Behind the Ticker

Brad Roth
  • 5.0 (12)
  • Investing
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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. 6d ago

    Getting 5% Yield With Half the Volatility | Jeff Klingelhofer, Aristotle Pacific

    Jeff Klingelhofer spent the early part of his career at Pimco — Newport Beach, Tokyo, and London — before an MBA at the University of Chicago and a summer at a five-person hedge fund reset his expectations for what an investment career could look like. He landed at Thornburg as employee number three on the taxable fixed income side, grew into Head of Investments over the next decade-plus, and in 2024 came back home to Newport Beach to join Aristotle Pacific. Aristotle has been around for 15 years, manages roughly $16 billion across a mutual fund lineup, and in July of this year launched its first three ETFs. In this episode, Jeff walks through the relative value investment philosophy that anchors the entire suite — ARCP (Core Plus), ARMS (Multi-Sector Income), and SDUR (Short-Term Income) — and makes one of the more concrete arguments for it you'll hear on the show. His centerpiece example: in February 2020, American Airlines priced a five-year corporate high yield bond at 3.75%, while the same issuer's equivalent Enhanced Equipment Trust Certificate was available at effectively the same yield. Same issuer, same tenor, same risk. One month later — after COVID hit — the corporate bond was trading at 27 cents on the dollar; the EETC was at 65 cents. That's the relative value process at work, and Jeff explains why most fixed income shops are structurally unable to identify those opportunities because they're organized around distinct silos rather than a unified relative value lens. Jeff also gets into how each of the three funds fits into different parts of an advisor's fixed income sleeve, why active management still matters in short duration (SDUR is currently yielding about 5% versus roughly 4% on comparable treasuries), how ARMS is currently positioned toward the low end of its below-investment-grade range because he's not being paid for that risk today, and why the funds are running slightly long duration as a hedge against credit exposure. He also delivers a genuinely substantive macro read on why the current Fed chair — facing only high inflation for the first time — is likely to have a different reaction function than his predecessors. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/getting-5-yield-with-half-the-volatility-jeff-klingelhofer-aristotle-pacific Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  2. Aug 30

    Innovation as a Core Allocation, Not a Satellite | Anthony Caruso, Nomura Asset Management

    Anthony Caruso is Head of Product and Strategy for Nomura Asset Management's US ETF platform — a business that launched in late 2023, now runs nine funds with just over a billion in assets, and is being built out on the foundation of the Macquarie public business that Nomura acquired earlier this year, including the legacy Delaware Investments and Ivy franchises. Anthony's career has moved with the ETF industry itself, starting at JP Morgan and moving through Dimensional and Macquarie before arriving at Nomura. In this episode, Anthony walks through FRWD — the Nomura Transformational Technologies ETF — an actively managed innovation strategy that converted to the ETF wrapper in January of this year but carries a live track record dating back to 2018 in separate account form, during which the strategy outperformed the NASDAQ 100 by approximately 200%. He explains the two-lens investment process that starts with thematic analysis and layers deep fundamental research on top, why the portfolio holds just over 25 highly concentrated positions with the top 10 representing roughly 57% of the fund, and why the strategy is deliberately not a technology sector fund — the framework allows the portfolio to move across sectors as different innovation waves take hold, from AI infrastructure today to healthcare, longevity, industrials, and beyond. The most substantive strategic argument Anthony makes is that innovation deserves to be treated as a long-term core allocation, not a tactical satellite. He uses the Babe Ruth analogy — you don't use your best hitter as a pinch hitter — and lays out how advisors should think about pairing FRWD with existing NASDAQ 100 or Russell 1000 growth exposures rather than layering it on as a small thematic tilt. He also covers the growth of FRWD to approximately $260 million in six months, the broader Nomura US ETF roadmap including EMEQ and HTAX, and what's coming through the pipeline before year-end. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/innovation-as-a-core-allocation-not-a-satellite-anthony-caruso-nomura-asset-mana Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  3. Aug 23

    Why the Real AI Bottleneck Isn't Compute | Howard Chan, Kurv Investment Management

