Behind the Ticker

Brad Roth
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Investing
  • Updated Weekly

Behind the Ticker is hosted by Brad Roth, Founder & CIO of THOR Financial Technologies, a systematic investment firm with ETFs listed on the NYSE. Each week, Brad sits down with the sharpest minds in ETFs, asset management, and wealth technology — fund managers, CIOs, and the entrepreneurs building the next generation of investment products. From managed futures to structured credit, from factor investing to full downside mitigation — no topic is off limits. Brad also publishes The Signal, a daily market research brief for advisors and allocators. New episodes every week.

  1. 4d ago

    The Bitcoin ETF Built to Survive a Drawdown | Mike Willis, Cyber Hornet ETFs

    Mike Willis has spent 25 years on Wall Street — Smith Barney, Paine Webber, UBS — before founding Cyber Hornet ETFs to do two things that traditional asset management still hasn't done well: offer a founder-run alternative to the index giants that dominate corporate voting, and build a way for financial advisors to put crypto into client portfolios without the volatility blowing the relationship up. In this episode, Mike breaks down BBB — the Cyber Hornet S&P 500 and Bitcoin 75/25 Strategy ETF — and the methodology behind why 75/25 is the sweet spot, not 50/50 or 60/40. He walks through what the fund actually did during Bitcoin's up year in 2024, its down year in 2025, and the deep drawdown unfolding right now in 2026 — and how the monthly rebalance functions as a built-in buy-low-sell-high mechanism. We also get into the firm's transition from Bitcoin futures to spot, why Coinbase's early custody concentration kept Cyber Hornet in futures longer than competitors, and how the wrapper actually changes the conversation when an advisor is trying to satisfy a client who wants crypto exposure without taking the volatility calls themselves. Mike also covers INDEX, the firm's S&P 500 fund that pioneered shareholder voting input years before the major issuers offered any version of it — and why he wishes he had pushed harder on full pass-through voting when they had the first-mover lead.

    33 min

  2. Jun 7

    A Forty-Year-Old Index That Still Outperforms in a Crisis | Jerry Prior, Mount Lucas

    Jerry Prior has spent nearly thirty years at Mount Lucas Management — a firm with roots in Commodities Corp, the legendary firm that launched Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon, and the broader managed futures and global macro industry. Mount Lucas built the MLM Index in 1988 to give institutional investors a price-based benchmark for managed futures — the first of its kind — and four decades later, the strategy is still running largely unchanged, now wrapped inside KMLM, the KraneShares Mount Lucas Managed Futures Index Strategy ETF. In this episode, Jerry breaks down why managed futures exists as an asset class in the first place — the real economic risk transfer happening underneath these markets — and why trend following is the most efficient way to harvest that risk premium. We get into why KMLM deliberately holds no equity exposure when most competitors do, why the firm refuses to use the volatility targeting that defines the rest of the industry, and how the relative-volatility weighting structure has remained stable for twenty years. Jerry walks through the 2022 case study — long commodities, short bonds, up roughly 30% in a year when the 60/40 broke — and explains why the early 2026 environment is starting to look like a setup for the same playbook. He also makes a point most managed futures conversations miss: that liquidity in a diversifying strategy is itself a form of alpha for the advisor using it. If you've been trying to understand where managed futures fits in a modern portfolio — or why the original index from 1988 still works — this is the conversation.

    34 min

  3. May 31

    Why Most Momentum Funds Are Looking at the Wrong Data | Jon Clements, Market Desk

    Jon Clements built his career in equity research at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Guggenheim before co-founding Market Desk Research with his brother Matt in 2020. What started as a research and model portfolio platform serving 200 of the largest wealth managers in the country eventually became an ETF issuer — and FMTM, the Focused Momentum ETF, is the result. In this episode, Jon breaks down what actually makes FMTM different from legacy momentum products like MTUM and SPMO. We get into why Market Desk uses a six-month lookback instead of the academic standard of twelve, why the algorithm scores the quality and consistency of a stock's price path rather than just its trailing return, and why a concentrated, equal-weighted portfolio of 30 to 50 names ends up with only about 2% overlap with the S&P 500. Jon also takes on the skeptic's question head-on — isn't momentum just performance chasing? — and explains how a fund that stays fully invested with no cash, no shorts, and no hedging still manages risk through holdings selection in a drawdown. It's a genuinely substantive conversation about factor investing, what price data really tells you, and how to build a momentum strategy that behaves like a momentum strategy.

    32 min

  4. May 24

    40 Years of Active Management, Now in an ETF | Matt Camuso, Baron Capital

    Matt Camuso spent over a decade helping the industry's biggest asset managers enter the ETF wrapper — at State Street, JP Morgan, and BNY — before joining Baron Capital to do it from the inside. Baron is a firm with over 40 years of active management history, $47 billion in AUM, and a track record that includes the best-performing mutual fund of the past 25 years per Morningstar. In December 2025 they launched five ETFs at once. They're already approaching $800 million. In this episode, Matt breaks down what "old school active" actually means at a firm like Baron — the person-to-person company engagement, the pre-IPO access, the ownership mentality that drives average holding periods well beyond the stated three-to-five year target. We get into BCTK, the Baron Technology ETF, and specifically where it differentiates from a passive NASDAQ 100 exposure — small and mid cap access, global universe, and names like Coherent, Lumentum, and Axon that index rules simply can't hold early enough. Matt also walks through how SpaceX inside the Baron First Principles ETF became a brand-defining moment, what the distribution strategy looks like for a firm bringing 40 years of relationships into a new wrapper, and where he sees the active ETF industry heading.

