The Weirdest VanEck Thematic ETFs You Didn’t Know About

Back in March, I wrote an article titled Thematic ETFs: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and singled out the ProShares Pet Care ETF (PAWZ) as the “bad” one.

My main gripe? It barely holds any pet-specific companies. Instead, you get a bunch of large-cap stocks that happen to sell pet food alongside thousands of other products. It’s less about investing in the pet care trend and more about buying an overpriced consumer staples ETF with a cute ticker.

That being said, not all niche thematic ETFs are bad. Some are just… weird. Usually targeting a theme you’d come up with while stoned or in the shower, and quickly dismiss, only to find out, yes, someone has packaged that into an ETF for your investing pleasure.

Here are three weird thematic ETFs from VanEck that I found genuinely amusing, yet surprisingly not terrible in terms of construction.

VanEck Environmental Services ETF (EVX)

This one’s funny because I actually own one of its top holdings—Waste Management. It’s one of those rare stocks that always trades at a premium, and in this case, it’s justified.

The company operates in a near-oligopoly, controls hard assets like landfills that are incredibly difficult to replicate, and has pricing power that rivals utilities but with better growth. It’s a classic “boring but beautiful” compounder.

But Waste Management isn’t the whole environmental services subsector, just the headliner. The VanEck Environmental Services ETF (EVX) covers the rest. It’s barely clinging to life with just $84 million in assets under management and a 0.55% expense ratio, but it’s honestly not a bad ETF.

EVX tracks the NYSE Arca Environmental Services Index, a concentrated basket of companies focused on waste collection, recycling, soil remediation, wastewater management, and environmental consulting.

Top holdings include Republic Services, Ecolab, Waste Connections, Clean Harbors, and, of course, Waste Management. I’ll admit, I like the holdings. It’s thematically tight, the names are all relevant, and the weightings aren’t lopsided. Narrow in scope, sure, but at least it does what it says on the tin.

Unfortunately, EVX is set to undergo a full makeover: new benchmark, new objective, and new strategy after the close of trading on December 19, 2025. So, it’s bye-bye to EVX as we know it.

VanEck Agribusiness ETF (MOO)

I’m a big fan of the VanEck Agribusiness ETF (MOO). Not enough to actually invest in it, because I refuse on principle to touch thematic ETFs with expense ratios over 50 basis points, but still, this one’s great.

First off, props to VanEck for locking in the MOO ticker. Somewhere, the folks over at Teucrium ETFs are seething because they’ll never get to launch a cattle futures ETF under that ticker again.

And the construction? Surprisingly solid. MOO tracks the MVIS® Global Agribusiness Index, which pulls together a wide-ranging basket of companies across agri-chemicals, fertilizers, animal health, seeds and traits, farm and irrigation equipment, aquaculture, fishing, livestock, and everything in between.

It’s got all the heavyweights: Deere, Zoetis, Corteva, Archer Daniels Midland, Nutrien, Tyson Foods, all a who’s who of global agribusiness.

If you’re absolutely dying for agricultural exposure and don’t want to buy an actual farm, or get diluted into oblivion by farmland REITs like Farmland Partners or Gladstone Land Corp, then MOO is probably your best bet.

VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX)

Ever since that Chip Wars book dropped, everyone’s been paying into semiconductor ETFs. Yes, yes, they’re important for everything, especially AI. But guess what actually goes into that stuff? Rare earth metals.

That’s where the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX) comes in. It’s one of the few ETFs giving you exposure to this space, with about $276 million in assets under management.

REMX tracks the MVIS Global Rare Earth/Strategic Metals Index, which includes companies that derive at least 50% of their revenue from the rare earth or strategic metals industry. That can even include mainland Chinese A-shares via the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect.

If you’re not familiar with this niche, the holdings will look pretty foreign…because many are. But broadly speaking, these companies are involved in the mining, refining, and processing of critical elements like tungsten, lithium, yttrium, molybdenum, vanadium, and other weird metals you can’t pronounce but are absolutely essential for electronics, EVs, military hardware, and clean tech.

The expense ratio is high at 0.58%, and performance has been rough. REMX has lost about 4.23% annually over the past 10 years. That’s not the ETF’s fault though.

This is a brutally cyclical sector where most firms struggle with profitability, often due to geopolitical risks, pricing power issues, or production constraints. But for now, REMX is your go-to option if you want rare metal exposure in a single ticker.