Adams Wealth Discards 65,000 CLOA Shares: Yield vs. Decline 📉

On Thursday, Adams Wealth Management performed the financial equivalent of casting a stone into a still pond: discarding 64,583 shares of the iShares AAA CLO Active ETF, a reduction of one-fifth its holdings. This act, though mechanical in execution, ripples outward-a quiet indictment of modern capital structures that promise stability while sowing quiet ruin.

Chronicle of a Divestment Foretold

Utah-based Adams Wealth, bound by the ritual of quarterly SEC filings, revealed its liquidation of CLOA shares during the second quarter. From 258,224 shares valued at $13.41 million, the firm now clutches a smaller fragment of a sinking vessel. The transaction, recorded with bureaucratic precision, masks deeper tremors: a portfolio manager’s reluctant concession to arithmetic that defies alchemy.

Portfolio Hieroglyphs

CLOA persists as 2.6% of Adams’ $525 million dominion-a diminished but persistent specter. Other holdings rise like obelisks:

  • SCHX: $64.57 million (12.3% of AUM)
  • JBBB: $50.65 million (9.7% of AUM)
  • IVV: $29.88 million (5.7% of AUM)
  • EUAD: $18.23 million (3.5% of AUM)
  • ICVT: $14.83 million (2.8% of AUM)

The ETF limps forward at $51.96 per share, its 0.4% annual gain a mockery against the S&P 500’s 12% surge. Yet its 5.61% dividend-a siren song for desperate yield-seekers-remains untarnished by logic.

Architectural Flaws

Metric Value
AUM N/A
Dividend yield 5.61%
Price (as of market close 9/24/25) $51.96
1-year total return 0.13%

Engineered Fragility

The iShares AAA CLO Active ETF constructs its citadel from 80% U.S. dollar-denominated AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations-debt instruments sliced into tranches like a carcass divided among scavengers. Marketed as “non-diversified,” this fund embodies paradox: safety through monoculture, income via labyrinthine debt pyramids. Its prospectus whispers promises of “attractive income” while its performance graph mutters scripture from Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

Moral Calculus of the Disillusioned

Adams’ divestment is no mere portfolio rebalancing-it is a confession. The firm retains CLOA not out of conviction but necessity, a hostage to clients chained to its dividend chains. This ETF, born in 2023, has appreciated 3% while spewing 5% yields-a mathematical impossibility sustained only by the credulity of those who mistake cash distributions for prosperity.

Herein lies the modern investor’s dilemma: choosing between the slow hemorrhage of capital preservation and the fever-dream of equity growth. CLOA’s existence validates Solzhenitsyn’s aphorism-“The world is divided into the doers and the onlookers”-yet none seem willing to do the hard work of dismantling systems that reward debt alchemy over productive capital.

Glossary of Illusions

Assets Under Management (AUM): The nominal value of funds entrusted to custodians who transmute them into paper castles.
Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO): A financial instrument born of labyrinthine debt structures, often masking risk beneath layers of abstraction.
AAA-rated: A priestly blessing conferred by oligarchic rating agencies, granting access to the temple of investor confidence.
Total Return: A statistic manipulated through creative accounting, often bearing little resemblance to lived investor experience.

Investors clinging to CLOA’s yield must reconcile themselves to its moral ambiguity: harvesting income from a machine designed to extract value from the carcasses of corporate debt. 📉

Read More

2025-09-26 00:39