When an ETF is cheaper than us.
A managed-futures ETF charges a percentage of your money every year. We charge a flat subscription. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how much you have — so here is the line, and which side of it you are on.
The number most comparisons get wrong
The naive version
“DBMF charges 0.85%/yr. Follow costs $180/yr. So the subscription wins above $180 / 0.0085 ≈ $21,000.”
This assumes the ETF would replace your entire portfolio. It would not, and using it flatters us by a factor of two and a half.
The version we use
The blend is 60% a broad index core, 40% a trend sleeve. A managed-futures ETF substitutes for the sleeve — you would still hold the index core, and index funds are nearly free.
So the fee actually avoided is 0.85% × 0.40 = 0.34%/yr, and the crossover is $180 / 0.0034 ≈ $53,000.
By account size
Annual cost of the sleeve, both ways. Green is the cheaper option at that size.
| Account size | ETF fee on the sleeve | Follow $180/yr | Connect $468/yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | $34 | $180 | $468 |
| $25,000 | $85 | $180 | $468 |
| $53,000 | $180 | $180 | $468 |
| $100,000 | $340 | $180 | $468 |
| $138,000 | $469 | $180 | $468 |
| $250,000 | $850 | $180 | $468 |
| $500,000 | $1,700 | $180 | $468 |
Crossovers: ~$52,941 for Follow, ~$137,647 for Connect.
Who should not subscribe
- Your sleeve is under ~$53,000. The fee you would avoid is smaller than the subscription. This is most people, and we would rather say so.
- You want someone else to press the buttons. We publish a trade list; you place the trades. An ETF requires nothing of you.
- You want a short leg. A managed-futures fund can go short. Our blend is long-or-flat and moves to T-bills instead.
- You want a real-money track record before committing. We do not have one. Nobody at Uptogain has managed real money in this strategy.
- Your sleeve is well above the crossover and a flat fee beats a percentage that grows with your account.
- You want to see the rules. Every rule is published, every rebalance is committed to version control, and the failures are published too.
- You hold in a taxable account and want control over when gains are realised — a fund makes that decision for you.
None of this is advice about your situation. It is arithmetic; you apply it.
This page compares cost only. It draws no performance comparison between Uptogain and any fund, because we have no real-money record to compare with — doing so would be dishonest by construction. The 0.85%/yr figure is DBMF's stated expense ratio. See the live record for what our paper account has actually done, including the weeks it trailed.