These may be the first ETFs to wrap this sort of strategy, but vehicles using it have been around "forever". See, e.g. principal protected notes, market linked CDs, indexed annuities, etc.
The particular strategy you described (provide protection via Treasuries, purchase at-the-money call options) is one way of structuring investments. This ETF uses a slightly different strategy (see pp. 19 et seq. in the prospectus).
It purchases at-the-money call and put options and sells an out-of-the-money put option to raise some cash. The put option provides protection against the market declining. The call option purchased provides market exposure for a 100% participation rate. The call option sold creates a cap - if the market goes up higher than the strike price, the buyer of the call will exercise, thus limiting the fund's upside potential.
This variant is independent of interest rates. It should work in ZIRP.
As the Bloomberg piece intimates, a "buffer"ed vehicle does not get 100% protection. (See the principal protected note link above for more on buffers.) So calling this first ETF a "buffer" ETF is somewhat of a misnomer. It does suggest that subsequent ETFs will not have 100% principal protection.

Well said @fred495 -
To me it’s all about doing better than cash over the short-intermediate term (approximately 3 years) with a risk profile you can tolerate. It’s not about beating the market or beating @FD1000 - or beating anyone else. It’s not a game. It’s about being able to stay near fully invested - even at an advanced age - and doing better than you would if parked 100% in cash (or cash-like investments). Why bother? Because inflation is unpredictable. Investing in something beyond “0 risk” cash is one way of hedging against an unknown rate of inflation.
All the criticisms of hedging are true. It does cost more and it does detract from your total return. And the various approaches attempted by funds are unpredictable … You think a balanced fund is more predictable? DODBX fell over 33% in 2008.
My purpose in posting wasn’t to find out whether you can make more money by hedging (You can’t). I just wanted to pick people’s brains about whether they ever engage in the practice and, if so, how they go about it. Thanks to all who offered an opinion.

I've noticed JHQAX (several others mentioned it) a while ago.
This fund seems to offer appealing risk/reward characteristics and it's less expensive than many "alt" funds.

And, JHQAX has successfully proven its mettle over the past 9 years by "providing smoother returns by tempering downside and upside returns via a systematically implemented options strategy".
Of course, it obviously all depends on your personal goals. At this stage of my life, I prefer to err on the side of caution since I don't need a lot more money.
Hence, I prefer to invest in a fund like JHQAX which had a total return of 8.2%, and a modest standard deviation of 8.6%, over the past 5 years. Whereas SPY, for example, gained 12.2%, but had a significantly higher standard deviation of 18.7%.
I find that sleeping well at night is more important to my wellbeing than making a lot of money.
Fred

Unfortunately M* has been off for years about PIMIX. I downloaded the last PIMCO+Bond+Stats+2023+06.xlsx from Pimco.
M* uses all the SEC filing information to present exposure by asset class. PIMCO mechanically sums market value figures, disregarding the effect of derivatives. Of course these figures don't match. One set informs investors about how the fund behaves (which is the theme running through this thead), the other is a pro forma summation.
The significance of this distinction can be seen easily using DSENX as a model. This fund uses nearly all its cash to purchase bonds (100% fixed income exposure), and then for next to nothing buys derivative exposure to the CAPE index (100% equity exposure). Cash exposure is thus -100%. The prospectus explains this and M* shows the fund to have approximately these exposures.
DSENX filings show that about 97% of the fund consists of fixed income, and 0% is equity. Those market value (MV) figures are accurate, just as the MV figures for PIMIX given in a post above are accurate. And they're all misleading.
No one thinks of DSENX as a bond fund. Rather it is presented (rightly) as a CAPE index fund with a bond kicker (100% added fixed income exposure). While PIMCO funds are more inscrutable, they similarly use derivatives to achieve behaviors that are belied by simple market value summaries.

Buffer Fund
A well-known bit of derivatives magic — a great, simple party trick that derivatives structurers can use to impress their friends — is that if you give me $100 today, I can invest $91 of it in two-year Treasury notes paying 4.75% interest, and in two years I will have $100. And I can invest the other $9 in two-year at-the-money call options on the S&P 500 stock index, options that gain value if the S&P goes up over those two years. Those options cost, let’s say, 13% of the price of the S&P today, so spending $9 on options will get me an option on about $70 worth of the index. And so I can offer you the following trade:
• You give me $100 today.
• In two years, I give you back (1) $100, no matter what, plus (2) 70% of the return on the S&P 500 index, if it’s up.
If stocks go up, you get the gains (well, 70% of them). If stocks go down, you don’t get the losses. What a great trade!
And because I can do this efficiently in size, and because I thought of it and you didn’t, and because I advertised it to you with a cool brochure, I can charge you like 1% of your money for putting this trade together. It is a very good trade, honestly. If you are a sophisticated investor you can quibble with it, but at a simple intuitive level it is just nice. “You get [much of] the upside of stocks, but no downside” is a clean and satisfying pitch. The shape of the payoff graph is pleasing.
Bloomberg’s Vildana Hajric and Emily Graffeo report:

