The Index seeks to track the performance of US-listed securities that have business operations in the field of distributed ledger or decentralized payment technology, which includes the following business fields (“Crypto Industry Businesses”): ●Blockchain Technology – Companies that provide digital, distributed ledgers that facilitate the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a network. This includes companies providing blockchain technology services, including operation of digital asset trading platforms or payment gateways that facilitate payments made with digital assets and companies active in the development or integration of blockchain software and blockchain applications;●Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) & Tokenization – Companies that enable users to be a part of the digital economy through NFT where each NFT is unique and can be tracked through the blockchain. This includes companies active in NFT trading platform business, or companies having engaged in NFT business by launching NFT auction, issuing NFT or providing NFT brokerage service;●Decentralized Finance – Companies that are engaged in the development or provision of decentralized payment technologies and/or that are involved in the provision of technologies, infrastructure, or hardware used to develop or operate decentralized payment systems; and●Digital Asset Mining Hardware – Companies that are involved in the manufacture, distribution or assembly of cryptocurrency mining equipment.To be eligible for inclusion in the Index, the securities must be listed on the NYSE, NASDAQ, or the NYSE American, have a share class market capitalization of at least $500,000,000, and have an average daily traded value of at least $5,000,000.Once the eligible universe of securities has been identified, companies are selected for inclusion in the Index by Solactive AG (the “Index Provider”), using ARTIS®, the Index Provider’s proprietary natural language processing algorithm. ARTIS uses key words to review large volumes of publicly available data, such as company annual reports, published business descriptions, and financial news reports, which the Index Provider believes will identify and classify companies as having significant exposure to the provision of products and/or services that contribute to the distributed ledger or decentralized payment technology and then ranks the companies based on the number of key word “hits” in the company’s data. The ARTIS classification system is different than traditional classification systems because it utilizes natural language processing, such as key word searching, whereas traditional classifications system utilize backward looking metrics, such as a company’s past profits or revenue, to determine the classification of a company.Companies are only eligible for inclusion in the Index if they generate at least 50% of their revenue from Crypto Industry Businesses. The Index consists of at least the top 5 ranked companies and then selects additional securities from the current constituents and newly eligible constituents, with a minimum of 25, from those ranking as most relevant. The index is rebalanced and reconstituted quarterly.As of December 29, 2023, the Index consisted of 25 constituents with an average market capitalization of approximately $114.3 billion, market capitalizations ranging from $716 million to $1.2 trillion and were concentrated in the information technology and financial sectors. The Fund does not invest directly in cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens or any other digital asset.The components of the Index and the percentages represented by various sectors in the Index may change over time. The Fund will concentrate its investment in a particular industry or group of industries (i.e., hold 25% or more of its total assets in investments that provide inverse leveraged exposure to a particular industry or group of industries) to approximately the same extent as the Index is so concentrated.The Fund, under normal circumstances, invests at least 80% of the Fund’s net assets (plus borrowing for investment purposes) in financial instruments, including swap agreements, futures contracts, or short positions, that, in combination, provide 1X daily inverse (opposite) or short exposure to the Index or to exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") that track the Index, consistent with the Fund’s investment objective.The Fund may also gain inverse exposure by investing in a combination of financial instruments, such as swap agreements or futures agreements that provide short exposure to the Index, to a representative sample of the securities in the Index that has aggregate characteristics similar to those of the Index or to an ETF that tracks the same Index or a substantially similar index, or the Fund may short securities of the Index, or short an ETF that tracks the same Index or a substantially similar index. The Fund invests in derivatives as a substitute for directly shorting securities in order to gain inverse exposure to the Index or its components. When the Fund shorts securities, including the securities of another investment company, it borrows shares of that security or investment company, which it then sells. The Fund closes out a short sale by purchasing the security that it has sold short and returning that security to the entity that lent the security. On a day-to-day basis, the Fund is expected to hold money market funds, deposit accounts with institutions with high quality credit ratings (i.e. investment grade or higher), and/or short-term debt instruments that have terms-to-maturity of less than 397 days and exhibit high quality credit profiles, including U.S. government securities and repurchase agreements.The Fund seeks to remain fully invested at all times consistent with its stated inverse investment objective, but may not always have inverse exposure to all of the securities in the Index, or its weighting of inverse exposure to securities or industries may be different from that of the Index. In addition, the Fund may have inverse exposure to securities, ETFs or financial instruments not included in the Index.The Fund will attempt to achieve its investment objective without regard to overall market movement or the increase or decrease of the value of the securities in the Index. At the close of the markets each trading day, Rafferty rebalances the Fund’s portfolio so that its exposure to the Index is consistent with the Fund’s inverse investment objective. For example, if the Index has fallen on a given day, net assets of the Fund should rise, meaning that the Fund’s exposure will need to be increased. Conversely, if the Index has risen on a given day, net assets of the Fund should fall, meaning the Fund’s exposure will need to be reduced and that a shareholder should lose money, a result that is the opposite of traditional index tracking ETFs. This re-positioning strategy may result in high portfolio turnover. The terms “daily,” “day,” and “trading day,” refer to the period from the close of the markets on one trading day to the close of the markets on the next trading day.The Fund is “non-diversified,” meaning that a relatively high percentage of its assets may be invested in a limited number of issuers of securities. Additionally, the Fund’s investment objective is not a fundamental policy and may be changed by the Fund’s Board of Trustees without shareholder approval. Because of daily rebalancing and the compounding of each day’s return over time, the return of the Fund for periods longer than a single day will be the result of each day’s returns compounded over the period, which will very likely differ from -100% of the return of the Index over the same period. The Fund will lose money if the Index performance is flat over time, and as a result of daily rebalancing, the Index’s volatility and the effects of compounding, it is even possible that the Fund will lose money over time while the Index’s performance decreases over a period longer than a single day.
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