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Put ADPV's 1.00% management fee next to a passive momentum ETF at 0.15% and the gap looks lopsided. On a $500,000 allocation, that's $5,000 a year against $750. A $4,250 difference, every year, for what looks like the same idea: own the stocks that are going up.
Here's the thing about a 15-basis-point price tag, though. A fee that low is usually telling you something. It tends to mean you're buying an index, a basket that mirrors the market and isn't trying to do anything the market isn't already doing. There's nothing wrong with that. But "cheap" and "the same product" aren't the same statement. You don't shop for the cheapest cardiologist, because price isn't the point. What they can actually do is the point.
So the real question isn't whether 1% costs more than 0.15%. It's what the difference does, and whether that matters in a client portfolio.
It comes down to one feature. The other two are how the fund earns the right to have it.
The Problem With Momentum Nobody Puts on the Brochure
Momentum works because winners tend to keep winning. The catch is the other half of that sentence. The same stocks that lead on the way up tend to lead on the way down. Momentum performs beautifully right until the trend breaks, and then it breaks hard, because you're concentrated in exactly the names that fall fastest.
A passive momentum ETF owns that downside in full. That isn't a flaw in the product, it's the design. It's an index. It stays invested through corrections, bear markets, and every drawdown in between, because that's what it promised to do. When the market finally rolls into a protracted correction, whenever that is, a passive momentum fund is going to ride the downside momentum the whole way.
For an advisor, that's a specific problem. You like the return profile of momentum, but you can't put a client into a concentrated equity sleeve that's built to ride the whole thing down. The drawdown is the part that blows up the client conversation, not the upside.
That problem is the reason ADPV exists. And the 1% is mostly paying for one thing: a way out.
Key Point: A passive momentum fund is built to ride the full drawdown, because the names that lead on the way up fall fastest on the way down.
The Exit
Here's the mechanism. When the 5-day moving average of the broad U.S. market closes below its 200-day moving average on the last trading day of the week, ADPV sells its equities and moves the entire portfolio into short-term Treasury bills. When the market recovers back above that line, it goes back in.
It's a binary switch. All in or all out, not a gradual step-down like some trend-following products that ease the allocation lower in stages. The signal either fires on Friday or it doesn't. You can see it coming, and so can your client.
What you're buying with the fee is a circuit breaker on an aggressive sleeve. The fund can hold a concentrated, fast-moving momentum portfolio precisely because it has a defined point at which it stops holding it. The aggression and the exit are a package. You don't get one without the other.
There's a second benefit advisors tend to underrate and is easy to explain to a client. The fund looks at a thousand stocks, ranks them by momentum, owns the top 25, and goes to cash when the market breaks down. You can say that to Mr. and Mrs. Client in two sentences, and the "it goes to cash to protect your account" part is the sentence they remember. It also takes the emotion out of the call. Nobody, advisor or client, has to decide whether today is the day to get defensive. And because the move to cash happens inside the ETF, it doesn't dump a pile of capital gains into a client's taxable account the way selling down a book of individual stocks would.
Be clear-eyed about the cost, though, because a moving-average rule is insurance, not magic. It will sometimes sell you out near a bottom and buy you back in late, and a sharp V-shaped recovery is the scenario where a trend rule looks worst. There's cash drag while you wait. The trade is giving up a slice of the snap-back in exchange for not owning the full drawdown. Whether that's worth the difference comes down to which fund keeps your client invested. The cheapest fund in the world costs you everything if the client bails at the bottom.
The switch has flipped more than once. The fund launched in protective mode, went defensive again from March through May 2025, and briefly in April 2026.
Key Point: The fee mostly buys a defined, rules-based exit to cash that lets the fund hold an aggressive sleeve precisely because it can stop holding it.
Why the Rest of the Design Follows From the Exit
The other two features are real, but they make the most sense as consequences of the exit.
It's also exactly the kind of portfolio that needs a circuit breaker, because concentration cuts both directions. The exit is what makes the concentration possible because without it, the concentration that sharpens your gains sharpens your losses.
The fund also re-ranks weekly instead of semi-annually. A six-month rebalance can hold a name on momentum data that's months stale, long after leadership has rotated, and it can be slow to pick up a name that's surging now. Weekly reconstitution keeps the portfolio current, which lets it stay aggressive. Same theme: the fund earns the right to move fast because it has a defined point at which it stops.
Key Point: The 25-stock concentration and weekly re-ranking only work because the exit gives the fund a defined point at which it stops.
Where Advisors Actually Put it
This isn't a whole-portfolio product, and the advisors using it don't treat it that way. A few patterns show up. Some use it as a momentum overlay, a dedicated factor sleeve sitting alongside the core. Some use it to replace a single-stock sleeve, swapping the work and concentration risk of picking individual names for a rules-based version of the same idea. And some run it as a sidecar to an S&P 500 position, a satellite meant to add some alpha while accepting that it carries more beta than the core.
The common thread is that it's a defined slice with a defined risk profile, which is easier to size and defend than a discretionary bet.
Key Point: Advisors use it as a defined factor slice with a defined risk profile, not as a core or whole-portfolio holding.
The Fee, Plainly
The 1.00% is unified. It covers management, administration, custody, and operating costs in one number, with nothing else passed through. On $500,000, that's $5,000 all-in, no surprises on the statement.
And this is where the fee question answers itself. The half point over a passive fund isn't paying for a fancier version of the index. It's paying for a fund that's actually trying to do something the index won't: hold a concentrated set of the strongest names, refresh it weekly, and step aside when the market breaks. You can buy the index for 15 basis points. You can't buy that for 15 basis points, because nobody builds it for 15 basis points.
Key Point: The 1% is one unified, all-in fee paying for a strategy a passive index will not replicate.
Who This is Actually For
If your client wants the cheapest possible momentum exposure and will genuinely sit through a full bear market without calling you, buy the 15-basis-point fund. That's the right answer, and ADPV isn't trying to win that client.
The 1% is for the other situation. You want momentum in the portfolio, but you need it to behave like something you can defend in a drawdown review, with a rules-based exit you didn't have to time yourself. When the next protracted correction comes, the passive fund will own the downside and this one is built not to. If that's the problem you're solving, the $4,250 isn't a premium on the same product. It's the price of a different one.
Key Point: It fits advisors who need rules-based momentum they can defend in a drawdown, not clients chasing the cheapest exposure.
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