Sprott Uranium Miners ETF
Sprott Asset Management
Tracks the VettaFi Global Uranium Mining Index — a purer miners play than URA (≥50%-uranium companies) with a large physical-uranium-trust position for direct spot-price torque.
- Concentrated — Top disclosed positions are 50%+ of the disclosed book.
Top holdings
Largest holding; world's #2 producer
Sprott's own physical trust — direct spot-uranium exposure
Top-3 weight; these three are ~half the fund
Canadian developer (Wheeler River)
US uranium + rare earths
World's largest producer
Performance
July 2026: 7.6% ($52.59 Jun 30 → $48.57 Jul 31); low $47.13 Jul 29, bounce to $49.45 Jul 30 — Distributions are annual (December), so 2026 YTD price return = total return; last payout $1.74317 ex-Dec 18 2025. Providers disagree on 1Y: stockanalysis +8.22% total vs Yahoo closes +7.5% price (~+11% with the Dec distribution) — both given. Issuer sprottetfs.com, Morningstar, etf.com and financecharts returned HTTP 403, so no issuer-confirmed NAV table.
Recent moves
Pure-miner beneficiary of the 2025-26 uranium re-rating — structural supply deficit plus AI-driven power demand and US policy support fueling inflows; the ~13% physical-trust holding gives it the most direct spot-price torque of the miners ETFs.
Our take
The connoisseur's uranium-equity vehicle — concentrated, miner-pure, and levered to the uranium price itself via the physical trust, so it plays the supply-deficit thesis harder than URA but with more single-name and commodity-price risk.
The differentiator and the core risk are the same thing: the ~14.4% Sprott Physical Uranium Trust holding (Jul 15 2026) makes URNM more of a direct uranium-price bet than a diversified miners basket — it torques harder than URA on the way up and down, and the trust itself trades at a premium/discount to its own NAV, layering basis noise on top of spot. This is not a leveraged/daily-reset product, so there is no volatility-decay mechanic to warn about; the honest caution is different — with ~46% in Cameco (19.4%), the physical trust (14.4%) and NexGen (12.2%), URNM is a single-factor commodity bet dressed as an equity fund. When uranium trends, everything in the book moves together; when it reverses, there is no offsetting sleeve. The fund does what it says — it is the cleanest liquid way to express a high-conviction uranium-deficit view — but 'concentrated and honest about it' is the accurate label, not 'diversified nuclear exposure.'
Thesis
URNM is a concentrated pure-play uranium-equity fund whose return is essentially a levered read on one variable — the uranium spot price — through a ~46% top-3 book and a ~14% physical-uranium-trust sleeve. Its headline record is entirely regime-dependent, not evidence of a durable edge.
Tracks the VettaFi Global Uranium Mining Index: companies with ≥50% of assets/revenue in uranium, cap-weighted, plus a large Sprott Physical Uranium Trust position that gives direct spot-price torque. 31 holdings, 0.75% expense ratio, no daily reset or leverage (verified stockanalysis, Jul 2026).
Assessment
- Purest liquid uranium-miners equity vehicle — the ≥50%-uranium screen strips out the nuclear-component names that dilute broader peers.
- The ~14% physical-uranium-trust sleeve gives the most direct spot-price torque of the miners ETFs.
- Deep and established: ~$1.73B AUM, live since Dec 2019, so it carries a genuine full-cycle track record most nuclear ETFs lack.
- 0.75% expense ratio is mid-pack for a single-commodity thematic fund.
- Trailing 1-year total return was just +1.43% as of Jul 21 2026 (stockanalysis) versus a +25.98% since-inception average — the record is a function of where you stand in the uranium cycle, nothing more.
- ~46% in the top 3 names plus one commodity: this is a leveraged spot bet, not diversification.
- The physical trust's premium/discount to NAV adds tracking noise beyond uranium spot itself.
- Foreign/junior names (Kazatomprom, Paladin, Deep Yellow) add Kazakhstan-geopolitical and single-mine operational risk.
- 2026-07Jul 31, 2026: trailing one-year is +8.22%, against +25.97% since inception — the +1.43% reading from Jul 21 moved 6.8pp in eight sessions. The volatility point holds; the level does not.
Record
The since-inception average annual return of +25.98% (from Dec 2019) is dominated by two uranium bull legs (2020-21 and 2024-25) and tells you little about forward odds. The give-away is the trailing window: YTD was ~+27.5% at Apr 30 2026, but uranium spot consolidated from a ~$101/lb late-January peak back to the ~$84-87 range through Q2, and by Jul 21 2026 the trailing 1-year return had collapsed to +1.43%. Same fund, same thesis, wildly different number depending on the as-of date — which is the whole point. Attribution is almost entirely the uranium price and the Cameco/physical-trust core, not stock selection. The ~3.6% distribution yield is a rounding error against swings of this magnitude.
- 2026-07Jul 31, 2026: URNM fell 7.6% in July to $48.57, leaving it 34.7% below its January month-end close of $74.36 and 11.5% lower year-to-date. That is a sustained drawdown, not a consolidation.
- 2026-07Jul 31, 2026: month-end closes ran 74.36, 71.94, 63.15, 68.55, 61.28, 52.59, 48.57 — down in five of the last six months. The weakness is now a trend, not an as-of-date effect.
Risks & fit
- Uranium spot is a thin, opaque market prone to violent reversals (Jan 2026 $101 → ~$85 by Q2); URNM amplifies both directions.
- Cameco at ~19% is a genuine single-name concentration risk on top of the commodity risk.
- The AI-power-demand narrative may be priced ahead of actual reactor/utility uranium buying, leaving equities vulnerable to a demand-timing miss.
- Kazakhstan (Kazatomprom) and Australian junior developers add sovereign and project-execution risk.
- Crowded, fast-money flows into the nuclear theme can reverse as quickly as they arrived.
The 'single-factor, regime-dependent' read would be wrong if URNM delivered positive risk-adjusted returns across a full cycle that were meaningfully decoupled from the uranium spot price — i.e. if manager/index construction (the physical-trust and miner-selection choices) added return independent of where uranium traded. It would also weaken if long-term contract pricing (~$91.50/lb, Q1 2026 Kazatomprom indicator, up ~$11.50 y/y) proved a durable floor that de-linked the miners from volatile spot.
Suits an investor who already holds a specific, high-conviction view on the uranium supply deficit and nuclear-buildout thesis and wants concentrated miner equity with direct spot torque — and who can stomach commodity-cycle drawdowns. It is a satellite/thematic sleeve, not a diversified core holding, and its number will look very different depending on when in the cycle you check it.
0.75% net expense ratio (verified stockanalysis, Jul 2026) — mid-pack for a single-commodity thematic ETF; broader peer URA runs ~0.69%, junior-focused URNJ ~0.80%.