The pioneer of the world’s first “buffer ETFs” — exchange-traded funds that are supposed to limit losses during market selloffs — has launched a new product which it says offers investors complete downside protection.
Investors in the $7.5 trillion ETF universe can now put money behind the Innovator Equity Defined Protection ETF, which began trading under the ticker TJUL on Tuesday. The offering comes from Innovator Capital Management, which launched the first so-called buffer ETFs, also sometimes referred to as defined-outcome funds, in 2018.
Buffer funds, as the name suggests, offer buffered exposure to stocks by limiting investors’ downside risk while also capping upside potential. …
Yet, Innovator says that its TJUL fund — which will track S&P 500 returns up to a capped percentage over a two-year period — will be the first of its kind to protect against 100% of stock losses. TJUL’s cap on potential gains is estimated at about 15% after fees.
Specifically, the fund will invest at least 80% of its net assets in options on the $423 billion SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker SPY), according to the fund’s prospectus. TJUL can purchase and sell a combination of call and put options in an effort to cushion against market volatility.
The outcomes set by the fund may only be realized by investors who continuously hold shares of TJUL from the first day of the “outcome period” — July 18 — to the end of the two-year period, which is June 30, 2025, reads the prospectus.

They give you 100% of the gains up to the cap, rather than 70% of uncapped gains, but same basic idea.
There is a reason that this product is the first of its kind: If interest rates are zero, I can’t invest $91 in Treasuries to get back $100, so I don’t have $9 to spend on options to get S&P 500 upside. (I have to put, like, $99 in Treasuries, and the only way to get you any meaningful upside is by giving you some downside risk too.) But as interest rates have gone up, products like this look better, and so people are offering them.
Of course as interest rates have gone up, products like this are in some sense less attractive: Putting up $100 and getting back $100 in two years is worse if I missed out on 4.75% interest than it would be if interest rates were zero. But that’s not the point! The point is that a trade like “I will give you some stock upside and take 75% of the downside between down 5% and down 20% blah blah blah” is annoying and complicated, while “I will give you the upside of stocks and you can’t lose any money” is nice and simple and intuitively attractive. “Buffer fund” is complicated, “stock fund but you can’t lose money” has an obvious appeal.

+1, @hank. Markets can be fickle. Holding on for the long-term can help to counteract our own self-defeating impulses.
My "experiment" with ENIC, the Chilean electric utility, was a disaster. Lost a bunch of money on that dog. And wouldn't you know? I've just seen it RECOMMENDED, and the share price is back up to where I first put my foot in "it." ...On the other hand, I have hung onto BHB and have noticed three days in particular in just the last couple of weeks: on each of those 3 days, the stock rose an amazing 4-plus percent. That's 12%+ all by themselves. And now I'm making money with that holding, rather than losing.
Do your homework. It's essential. Even then, we are bound to screw up sometimes. We are human, after all.

I have spent years looking for hedging, and shorting funds, starting with AQR. I could not find any consistent fund that can do it. A fund can work for several years and then stop working for other years.
My conclusion is that the only thing that works, especially for retirees who have enough is to go to MM in high-risk markets and back to invest when markets are "normal. Sure, it's called timing. Timing doesn't have to be perfect, just good, just like investing isn't. All you got to do is come up with a system and try, if it does not work then stop.
Here is another point that many miss. Missing the worst days is better than missing the best days.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/timing-the-market-pays-off-buy-and-hold-51588186928
So here’s the full truth, according to data from Ned Davis Research. From 1979 to mid-April of 2020, the S&P 500 Total Return Index gained 11.23% per annum. Sure, if you missed the best 40 days, returns shrunk to 5.21%. How about if you missed the worst 40 days? Nobody ever talks about that, because you’d be accused of market timing. Guess what? Your returns would soar to 18.83% annually. And importantly, if you missed both the best and the worst 40 days, you actually beat the market at 12.39%.
FD: and more importantly, the portfolio risk-adjusted return is much better too.
Read the following
https://www.cambriainvestments.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Where-the-Black-Swans-Hide-the-10-Best-Days-Myth.pdf
Conclusions:
1. The stock market historically has gone up about two-thirds of the time.
2. All of the stock market return occurs when the market is already uptrending.
3. The volatility is much higher when the market is declining.
4. Most of the best and worst days occur when the market is already declining because markets are much riskier than models assuming normal distributions predict.
5. The reason markets are more volatile when declining is because investors use a different part of their brain making money than when losing money.

10-4 on above. Great to see you back.

