Harley Bassman questions Simplify Asset Management’s governance in shareholder letter

Harley Bassman, the bond market veteran who created the widely tracked MOVE Index, has fired a public shot at Simplify Asset Management in a letter to shareholders. The letter, addressed ahead of Simplify’s first shareholder meeting scheduled for August 2026, raises pointed concerns about the firm’s governance, fee practices, and what Bassman describes as an opaque fund-of-funds structure. Simplify manages roughly $13.6 billion across 42 ETFs. About 38% of those assets originate from other Simplify products, a nesting arrangement that Bassman calls “Russian doll stacking.” The nesting problem At the center of Bassman’s critique is a structural issue that sounds arcane but has real consequences for investors. Simplify’s ETFs hold positions in other Simplify ETFs, sometimes in ways that Bassman argues are inconsistent with the funds’ stated strategies. One product in particular stands out. The SBIL fund holds approximately $4.8 billion in assets sourced entirely from other Simplify products. When more than a third of a firm’s total asset base comes from internal cross-holdings, the fee implications compound quickly. Each layer of the structure can carry its own management fee, meanin...