The stock market has gone to the dogs. Well, one of them anyway.
Before I get to that (and I’ll correct my deliberate syntactical gaffe – one market, or one dog?), ModernIR has launched a new product designed to track the flows behind price and volume, called the Pattern Insight View. To see it, request a demo and mention it.
Now, back to that dog to which the market has gone. It’s a Corgi. I love Corgis, had two Corgi-Collies long ago and they were almost as awesome as Clyde, our Cavalier spaniel.
And what Corgi is doing seems cavalier.
Also, impressive.
Corgi is apparently named after the company’s dog, Trudy. A Corgi. Founders Nico Laqua and Emily Yuan are in their mid-twenties. They started Corgi in 2024 to bring AI to the insurance industry.
They must be persuasive. Venerable Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator led a series A round in January this year that valued the company of about 200 people now at more than $600 million.
Y Combinator was initially backed by Sequoia Ventures, a Steamboat Springs connection. Mark Stevens, former managing partner at Sequoia and current board member at Nvidia, is a major force in our Yampa Valley.
It’s good to have billionaires around, believe me. He spent $100 million to buy a new luxury apartment complex and convert it to affordable housing.
Anyway, last month Technology Crossover Ventures led a B round for $160 million that values Corgi near $3 billion.
Shockingly fast. That’s also how one can describe the slew of ETFs the company has spat like darts into the stock market.
That’s what got my attention. Bloomberg ETF guru Eric Balchunas alerted us on X to its “hundreds” of ETFs in the queue, rather than the 3-4 that are typical from big ETF sponsors.
What the heck is Corgi doing? They call themselves an “AI financial infrastructure company.” They’re an underwriter in business insurance. They’re an SEC-registered investment advisor launching targeted AI-built ETFs.
And they’re doing both in a massive, overwhelming, AI-speed way.
Founder Nico Laqua was a Rabi scholar in neuroscience at Columbia with an emphasis on computational biology and machine-learning. Co-founder Emily Yuan is a Stanford computer science dropout.
Smart kids.
They’re running about $250 million of assets under management. Yeah, not much. But they’re only six months in.
And the flagship fund that began trading Dec 30, 2025, The Founder-Led ETF (FDRS) that invests only in businesses with at least one original co-founder in the c-suite, is about to hit a key level of $100 million of assets. The company kicked it off by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell late last year.
On Thursday, six Corgi bond ETFs start trading. On May 4, a barrage of 34 ETFs listed on the CBOE with targeted themes like Bay Area Companies (BAY), Coffee & Energy (BREW), Crypto Infrastructure (BLCK), Robots and Humanoids (CBOT), 30% structured buffer (CTMA), Genomics & Precision Medicine (GNMX).
There are a lot more. It’s clever. Gotta hand it to them.
Here’s the problem. There are now nearly 4,800 ETFs in the stock market. Heck, there are over three million global index products. But there are only so many stocks. And 90% of ETF assets are in large caps.
Well, how many of those are there? If we define large cap as “$20 billion of market cap or more,” there are 540. Just 138 worth $100 billion or more are $66 trillion, about 85% of the stock market.
You can slice and dice ETFs however you want. But the assets backing them are likely to be the same. Because there aren’t enough stocks. And especially enough that are large, liquid and predictable so that market-makers like Jane Street that create prices for all these ETFs have a “basket” to trade efficiently.
So is this good or bad for you, public companies and investors? The good news for investors is ETFs are infinitely elastic. You can create all the ETF shares you want.
So far in 2026 through April, data from the Investment Company Institute show that $2.7 trillion of ETF shares have been created. Issuers of ETFs are paid for every one of those.
I’m leaving out redemptions for the moment. Follow me here.
If you create $2.7 trillion of “currency” in the form of ETF shares to sell to investors, the probability that stocks rise is darned high. More money, higher prices.
The problem with all inflationary policies – driving prices up by creating more money to chase it – is that nobody knows the correct price for anything. And at some point people lose confidence. Even on the way up. A market that only goes up begins to look to people like a runaway train.
And they jump off. And all the sudden, the $15 trillion of assets in ETFs that are largely concentrated in 140 stocks tries to get out.
That’s no good for anybody. There is such a thing as too many ETFs. But meanwhile, Corgi is killing it like a pack of wolves.
PS – Public companies, see you at the NIRI annual conference. Attend my Express Talk on rethinking earnings, Jun 8, 3p.