Here’s a lesson in how not to invest. I’d played around with DraftKings stock (DKNG) for a couple years. “In and out” / “In and out” as it fell from $45 down to under $11. Fortunately, I managed to break even. Not without a lot of effort. Than in January I bought a pretty big slug of it for $11 which was near its all time low. I vowed to hang on. But when it got up to around $14 by month’s end the “chicken” in me took hold and I cashed out for the $3 per share gain. Today, the stock sits near $31. So I’d have nearly tripled my $$ by hanging on 6 more months. If you want to make $$, buy something you believe in that’s badly beaten up and hang on for the long term.
PS - I don’t any longer post specific holdings or buys / sells. Thought the lesson worth sharing.

+1 Welcome back Yogi. Please continue to mend. You are an invaluable resource.

Schwab used to have rather short GTC-60. I was surprised to learn that the new limit orders at Schwab are GTC-180 now (since February 2023 from the link below), but existing/continuing ones may be GTC-60.
I also checked Fido and it also has GTC-180.
https://advisorservices.schwab.com/whats-new/trading-portfolio-management/trading-research-rebalancing

It's not all that unusual for new funds to be closed from the start "subject to certain exceptions" (quoting the preliminary TRP prospectus). Often it is to restrict those funds to internal use.
Vanguard was a little clearer when it launched its "Advice Select Funds" - closed to everyone except those working through a Vanguard advisor (robo or "real").
Similarly, Fidelity has its Strategic Adviser® funds, where the prospectuses read: The fund is not available for sale to the general public. They too are open to investors working through Fidelity advisors ("enrolled in Fidelity Wealth Services"). Fidelity also has its Fidelity Series Funds, closed except to its funds of funds and collective management trusts.
It will be interesting to see whether TRP makes this fund available to Summit Select (and higher) level investors, just as it has opened PRWCX and all its other closed funds to these investors.

Keep in mind that the TCIFX symbol, institutional share class, was indicated on the 2017 Summary Prospectus. Even Bloomberg indicates the symbol listing is pending.
The 2023 Registration Statement for the fund indicates the symbols are to be determined (TBD).

HEQT might be worth a look for the nervous. Takes equities and adds put-spread collars to reduce volatility. Has done quite well so far this year -- lags SPY, of course, but still, not bad. Like to see how it performs in a really nasty bear market, though.

Thanks for making me aware of HEQT. I am one of those "nervous" investors that has been well served by JHQAX in the past.
While HEQT "has done quite well so far this year", JHQAX has achieved higher YTD and 1-year total returns but with higher volatility.
Unfortunately, HEQTX has been in existence for only 1.7 years, whereas JHQAX has been around for 9.6 years. Difficult to make a judgement about a fund over such a short life span.
I will add HEQTX to my watchlist to monitor its risk/reward performance over the next couple of years.
Again, thanks for the tip, Richard.
Fred

TCIFX.... closed before inception??? or misprint? PRWCX has no income manager either so Giroux will do both equity & bond my guess.
Why so long delayed inception since 2017??

In 2022 I was one who tried using BLNDX/REMIX, a fund that engages in L/S trading of stock indices, FI, currencies, and commodities. The managers’ monthly reports are quite detailed regarding how their positions fared over the previous 30 days and what new positions have been initiated. The fund measures itself against 50% MSCI World Index and 50% either the BAML 3-Month Index (bonds) or the SG Trend Index and touts itself as an all-weather vehicle. It has only a four-year history. Here are some numbers from the latest monthly missive.
Year to Date 1-Year Since Inception
BLNDX 4.88% 3.05% 12.68%
REMIX 4.82% 2.86% 12.42%
50% MSCI World Index & 50% BAML 3-Month Index 8.85% 11.38% 5.50%
50% MSCI World Index & 50% SG Trend Index 7.78% 9.00% 11.12%
Once all the dust had settled, my sense is that I would have done much better to go to cash other than try to buy an alternative fund to protect my portfolio. IOW, I did not make any money from my positions in REMIX. As someone else pointed out, one would need a sizable position established before the terrible downturn in stocks and bonds in order to have a positive effect. The position would have had to be big and it had to be early. That’s a tough order to fill. I have never tried shorting any asset, so I can’t report on that.

JHQAX sounds good in theory. SPY suffered about 20% fall in Q4/2018 + lost over 30% in 03/2020 and over 20% in 2022....but SPY made almost twice as much as JHQAX.
Chart (https://schrts.co/mEAddMPX)

+1

+1

@WABAC: I have hung on to FIW with no regrets. Of the « theme » ETFs I own or have owned, PAVE held up the best during 2022. The ones I sold don’t get mentioned.

PAVE looks like a good one. I'm all booked up on infrastructure with GLIFX. I was able to upgrade to the I share for 45 bucks at Fidelity. The expense ratio is .97 vice 1.22. First dividend paid the fee. It doesn't shoot the lights out. And it has been going through a rough patch lately. But it helps me sleep at night.