Confusion over escalating tariffs between the U.S. and its major trading partners is pushing inflation back toward the top of investor concerns. Many exchange-traded funds offer different ways to protect against that. The sharp rise in inflation after the Covid-19 pandemic led to a rush of new investment products to help people guard against higher prices, but the performance of different inflation-fighting ETFs was mixed. Now, with the February consumer price index due out Wednesday, investors may be turning their attention back to inflation-fighting ETFs — many of which have survived, allowing investors to dig through their track records. Inflation beneficiaries Some funds try to play inflation by buying assets that can rise alongside prices. That can include stock in companies that are positioned to pass on price increases to customers, or multi-asset funds that buy commodities or real estate assets that could also benefit. One such strategy is available in the Horizon Kinetics Inflation Beneficiaries ETF (INFL) , an equity-only fund with about $1.1 billion in assets, according to FactSet. The fund, opened in 2021, has trailed the S & P 500 over the past three years but is outperforming so far this year, with a return of about 3%, according to FactSet. INFL YTD mountain This Horizon Kinetics fund has logged gains in 2025 despite a broader stock market sell-off. INFL is an equity-only fund, with top holdings including LandBridge Co. , Texas Pacific Land Corp. , and Wheaton Precious Metals . "In a rising nominal [price] environment, to the extent that it is sustained, what you want to own is equities. So rather than trying to look at this as a hedge ... you need to think about how you can benefit from artificially subdued inflation — which I would argue was really the case from call it 1999 to 2019 — to a higher baseline level of inflation," said James Davolos, lead portfolio manager of the Horizon Kinetics fund. Davolos said his team looks for companies that benefit from "localized" inflation and don't necessarily make moves based on broad inflation measures. Another investors option is a multi-asset fund like the AXS Astoria Real Assets ETF (PPI) , which holds stocks along with other funds that track fixed income holdings and commodities. The ETF is down about 3.3% year to date, according to FactSet, slightly better than the S & P 500. "It's got a relatively low correlation to the S & P 500, which makes it a good diversifier in a multi-asset portfolio," said Frank Tedesco, an ETF portfolio specialist as Astoria Portfolio Advisors. Fixed income trades Bonds with variable payouts offer investors another way to fight inflation. The most common avenue is through Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS, which are government-issued bonds that accrue value based on the consumer price index. There are several different TIPS funds on the market. The biggest are the iShares TIPS Bond ETF (TIP) and the Schwab US TIPS ETF (SCHP) . TIPS preserve purchasing power if held to maturity, but the funds can see their share price fall based on bond market moves or if inflation turns down. More complicated versions of fixed income ETFs use derivatives to capture movements in interest rates. KraneShares Quadratic Interest Rate Volatility and Inflation Hedge ETF (IVOL) and Simplify Interest Rate Hedge ETF (PFIX) both use options tied to interest rate volatility and potentially a rise in long-term yields. Even though these funds have similar stated goals, their performance varies. IVOL has averaged an annual loss of 8.4% over the past three years, but is up 4.8% year to date, according to FactSet. PFIX has a 3-year annualized return of 27.4% but is down nearly 9% in 2025. PFIX's returns also show a relatively large gap between the fund's price and net asset value. While inflation is often associated with a rise in interest rates, the relationship isn't always direct. For example, interest rates might stay flat or even decline if signs of an economic slowdown lead traders to start pricing in easier Federal Reserve policy and more rate cuts in the year ahead. New choices Other firms are trying to take lessons learned in the post-Covid inflation to build a new tool. For example, one fund that launched last month is F/m Ultrashort Treasury Inflation-Protected Security ETF (RBIL) . The idea behind the fund is that holding TIPS that mature in less than a year gets rid of the risk associated with longer-dated assets in other TIPS funds — which can see their price fall when yields rise — while also accounting for the fact that the Federal Reserve might be hesitant to raise rates, which hurt the performance of short-dated T-Bills in 2021 and 2022. "The Treasury doesn't issue inflation-protected bills, so we had to go out and find them, which were these old 4, 9, 29-year-old bonds that are suddenly about to mature that still have the CPI accumulator but don't have any duration risk to speak of, maturity risk to speak of," Mark Spindel, senior adviser to F/m Investments, told CNBC. Another new ETF that could be put to the test is the Atlas America Fund (USAF) . The active multi-asset fund has economist Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed "Dr. Doom" for his forecasts during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, as one of its portfolio managers. USAF launched last November, and Roubini told CNBC that the goal of the fund was to help protect against inflation and climate change . Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the proper launch timing of the F/m Ultrashort Treasury Inflation-Protected Security ETF.
