Siebert and Unusual Whales to build ETFs from market data

Siebert Financial Corp. and Unusual Whales said Tuesday they will build and launch a series of ETFs that package the data platform's market tracking into investable strategies. The strategies will track congressional trades, unusual options activity, and institutional flows. The companies aim to give investors access to themes and market activity that have been difficult to reach through traditional investment products.

Unusual Whales founder and CEO Matt Saincome said the platform was built on the idea that 'retail investors shouldn't be the last ones to know what's happening in the market.' The partnership, he said, takes insights from the firm's tools and 'worldview' and packages them into 'more easily accessible ETFs' with a partner that knows how to scale financial products.

Siebert, listed on Nasdaq under SIEB, brings 59 years of brokerage infrastructure. Chief executive John J. Gebbia called Unusual Whales' tracking of political trading activity and other non-traditional market data 'a powerful window' into the market. Siebert's execution capabilities, he said, turn those insights into products. The planned ETFs, he added, are 'unlike anything currently available to investors.'

This is the second piece of Siebert's data strategy this week. On Monday, PWD reported that Siebert deepened its investment in FusionIQ with a ten-year technology pact, installing that firm at the core of its digital-wealth roadmap. The ETF partnership follows the same pattern: wrap Siebert's brokerage infrastructure around data-driven products and find a distribution edge. The collaboration is meant to connect market intelligence with investable products, according to the release.

The open question is whether investors buy the premise. PWD's own analysis Tuesday argued that ETF launches fail from a trust deficit, and that advisor trust, not capital, determines which funds survive. Unusual Whales has a large retail following. Retail attention, though, does not automatically convert into advisor allocations. The political-trading angle is a selling point; it also gives compliance officers a set of questions about market manipulation and insider trading. The companies said individual strategies, regulatory filings, and launch dates will be announced later.