● LAUNCHED Began trading Sep 24, 2026. Payment history will be charted here from the first distribution.
This fund is already trading; the payment watch is now waiting on its first distribution. A green LAUNCHED badge here means it's live and our launch tracker has logged it.
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What VAIC Does, Per the Filing
VAIC began trading on September 24, 2026 on NYSE Arca with a total expense ratio of 0.74%. That figure is unitary: the management fee is 0.74%, 12b-1 fees are zero, other expenses are zero, and Vega Capital Partners pays the fund's remaining operating costs out of its own fee. That lands mid-pack rather than cheap — identical to VegaShares' own VAIE and to SALI, below the Calamos pair at 0.86% and ARKY at 0.85%, but above the m+ trio at 0.70% and the Pacer Metaurus pair at 0.60%.
The fund seeks income and reduced downside risk through the NYSE® U.S. 500 Adaptive Vol Autocallable Conservative Index, which the prospectus calls the Laddered Autocall Index. That index replicates a portfolio of synthetic autocallable notes rather than holding stocks.
The ladder is the part worth understanding. It holds 52 autocallables, each with its own anchor date spaced one week apart across 52 weeks, each referencing one of 11 underlying reference indices. Because the rungs mature and reset on a rolling weekly schedule, no single entry point decides the whole fund's fate — the design that Calamos used to produce the steadiest payment record in this category.
Coupons are paid monthly. That alone makes this launch unusual: most funds list without stating a payment rhythm at all, and several of the six FT Vest funds that listed two days earlier still publish no distribution frequency. A rhythm is not an amount, though, and VAIC has not declared anything yet.
The cushion is where a reader should look hardest. Both the coupon barrier and the principal barrier sit at 60% of the starting level, so a reference index has to fall roughly 40% before coupons stop or principal is at risk. The autocall barrier starts at 104.50% and steps down 0.25% each quarter toward 100%, which means a rung becomes easier to call away the longer it survives. Tenors run 5 to 5.75 years with non-call periods of 6 to 15 months.
Those 60% barriers put VAIC level with m+'s MPDY and MPIM, which also run 60% coupon and principal barriers, and materially deeper than MPIA's 70%. The word "Conservative" in the fund's name is doing real work here rather than marketing work — but note it describes the barrier, not the outcome. A 40% cushion is not the same as safety, and no fund in this category has yet been through a genuine crash.
VegaShares already has one fund on this site: VAIE, the only weekly-paying autocallable ETF in existence, whose full payment record is charted and recomputed nightly. VAIC is the monthly, conservative sibling. When its first coupon lands, every payment gets charted here from the first one.
What Nobody Can Know Yet
VAIC is trading, but it has not paid yet, so there is no payment history, no real yield, and no evidence of how its strategy behaves in live markets — any number you hear before launch is a target or a guess. Filings also get delayed, renamed, or quietly abandoned; this page's status updates daily either way. When VAIC does launch, we chart every payment from its very first one, free.
One email the day a new income fund launches — nothing else, ever. We watch the issuers' own sites continuously; you hear before the videos exist.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did VAIC launch?
It launched Sep 24, 2026. The registration was first seen in SEC records dated Sep 16, 2026; issuers typically launch within months of filing, but filings can also stall. The status box above updates daily, and the launch tracker shows everything else on the runway.
What will VAIC pay?
Unknowable until it pays — there is no payment history yet and the filing promises no rate. The strategy is option-income, so distributions would depend on real option premiums once live.
Is VAIC safer than other autocallable ETFs?
Its barriers are deeper than some and equal to others, which is not the same as safe. VAIC's coupon and principal barriers both sit at 60% of the starting level, so roughly a 40% fall in a reference index is what stops coupons or puts principal at risk. That matches m+'s MPDY and MPIM at 60% and is deeper than MPIA at 70%. What a barrier cannot tell you is how the fund behaves in a real crash, because no fund in this category has been through one. Judge it on its payment record once it has one, and on the fact that it is also exposed to the swap counterparties behind the notes.