Luxury has all the time been a rarefied world that few can access. 

And because it was in the shop, so it was on Wall Street, where the Average Joe or Jolene investors couldn’t easily bet on the large European stalwarts like LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton or Hermès International, which trade in Paris.

But Tema Global is changing that with a latest exchange traded fund — the Tema Luxury ETF — that makes it easier to take a position within the spending power of the ultra wealthy.

While the fund is a democratizing force in luxury investing, the team behind it takes more of a purist view of the sector, specializing in the truly premium players and bypassing the cheaper brands, like Tesla or Nike, that sometimes get lumped into the sector by financial types.

The ETF launched this month under the “LUX” ticker and lets traders take a stake in a bunch of stocks without delay, including LVMH and Hermès, but in addition Ferrari, spirit makers Pernod Ricard and Kweichow Moutai Co., beauty giant L’Oréal and more. 

A few of those firms make products mere mortals can purchase, but the concept hew closer to the spending of the “if-you-have-to-ask, it’s-too-expensive” crowd.

It’s a consumer cohort that is comparatively small in numbers, but big in spending and has been growing stronger and more immune to the type of shocks that caused the industry to decelerate prior to now.

A stock market crash within the U.S. may not be enough anymore to make the posh shopper wince. 

“What makes luxury so resilient today is geographic diversification, but in addition demographic diversification,” said Maurits Pot, chief executive officer and founding father of Tema. “First-time customers are younger, they’ll participate easier, they’ll participate quicker and ultimately the category is becoming more accessible financially.

“Should you take into consideration luxury ultimately because the aspirational ladder of consumerism, then people can enter the ladder at different points and there’s more entry points for the posh consumer at each the low end but in addition at the upper end,” he said. 

A more global customer base also provides some cushion for the businesses.

Javier Lastra, fund manager of Lux, said: “The common message from all the businesses is that the U.S. is slowing…and plenty of that’s being compensated by Chinese reopening.”

“Should you take into consideration how wealth portfolios of rich Chinese persons are structured, it’s very different to how American portfolios are structured,” Lastra said. “In China, plenty of it has to do with real estate.”  

That makes for less volatility overall within the profile of luxury shoppers, who’ve ridden what Lastra described as a “tremendous secular trend.” 

“Generally global wealth keeps rising and we see it in all of the segments of the buyer goods industry,” he said.

Parts of the shopper base is perhaps latest, however the brands are generally old in luxury — and subsequently protected, making the businesses all of the more attractive to investors. 

Lastra said a key difference between technology and luxury is “the longevity of the trend.” 

“Once I take into consideration an Apple watch or I take into consideration an iPhone, at the tip of the day, it is sort of a machine, a toasting machine, right? It’s great innovation in 12 months one, but clearly it would be disrupted in 12 months two, 12 months three,” he said. “This disruption in luxury goods is difficult, it hardly exists. We had the difficulty of the Apple Watch disrupting potentially the high-end watches. It really didn’t disrupt that. The rationale why you’re buying a Cartier watch may be very different.”

That’s the magic of luxury. And, not less than these days, that magic has been good for investors.