    28 min

  5. May 17

    SpaceX in an ETF — Here's How They Did It | Yuri Khodjamirian, Tema ETFs

    Yuri Khodjamirian spent a decade running institutional equity portfolios in London before leaving the industry entirely to get a master's degree in bioscience at Cambridge. That intellectual restlessness is what eventually brought him to Tema ETFs, where he now serves as CIO overseeing a suite of actively managed thematic funds — and most recently, the Tema Space Innovators ETF, ticker NASA. In this episode, Yuri breaks down what makes NASA different from every other space fund on the market — starting with the fact that it holds SpaceX. He walks through exactly how a private company ends up inside a liquid ETF, what investors need to understand about the SPV structure, and why Tema chose to absorb those costs rather than pass them through. Beyond SpaceX, we get into how Yuri and his team are building exposure across the full stack of the space economy — launch, satellites, connectivity, imaging, and the under-the-radar supply chain businesses that competing funds simply aren't finding. He also makes the case for why the 9% projected annual growth headline understates what's actually happening in commercial space, why active management matters more here than almost anywhere else, and how advisors should think about sizing a position like this inside a client portfolio.

    33 min

  6. May 10

    The Entire US Bond Market in One Ticker | Steve Laipply, BlackRock iShares

    Steve Laipply is the Global Co-Head of iShares Fixed Income ETFs at BlackRock — overseeing roughly a trillion dollars in bond ETF assets. His path into the category started not with a job posting but with a moment of personal frustration trying to buy a two-year treasury note and a colleague suggesting he just buy a bond ETF instead. That curiosity led him to BGI, the iShares predecessor, where he joined a small team that helped build the bond ETF category from the ground up. In this episode, Steve breaks down BTOT — the iShares Total US Fixed Income Market ETF — and makes the case for why the Bloomberg Aggregate, for all its utility, leaves meaningful parts of the bond market on the table. We get into what BTOT includes that the AG doesn't, how to think about duration extension in a world where money markets are still yielding in the high threes, and why Steve believes bond ETF prices function as leading indicators during market stress. He also addresses the individual bond vs. ETF debate head-on, explains how BTOT and BlackRock's active BINC fund are designed to work together, and closes with career advice that's more useful than most.

    31 min

  7. May 3

    The Only Pure Play Drone ETF on the Market | Bill Birmingham, REX Shares

    Bill Birmingham spent his career as a buy-side equity research analyst before joining REX Shares to help build their crypto product suite — and eventually take on a broader mandate of finding the next emerging investment themes before they're obvious. That search led him to drones. In this episode, Bill breaks down DRNZ — the REX Drone ETF and the only pure-play UAV fund on the market. We get into why existing defense ETFs were failing drone investors, how the index is constructed to capture emerging names before they dominate the cap table, and why the counter-drone market may actually be a bigger opportunity than drones themselves. Bill also walks through where commercial drone revenue is real right now, why he's revised his eVTOL timeline closer than he originally expected, and what the FAA's pending BVLOS rulemaking unlocks for industrial use cases that are technically ready but operationally stuck. If you've been watching the drone space and wondering how to get clean exposure to it — this is the episode. Learn more at rexshares.com and follow REX Shares and Bill Birmingham on X

    34 min

  8. Apr 26

    $55B Built on Tools for Traders | Mo Sparks, Direxion

    Mo is the Chief Product Officer at Direxion — and the person who first told Brad to start a podcast instead of a Netflix series. Years later, he's the guest. With a career that ran from Vanguard to the New York Stock Exchange to Raymond James before landing at Direxion, Mo brings a rare cross-sectional view of the ETF industry that few in the space can match. In this episode, Mo breaks down how Direxion — now managing roughly $55 billion across 130+ ETFs — builds tools for active traders to express short-term views with leverage. We get into how the daily reset mechanism works and why holding these products beyond a single day changes the math, how the firm decides which single stock names deserve a leveraged wrapper (and whether to offer bull, bear, or both), and why most trader assets still flow overwhelmingly to the bull side. Mo also walks through the new Titan series concentrated basket concept, the right and wrong ways advisors are using these products in client portfolios, and where the category goes from here — including what the team has publicly filed and what they're watching in the tokenization space. It's a candid conversation about a corner of the ETF market that is widely misunderstood and underappreciated as a legitimate portfolio tool.

    33 min
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out of 5
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About

Behind the Ticker is hosted by Brad Roth, Founder & CIO of THOR Financial Technologies, a systematic investment firm with ETFs listed on the NYSE. Each week, Brad sits down with the sharpest minds in ETFs, asset management, and wealth technology — fund managers, CIOs, and the entrepreneurs building the next generation of investment products. From managed futures to structured credit, from factor investing to full downside mitigation — no topic is off limits. Brad also publishes The Signal, a daily market research brief for advisors and allocators. New episodes every week.

Information

  • Creator
    Brad Roth
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    113
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Behind the Ticker
  • Show Website
    Behind the Ticker

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