    Howard Chan is back on Behind the Ticker for his second appearance, celebrating almost exactly the two-year anniversary of KQQQ — Kurv Investment Management's first ETF. When Howard first sat down with Brad two years ago, the conversation was about theory. This time he brings two years of live performance data validating the approach and a new fund tackling one of the most under-appreciated bottlenecks in the AI trade. KMEM — the Kurv Memory Select ETF — launched on July 1st with a specific thesis: while the market has spent years pricing NVIDIA and the compute layer of AI, the next binding constraint is memory. Ninety percent of the world's memory chips are made by three companies — Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix — and all three are sold out through 2028. Howard walks through why the shift from commoditized memory to specialized HBM chips has created a moat where none existed before, why SK Hynix just reported 250% revenue growth and 500% profit growth, and why the physical constraints on expansion (fab costs, ASML equipment waitlists, workforce buildout) mean this is a two-to-four-year story rather than a quarter-to-quarter one. He also explains why the secondary effect — memory costs pushing up Apple, Xbox, and MacBook prices — signals how deeply this constraint is filtering into the broader economy. Howard also covers the two-year update on KQQQ, which has kept pace with and in fact outperformed its mega-cap tech underlying while generating 15-18% distribution yield through selective options overlays — writing calls only on positions with limited upside rather than mechanically across the portfolio. He walks through why the pairing of KQQQ with a dividend equity ETF gives an advisor a more complete sector picture than either alone, and hints at the tax-efficient portable alpha strategies coming from Kurv in the months ahead. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/why-the-real-ai-bottleneck-isn-t-compute-howard-chan-kurv-investment-management Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  4. Aug 16

    The Value ETF That Kept Pace With Growth — Without Owning a Single Mag Seven Name | Mannik Dhillon, Victory Capital

    Mannik Dhillon is President of Investment Franchises and Solutions and Head of ETFs at Victory Capital — a firm that manages a lineup of independent investment boutiques under a shared platform, with a business model informed by Mannik's earlier career evaluating asset managers on the institutional consulting side at Hewitt and Wilshire. He joined Victory in 2015 as Head of Product and has since grown into a leadership role across investment franchises, solutions, and the firm's ETF business. In this episode, Mannik walks through VFLO — the VictoryShares Free Cash Flow ETF — which has grown to roughly six to nine billion in assets in the three years since its June 2023 launch. He explains why VFLO isn't really a free cash flow product but a better way to measure value, why traditional value metrics like price to book have lost their power in an economy built on intangibles and IP, and how VFLO's two enhancements to the standard free cash flow yield approach — forward-looking cash flow estimates and a growth filter that removes the worst growers from the eligible universe — have produced a track record that outperformed value, core, and growth benchmarks over three years with zero Magnificent Seven exposure. Mannik also gets into how the free cash flow methodology has been extended across market caps and geographies (VFLO, SFLO, GFLW, IFLO, and GRIN), what future extensions are under research (enhanced income variations, more sector-complete versions, a global strategy), and how the pairing of VFLO with GFLW is being used by advisors to build differentiated wings around a passive core. He also walks through Victory's multi-boutique franchise model and why he believes independent, autonomous investment teams supported by a centralized (but not standardized) platform produce better outcomes for clients. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/the-value-etf-that-kept-pace-with-growth-without-owning-a-single-mag-seven-name- Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  5. Aug 9

    Built for the Retiree Who Can't Afford a 30% Drawdown | Raymond Bridges, Bridges Capital

    Raymond Bridges founded Bridges Capital in 2018 after years at Wells Fargo, building his practice around a demographic reality he sees every day in South Florida — retirees who need to draw from their portfolios monthly and cannot afford the 20 to 30% drawdowns the market delivers on a regular basis. He built an active risk management process specifically to reduce the depth of those drawdowns, tested it through COVID, and packaged it into BDGS — the Bridges Capital Tactical ETF, which launched on the Nasdaq in May 2023. In this episode, Raymond walks through how BDGS actually works — the macro thesis grounded in Austrian business cycle theory that creates the fund's directional bias, the four-category breadth analysis that drives the actual trades, and the tranche-based scaling discipline that keeps the fund from ever going all-in or all-out. He explains why the fund has held as much as 80% cash for long stretches, how the top-ten market-cap-weighted names of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 form the equity core, and why mean reversion is the buying discipline even when a name is a category leader. He makes the case for why the Sortino ratio is a better lens than the Sharpe ratio for evaluating tactical strategies, why he'd replace long-duration bonds with BDGS in most conservative portfolios, and how the ETF wrapper's custom basket redemption feature lets the fund manage risk without dragging tax consequences into every decision. Raymond also gets into his monetarist read of the current environment, why he's been an advocate for Kevin Warsh at the Fed for more than a year, and how his macro view directly shapes the cautious posture BDGS currently carries. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/built-for-the-retiree-who-can-t-afford-a-30-drawdown-raymond-bridges-bridges-cap Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  6. Aug 2

