THE SCOOP Investors have been scrambling to keep up with the US president-elect, including some capitalizing on the political moment, testing how long the Trump trade will last. One of the latest examples: Described in a recent pitch to prospective venture investors as “an S&P 500 fund without the woke sh*t,” the Azoria Meritocracy ETF will shun companies that use diversity quotas in hiring or promotion. The fund is a bet on the Trump economy and the broader backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that the president-elect tapped into on his way to victory. It will launch early next year under the ticker SPXM, said Azoria’s co-founder James Fishback. (MAGA is already taken.) “The country just wholeheartedly rejected DEI affirmative action,” he said in an interview. “We’re going to deliver that mandate to the private sector. These practices are not just unethical but bad business.” Fishback is a 29-year-old college dropout turned Wall Street trader whom Vivek Ramaswamy, himself a pioneer in the anti-woke investment war, has called “a major Gen Z star in our pro-American movement.” Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are now leading Trump’s government efficiency effort. Fishback is best known for a bizarre and ongoing fight with his former employer, David Einhorn’s hedge fund, Greenlight Capital. What began as a spat over Fishback’s title and contributions to Greenlight’s investment returns escalated into dueling lawsuits and online trolling that has bemused Wall Street since the spring. The dispute is now in arbitration. Azoria is finalizing a roughly $25 million venture round, people familiar with the matter said. Fishback declined to name its financial backers but said they include “two prominent conservative-minded California venture capitalists” and several family offices.  James FishbackThe fund is playing for a slice of the $16 trillion that’s invested in funds that mirror the S&P 500. It will buy all the stocks in the index except for companies that use racial or gender quotas in hiring, promotions, or pay decisions, which Fishback said will disqualify about two dozen stocks. “But we won’t give up on these companies,” he said. The fund will launch public campaigns and seek to engage behind the scenes to pressure companies to drop their DEI policies. He’s planning an accompanying podcast and livestreams on X, leaning into the wave of very online retail investors whose rightward leanings have been sharpened over the past year. “We’ll make our case in the marketplace of ideas,” he said. “We’re also going to make some noise.” Fishback said he’ll unveil his first corporate target at a Mar-a-Lago event next week. There are already a handful of ideologically conservative S&P 500 trackers. They’ve attracted little money and charge high fees. The America First ETF, which invests in the 150 companies whose employees or corporate PACs have donated the most to Republican candidates, has $23 million in assets, charges 24 times what BlackRock charges for its S&P 500 fund, and has performed slightly worse than the index this year. | 
