Jensen launches JQTY, a U.S. quality index ETF at 25 basis points

Jensen Investment Management launched its second exchange-traded fund on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, the Jensen U.S. Quality Index ETF, ticker JQTY, with a net expense ratio of 25 basis points. The fund aims to track the Jensen U.S. Quality Index, and ETF Trends reports it intends to hold most, if not all, of its assets in the index's securities.

The index JQTY tracks starts with the VettaFi US Equity 3000 Index, a barometer of the 3,000 largest U.S. stocks, and requires every candidate to have produced return on equity of at least 15% in each of the last ten fiscal years; survivors are then ranked by free-float market capitalization and cut to the 100 biggest names. VettaFi supplies the index and collects a licensing fee for it, and JQTY is not issued, sponsored, endorsed or sold by the provider, which the disclosure says has no obligation or liability for the fund.

Allen Bond, Jensen's managing director and head of research, calls the ten-year hurdle the mechanism that converts a 35-year quality philosophy into a rules-based benchmark, and argues that judging a company from a snapshot of its current financials misses the point. The disclosed rule tests returns on equity and size, though coverage does not say whether the fuller index methodology adds a leverage or valuation test, even though the broader quality pitch in the write-up leans partly on the lighter debt loads such companies tend to carry.

JQTY is Jensen's second product, following the Jensen Quality Growth ETF, which grew its net asset value 2.03% over the month through August 31, 2026, according to the write-up. Todd Rosenbluth, VettaFi's head of research and a former mutual fund analyst, said he is glad to see the firm bring its quality approach to ETFs; his firm also licenses the index JQTY tracks.

Shelf space and advisor attention, rather than ticker count, are the scarce assets in the current launch wave, and if that holds, a second listing from a firm whose quality philosophy predates its ETF business still has to earn the same slot as any other rules-based quality fund.

ETF Trends frames the launch around a Federal Reserve that has raised rates for the first time in three years with inflation still persistent, and around the argument that quality companies hold up in uncertainty because of their higher returns on equity and lighter historical debt. September 2 brought 10-year Treasury yields at 4.78%, the highest since January 2025, with hike odds past two-thirds, a backdrop against which a decade-long earnings test is an easy story for an issuer to tell.

Quality screens do not always deliver the diversification their labels imply; the 111-name OUSM portfolio, for one, kept producing sector outcomes under a quality label. JQTY's 100 names will be published against a rule anyone can check, and the first basket will answer the question the fee does not: how much of a portfolio built on ten straight years of 15% returns on equity lands in a handful of sectors.