VTI) as the benchmark. We focus on monthly return statistics, along with compound annual growth rates (CAGR) and maximum drawdowns (MaxDD). Using monthly total returns for the three sentiment-driven ETFs and VTI available through March 2026, we find that:

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Market Indicators guide

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