Is This Dip In BOTZ A Bargain Or A Trap?

This fund’s concentrated robotics and AI holdings make buying the dip a more complicated decision than it looks.

The median return in the twelve months after a dip of 10% or more in the Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ) has been +19%. With the fund currently sitting about 13.8% below its 52-week high, that history is tempting. But a dip can be a gift in a broad fund and a trap in a narrow one. The question for an owner of BOTZ is whether its own record suggests this discount is an opportunity, or a warning sign.

A Rebound With A Steep Price of Admission

On the surface, the fund’s history looks encouraging. Since 2016, BOTZ has seen 10 meaningful dips like the current one. Of those 10 dips, 7 were followed by a positive return over the next twelve months. The one-year returns after those drops have ranged from a painful negative 34% to a powerful +80%. That is a wide spread, but the tendency has been positive.

However, that performance came with a significant catch. The median worst further drawdown in the year after a dip was 16%. That is the extra decline a buyer typically had to stomach before the fund found its footing. Buying the dip here has historically meant being prepared to see your new position fall significantly further before any potential recovery began.

What Past Dips Felt Like

Looking at specific episodes makes this trade-off clear. The dip in October 2023 was followed by a 31% gain a year later. Similarly, buyers during the dips in August 2024 and March 2025 saw gains of 17% and 16% respectively over the following year. These instances paid off for those who held on. But in the past, there were dips that often were in loss even after a year.

A Concentrated Play On A Single Idea

What explains this volatility? The answer is inside the fund itself. A broad market fund recovers with the economy, but BOTZ is a highly focused portfolio. It holds just 62 positions, and its ten largest holdings make up 60% of the fund. The top five alone, including names like Nvidia (NVDA) and Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), account for 43% of its assets. This kind of concentration risk is common in thematic funds, and it’s worth seeing how it plays out in other areas of innovation.

This isn’t a diversified basket of the whole market; it is a concentrated portfolio built around the single theme of robotics and artificial intelligence. When that theme is in favor, the fund can do very well. When it is not, there is no broader portfolio to cushion the fall, which helps explain why dips can get so much deeper before they turn around.

For an investor staring at a loss in BOTZ, the fund’s own history presents a clear choice. The record suggests a rebound is more common than not, but it also warns that the path there involves weathering a potentially steep further decline. The decision rests on whether you believe in the long-term prospects of this specific, concentrated basket of companies enough to endure that ride.

Should You Be Buying This Dip?

With BOTZ in the red, the instinct is to treat the discount as a gift and buy more. The history above is a real reason for caution before you do. We know what you are thinking, and it is an absolutely fair question.

Still, a dip-and-recovery record is only half the story. It tells you what tended to happen after past drops, not whether the fund is reasonably valued today or how it is holding up against its peers right now. Before adding to a position, it is worth seeing where it actually stands: our ETF Valuation and Performance Scorecard lines the major ETFs up side by side on valuation, returns, and risk, so the dip becomes one input rather than the whole decision.

The Fund Is Diversified, Is The Rest Of Your Portfolio?

A fund spreads risk by design, which makes it easy to overlook a single stock elsewhere in the portfolio that has grown too large. How much damage any single position could do to your net worth is a question with a precise answer. The Trefis Wealth team computes it for investors professionally, with the same rules-based systematic discipline that runs our High Quality Portfolio. Request a free vulnerability audit of your biggest positions.