“Morning David. Forgive me if you have been asked and answered this question already but is there an ETF out there anywhere that roughly tracks your list of Autonomies? I wholeheartedly agree with the methodology but the practicalities of trading such a large portfolio on a number of exchanges is time consuming and frighteningly expensive for the smaller investor. Let me take this opportunity to say what a great job you both are doing. The experience and clarity of thought that you bring to your daily comments have helped me cut through the maelstrom of noise and nonsense and made me a much better investor in the truest sense of the word over the last couple of years since I signed up. Thanks again”

Eoin Treacy's view Thank you for your kind words and I will also pass this email along to David. At the present time there is no ETF for the group of companies we define as Autonomies not least because it is constantly evolving. However there are some proxies.

The SPDR Consumer Staples ETF (XLP) contains a significant number of the companies in our group and has performed more or less in line. Following its recent reweighting the Dow Jones Industrials now contains even more Autonomies and might also be considered a proxy.

I had a proxy index in the Chart Library for the Autonomies but due to a change in how Bloomberg calculate back history for custom indices this stopped updating in the summer. My intention is to create a new proxy when I return to the office next week which will allow us to continue to track a proxy for the group