Plan: Fund · Credits: 1 per call
Why ETF Splits Matter More Than Stock Splits
Splits are routine in the ETF market in a way they are not for common stock. Leveraged and inverse funds decay by construction, so they reverse-split repeatedly to keep their price tradable — SQQQ has reverse-split five times since 2019 — and successful leveraged funds forward-split just as often — TQQQ has forward-split 2-for-1 three times since 2021. A NAV history that ignores these events shows a 50% one-day loss that never happened, and a share-count history shows creations and redemptions that are actually the split itself.Key ETF Split Event Fields
Each split event carries three fields.split_date is the date the split took effect on the fund’s published series. split_type is forward (each share becomes several; NAV per share falls) or reverse (several shares become one; NAV per share rises). ratio is the multiple: a forward split with ratio 2 is 2-for-1, a reverse split with ratio 5 is 1-for-5.
Split events are returned in the events.splits block of the ETF profile, newest first.
How Split Adjustment Works in the FocusAlpha API
Every NAV and share-count value in the ETF NAV series is served in two bases at once: the value as the fund published it on that day (nav, shares_outstanding), and the value restated onto today’s share count (nav_split_adjusted, shares_outstanding_split_adjusted). The published basis is what the fund actually printed; the split-adjusted basis is the one that is comparable across time.
Each value carries its own status. published means the fund printed exactly that number. converted means FocusAlpha rescaled a published number using the adjudicated split events on this page. derived means the value was rebuilt from an accounting identity. withheld means the basis could not be established, so the value is null on purpose — a refusal to invent a number, not missing data.
Distribution amounts get the same treatment: ETF Distributions serves amount_per_share as declared and amount_per_share_split_adjusted on today’s share basis.
The Split Factor Column in the Daily Series
On the day a split takes effect, the NAV series row carries the event in itssplit_factor column. Every other day the column is null. This is how a consumer of the daily series can see exactly where the published basis changed without joining a second dataset.
ETF Split Date Convention
split_date is the date the fund’s published per-share series changes basis — the first date on which the new share count applies. When the issuer’s own notice dates the event, that date is used; otherwise the date is anchored to the observed break in the published series.
ETF Split Sources
Split events are adjudicated by FocusAlpha from issuer notices and the funds’ own published daily series, not taken from a market-data vendor’s pre-folded history. This matters because vendor price histories typically fold splits (and sometimes ticker changes) silently into the series, which makes it impossible to tell what the fund actually published on a given day. Here the raw published value and the adjudicated event are both first-class, so either basis can be reconstructed exactly.Query ETF Splits
Split events are served in theevents block of the ETF profile endpoint. There is no separate splits route.
string
required
etf_id (E000011), a ticker (TQQQ), an ISIN, or a CUSIP.split_date and compare nav with nav_split_adjusted.