(Bloomberg) — Wall Street forecasters tend to huddle around the consensus, afraid to break out for fear of being wrong. Then there's Tom Lee.

Fundstrat Capital's chief investment officer has made his name with bold calls (S&P 500 at 15,000; Bitcoin to $10 million). His shameless Bulgarian dealings, for which he makes no apologies, have attracted legions of followers online in this age of market speculation – fueled by do-it-yourself retail investors.

Now, the former JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategist. is looking to cash in on its fame with a new exchange-traded fund, the Granny Shots US Large Cap ETF (ticker GRNY), which launched earlier this month and has already earned more than $400 million. It's the first of what he hopes will be many to follow.

The fund's name, like the list of equity recommendations Lee has offered clients since 2019, derives from an unconventional free-throw style of basketball that he likens to his systematic, theme-based process of stock-picking. shares. It may not look the prettiest, Lee says, but it has the highest chance of success.

“Our clients and their loyalty and the fact that we're still growing really fast as a research firm is not just because we're bulls,” Lee said in an interview, adding that the firm also has a dedicated following. institutional. “That's because we've given them plenty of reasons to understand why the markets should be doing what they're doing.”

The ETF is off to a strong start. The GRNY is up 2.2% since the start of November, compared to a 0.2% advance for the S&P 500 over the same span. The $412 million in inflows put it in the top 10% of fund debuts this year based on the speed of asset accumulation, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.

still, GRNY ​​is starting amid a tough run for stock pickers. Roughly two-thirds of large-cap managers have underperformed the S&P 500 this year through the end of October, data from Strategas Research shows. In fact, more than half of active managers have followed the benchmark in 14 of the past 15 years.

Thematic ETFs have also fallen out of favor recently, with exits in nine of the 10 months this year through October, Bloomberg Intelligence data show.

That won't stop Lee. The GRNY is based on four long-term themes, including easing financial conditions and global labor suppliers, and three short-term ones such as seasonality and trend bias. Stocks that match two or more themes are included in the fund. Meta Platforms Inc. is divided into five themes, for example, while Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Garmin Ltd. fit in four.

“It's not a black box process,” said Lee, who added that he and his team have received positive feedback for their transparency. “Granny Shots is giving people a really good sense of why they own this.”

Major holdings include police and military equipment maker Axon Enterprise Inc., Tesla Inc. and CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. The fund, which consists of about 35 stocks, will be rebalanced every quarter. Themes, too, are dynamic.

Of course, always being a bully doesn't always pay off. Both 2018 and 2022 were tough years for risk assets and, in turn, Lee's bullish outlook.

However last year his S&P 500 forecast was the most accurate among more than 20 Wall Street strategists tracked by Bloomberg as the gauge advanced 24%. This year is likely to be a similar story as the benchmark's 26% advance exceeded even the highest estimates. He recently told Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast that the S&P 500 could hit 15,000 by 2030.

When it comes to Bitcoin, he has predicted that the digital token will reach $100,000 since then. at least 2018. In February, he predicted that the virtual currency would reach $150,000 by the end of the year, largely due to a supply-demand imbalance due to a planned reduction in the rewards miners receive and President-elect Donald Trump's promise to create a national country. Bitcoin stock.

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Lee, who co-manages the fund with Ken Xuan, is the latest in a growing list of prominent economists and investors to launch ETFs, joining the likes of Nouriel Roubini, Research Affiliates' Rob Arnott and others.

However, it takes more than just a household name to launch a successful fund, he said. “I don't think that just because someone has a name that all of a sudden they can put out an ETF and it attracts assets,” Lee said.

Ultimately, the plan is for GRNY to be the first of many ETFs based on Lee's investment philosophy.

“We are already planning a full phase of what follows this,” he said.