DEFN — Emles Protective Allocation ETF

DEFN Fund Overview

DEFN — Emles Protective Allocation ETF is a US ETF managed by Emles Trust, categorised as Commodity. ABC INVEST provides holdings, performance, costs, cashflows, risk data, prospectus documents and SEC filings, sourced from SEC filings.

• Type: US ETF
• Manager: Emles Trust
• Category: Commodity
• Assets under management: $3.84M
• 1-year return: -2.8%
• Ticker: DEFN
• SEC CIK: 0001755351
• SEC series ID: S000069235
• Share class ID: C000221146

DEFN Investment Objective and Strategy

Emles Protective Allocation ETF describes its objective and strategy as follows, from its latest prospectus filed with the SEC by Emles Trust.

Investment objective

"Emles Protective Allocation ETF (the ""Fund"") seeks investment results that correspond, before fees and expenses, to the price and yield performance of the Emles Protective Allocation Index (the ""Index"")."

Principal investment strategy

"The Fund attempts to replicate the Index by investing all, or substantially all, of its assets in the stocks that make up the Index, holding each stock in approximately the same proportion as its weighting in the Index. As of September 29, 2020, there were 24 issues in the Index. The Index is designed to provide exposure to those publicly traded securities that can preserve capital and survive through a longer and more persistent economic downturn. In general, no less than 80% of the exposure in the Index will be comprised of corporate credit securities and equity securities issued in the U.S. by U.S. companies and American Depository Receipts (""ADRs""), based on percentage of capital deployed (or exposure) in the Index. The Index is weighted to provide approximately 55% exposure to corporate credit securities and approximately 35% exposure to equity securities, with the remainder of the exposure spread across put options, commodities (in the form of futures contracts) and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (""TIPS""), as further described below.

The Index is rebalanced on a quarterly basis and, in certain circumstances, such as a merger between two or more Index constituents, a special rebalance may be completed to maintain the Index's weighting scheme. The initial universe of corporate credit securities and equity securities eligible for inclusion in the Index must meet certain criteria in accordance with the Index methodology. For example, the companies included must have a minimum of $50 billion market capitalization and at least a BBB+ rating by S&P for long term USD denominated debt (although companies with no corporate debt outstanding or ""NR"" (not rated) may still be included). The corporate credit securities and equity securities are further refined using proprietary scoring methodology that considers, among other things, the balance sheet health, earnings cadence, debt paydown ability and other relevant factors as applicable.

Corporate credit securities will only be included in the Index if a minimum of 3 years maturity remain. The remaining exposure in the Index will be comprised of put options, commodities (in the form of futures contracts) and TIPS, as part of the protective and defensive component of the Index. Put options, futures contracts and TIPS that are considered or generally viewed as defensive in nature, both during a period of economic and/or market stress or uncertainly, will be included in the Index so as to provide a level of protection in light of the weighting in the Index. The Fund may invest up to 25% of its total assets in a wholly owned and controlled subsidiary (the ""Subsidiary""). The Subsidiary will invest primarily in commodities. When viewed on a consolidated basis, the Subsidiary is subject to the same investment restrictions as the Fund, the Fund will consolidate the Subsidiary for purposes of financial statements, leverage and concentration.

The Fund and the Subsidiary will test for compliance with applicable investment restrictions, such as capital structure and leverage requirements, on a consolidated basis and comply with investment policy disclosure requirements under the 1940 Act on a similar basis. The Subsidiary's advisory contracts will be subject to the same regulatory requirements applicable to the Fund's contracts. The Subsidiary also is subject to the Fund's compliance program, to the extent the Fund's policies and procedures apply to its investments and operations. The Section 17 requirements (e.g., transactions involving affiliated persons, custody requirements) are covered by the Fund's compliance program. The Fund's Subsidiary, under management by the same adviser as the Fund, is subject to the Section 17 requirements as addressed by the compliance program to the same extent as the Fund.

The custodian of the Subsidiary's assets is Citibank, N.A. Emles Indexing LLC, an entity affiliated with and under common control with Emles Advisors LLC (the ""Adviser"") is the index provider for the Index (the ""Index Provider""). Solactive AG (""Solactive"") is the calculation agent for the Index and independently prices the Index on a continuous basis during equity market hours. The Fund has adopted procedures pursuant to Rule 17j-1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the ""1940 Act"") and the Adviser has adopted procedures to address any potential conflicts in accordance with Rule 204(A)(1) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. These procedures address the types of conflicts that may arise in connection with a self-indexing fund. The Adviser uses a ""passive"" or indexing approach to try to achieve the Fund's investment objective.

Unlike many investment companies, the Fund does not try to ""beat"" the index it tracks and does not seek temporary defensive positions when markets decline or appear overvalued. Indexing may eliminate the chance that the Fund will substantially outperform the Index but also may reduce some of the risks of active management, such as poor security selection. Indexing seeks to achieve lower costs and better after-tax performance by keeping portfolio turnover low in comparison to actively managed investment companies."

DEFN Performance

Total returns for DEFN (as of 2026-10-01), from SEC filings.

DEFN Risk Information

Risk metrics for DEFN, derived from monthly returns in SEC filings.

• 1-year volatility (annualised): 5.6%

DEFN Costs and Fees

DEFN costs about $55 per $10,000 invested per year in fund expenses.

• Net expense ratio: 0.55%
• Gross expense ratio: 0.55%
• Brokerage commissions: 5.69 bps of average net assets (SEC N-CEN)

DEFN Cashflows

Over the 12 months to 2021-09, Emles Protective Allocation ETF had net inflows of $11.48M, from monthly SEC N-PORT filings.

DEFN Debt Constituents

No individual debt constituents are reported in Emles Protective Allocation ETF's latest SEC N-PORT filing.

DEFN Prospectus and SEC Filings

Official Emles Protective Allocation ETF filings on SEC EDGAR — prospectus, portfolio holdings and annual reports.

• Prospectus supplement (497) — filed 2020-12-09
• Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2021-11-26
• Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2021-08-27
• Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2021-05-26
• Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2021-09-13

Related Funds

Other Commodity funds tracked on ABC INVEST:

• VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX)
• VanEck Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ)
• Invesco Optimum Yield Diversified Commodity Strategy No K-1 ETF (PDBC)
• PIMCO CommoditiesPLUS Strategy Fund (PCLAX)
• First Eagle Gold Fund (SGGDX)

Data Sources

ABC INVEST compiles this page from public filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through EDGAR: portfolio holdings and monthly cashflows from Form N-PORT, expenses and returns from fund prospectuses (Form 485BPOS) and the SEC DERA Risk/Return Summary data sets, annual data from Form N-CEN, and shareholder reports from Form N-CSR.