    Real Small Cap Value Exposure | Elena Khoziaeva, Bridgeway

    Elena Khoziaeva is Co-CIO of Bridgeway Capital Management — a boutique systematic investment firm founded in Houston with a long history of factor-based investing and one of the more unusual missions in asset management. Bridgeway donates 50% of firm profits to the Bridgeway Foundation and caps its internal salary ratio at seven to one. Elena joined the firm in 1998 as partner number six and has spent 25 years building strategies grounded in academic theory and disciplined systematic research. In this episode, Elena walks through BSVO — the Bridgeway Omni Small-Cap Value ETF — and what it means to build a small cap value strategy that's deeper on both factors than the benchmarks that dominate the category. The strategy carries a 15-year track record inside a modern ETF wrapper (converted from a mutual fund in 2023), holds approximately 600 names for diversification within the asset class, and uses a multi-metric valuation screen that produces a natural quality tilt. Elena explains why running value across the universe rather than within sectors produces the fund's characteristic tilts toward financials and away from healthcare, how the sidestep screens are designed to remove fallen knives from a deep value portfolio, and why BSVO's 79% correlation to the S&P 500 delivers meaningfully better factor diversification than the Russell 2000 Value. She also makes the case for where small cap value sits right now — with the median book-to-market ratio versus the S&P at 2.8 versus a historical norm of 1.6, and a Q1 2026 that already showed the kind of rapid reversal small cap value tends to produce. Her framing: the tighter the spring, the more powerful the release. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/real-small-cap-value-exposure-elena-khoziaeva-bridgeway Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  7. Jul 26

    Turning Down $1 Billion in Flows to Protect Retail Investors | Eva Ados, ERShares

    Eva Ados is Partner, COO, and Chief Investment Strategist at ERShares — a firm built on decades of academic research by founder Dr. Joel Schulman into what makes entrepreneurial companies successful and how the best VCs identify category leaders before the market catches on. Schulman famously identified Nvidia at $5 in 2005 and got into most of the Magnificent Seven early. That framework — the entrepreneur factor, or the VC lens applied to public markets — is now built into XOVR, the first ETF ever to combine public equity exposure with a genuine sleeve of private company holdings. In this episode, Eva walks through what XOVR actually owns beyond the SpaceX position that has dominated the media narrative — an 85% public equity portfolio built on the ER30 index and a 15% private sleeve currently holding SpaceX and Rocket Lab with more to come. She covers the four structural innovations that make the fund work: the crossover structure itself, the zero-zero SPV, the board-approved liquidity arrangement that allowed SpaceX to exceed the 15% illiquid cap, and the shareholder protection plan the firm built specifically to prevent arbitrage flows from diluting long-term retail investors. That last one is worth the price of admission on its own — Eva walks through how the firm turned away more than a billion dollars in creation flows the week before an IPO event, applied a 2% redemption fee on institutional creation orders, and repriced the SpaceX position multiple times through Q2 — all deliberate choices to prioritize retail investors over asset management revenue. Eva also gets into how ERShares uses revenue per employee as a screen for identifying which companies are actually monetizing AI, why Astera Labs and AppLovin were both picked up before they became household names, and what the fund is looking for next. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/turning-down-1-billion-in-flows-to-protect-retail-investors-eva-ados-ershares Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

  8. Jul 19

    Why Your Emerging Markets ETF Isn't Actually Diversifying You | Young Jae Lee, Pictet

    Young Jae Lee is a Senior Investment Manager at Pictet Asset Management — a Geneva-based firm founded in 1805, still owned by its managing partners 220 years later, and one of the largest asset managers in Europe. Young Jae joined Pictet in 2010, spent his first seven years covering emerging market technology as an analyst, and now runs the strategy behind RISE — the Pictet Emerging Markets Rising Economy ETF. In this episode, Young Jae walks through a fundamental problem with how US investors get emerging market exposure today. The MSCI Emerging Markets benchmark is more than 70% Korea, Taiwan, and China. Its top five holdings — TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Tencent, Alibaba — mirror the same technology-heavy concentration as the top five names in the S&P 500. Buying a passive emerging market fund alongside a US portfolio, he argues, doesn't diversify — it amplifies the risk you already have. RISE was built to solve that problem. The fund invests only in emerging market countries where the working-age population is growing, which structurally excludes Korea, Taiwan, and China and shifts the portfolio into India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, and others. Young Jae explains the demographic thesis grounded in the Solow Growth Model, why he calls population growth in emerging markets structurally equivalent to what AI is in developed markets, and how the fund's 60% quantitative screen and 40% fundamental conviction sleeve are designed to work together. He also drops one of the more surprising statistics you'll hear on the show — that more than half of the MSCI EM benchmark's total return has historically come from dividend yield — and explains why that reframes the case for value investing in emerging markets. Full episode page, with the complete transcript: thorft.com/podcast/why-your-emerging-markets-etf-isn-t-actually-diversifying-you-young-jae-lee-pict Every episode: thorft.com/podcast Brad's daily market note: The Signal

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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
    125
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Behind the Ticker
  • Show Website
    Behind the Ticker

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