Calamos Focus Growth ETF (CFGE)

The Calamos Focus Growth ETF was an actively managed exchange-traded fund run by Calamos Advisors. It held a concentrated portfolio of large U.S. growth companies picked through the firm's fundamental research, rather than tracking an index. The idea was to package Calamos's growth equity approach, long offered through mutual funds, in a lower-cost listed vehicle that traded throughout the day.

The fund debuted on NASDAQ in September 2014 as the firm's first ETF and one of the early fully transparent active equity ETFs in the U.S. market. Like other active ETFs of that era it had to publish its holdings daily, which some managers saw as a drawback, and it competed with cheap passive growth index funds for investor money.

The fund attracted only a small amount of assets during its life. In 2016 Calamos decided that keeping it open was not practical and announced a liquidation. The last day of trading on NASDAQ was August 1, 2016, and the fund was wound down on or about August 8, 2016, with shareholders receiving cash for their shares. The fund's small size meant fixed operating costs weighed heavily on returns.

Calamos continued to run its growth strategies through mutual funds and later returned to the ETF market with other products. Investors seeking similar exposure generally turned to large-cap growth index ETFs or to other actively managed growth funds. The fund's short life illustrated how hard it was for early active equity ETFs to win assets from established passive funds and from the same managers' own mutual funds.