When it comes to investing, I'm an old-school-aggressive rather than a meme-stock-aggressive. Being a Buffet-ier and a Bogle-ier, I go long-term on most.

I prefer matched 401k + ESPPs over YOLO (though I do nano-YOLOs all the time, including buying lottery tickets and hitting casinos for Poker and Cumulative Blackjack).

I believe that 90% of the hedge-funds are on the negative wrt S&P500 if considered large enough time-window, and that a simple index fund would fare better. I also think that the Wall Street is fairly disconnected from corporate financial basics most of the time (which proves Buffet's quote again - 'Be greedy when the market is afraid; be very afraid when the market is greedy').

To prove the above two, a few years ago, I conceptualized a mock-ish “Fruit Basket ETF” that is an index of NYSE/NASDAQ traded firms with either fruits or fruit derivatives in their names - now or historically. The percentage allocations were weighted by their all-time-high market capitalization prices in the post 2008 crisis era. However, to avoid single points of failure, all components were limited to a maximum allocation of ten times the allocation of its immediate lower component.

The index consists of the below stocks, and below are their returns!
I will continue to hold this private, active ETF for a few more years and see how a mock-index performs.

Painting by Caravaggio

On similar lines, I have a few other synthetic portfolios that track unusual themes:

GoP Leaning: This mock-ETF consists of firms that are openly Republican leaning. The reason I find it interesting to track the performance of these is because these constantly benefit from the K Street lobbying. Additionally, they are typically in certain specific industries that are considered quintesentially American! The top five holdings of this ETF are: Chevron, Conoco Phillips, WWE, Reynolds, and The Mosaic.

Women on Top: Companies led by women. There's ample research that shows companies led by women leaders do better in terms of stability, innovation, and diversity. The top five active holdigs in this include Oracle, Walgreens, PG&E, UPS, and Arista.

Glassdoor Stars: It's important to track this because "Employee First" policy has paid off for many corporations in a big way. The public reviews (or eNPS), open culture, diversity, salary transparency etc. make this ETF loaded with companies with highly loyal employees working to bring out their best. The top five include Nvidia, Adobe, ServiceNow, Southwest, and SAP.

Uncool & Boring: Trust me, some of my most stable investments are in this pool. And it's not surprising because this group of companies is largely a hedge against fads, trendy things, sector boom and busts, bubbles etc. These are uncool, boring BUT make money! The companies in this are also the ones I have made most research on. The top five in this mock-ETF include: Waste Management Inc, West Fraser Timber, Peabody Energy Corporation, McKesson, and Caterpillar.

Antidote Ivy: This is a mock-ETF consisting of companies where a substantial percentage of their executive team and Board members are made up of Ivy League alumni! Why is this significant, one might ask. In most situations, it's all about connections! The alumni network is powerful, and there are more options for disaster recoveries, better exits etc.