Podcast
Behind the Ticker
Hosted by Brad Roth · EN
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.
31episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
40 Years of Active Management, Now in an ETF | Matt Camuso, Baron Capital
2d ago00:27:54Tap to summarizeMatt 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.
Transcribe →SpaceX in an ETF — Here's How They Did It | Yuri Khodjamirian, Tema ETFs
1w ago00:33:11Tap to summarizeYuri 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.
Transcribe →The Entire US Bond Market in One Ticker | Steve Laipply, BlackRock iShares
2w ago00:30:41Tap to summarizeSteve 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.
Transcribe →The Only Pure Play Drone ETF on the Market | Bill Birmingham, REX Shares
3w ago00:33:32Tap to summarizeBill 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
Transcribe →$55B Built on Tools for Traders | Mo Sparks, Direxion
Apr 2600:33:14Tap to summarizeMo 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.
Transcribe →The Multi-Manager ETF Built for Small Cap Alpha | Chris Tessin, Acuitas Investments
Apr 1900:32:56Tap to summarizeChris Tessin, founder of Acuitas Investments, joins the show to break down AIMS — the Acuitas Multi-Manager Small Cap ETF and one of the most structurally unique products we've covered on Behind the Ticker. Rather than a single portfolio manager picking stocks, AIMS aggregates multiple deeply researched, truly active small cap managers into one ETF wrapper at a single all-in fee of 75 basis points. Chris walks through how the multi-manager model works, how Acuitas sources and underwrites managers — often finding them before anyone else is paying attention — why active management has a real edge in small cap, and why the valuation and earnings setup for small cap makes this a compelling time to pay attention to the space.
Transcribe →Building a Thematic ETF Around Where the World Is Headed | Sean Emory, Avery & Company
Apr 1200:33:54Tap to summarizeSean Emory, founder and CIO of Avory and Company, joins the show to break down the firm's newly launched Avory Foundational ETF (AVRY) and the decade-long investment philosophy behind it. Sean walks through Avory's "investing forward" framework — identifying secular friction points in the economy, finding the companies built to solve them, and running a high-conviction portfolio of 20 to 30 names across two buckets: structural secular winners and established businesses undergoing genuine transformation. We dig into the Six M's research process, how the fund manages position sizing and cash allocation, why identity verification is one of Sean's highest-conviction themes in an AI-driven world, and how advisors should think about AVRY as a core equity holding. Sean also pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to launch an ETF as an independent issuer.
Transcribe →$150B Built on One Idea: Why Cap-Weighted Indexing Is Broken | Rob Arnott, Research Affiliates
Apr 500:31:57Tap to summarizeRob Arnott chose Wall Street over astrophysics, built his career applying scientific method to markets, and coined the fundamental indexing revolution that now runs $150B+ in assets. He breaks down the hidden drag inside cap-weighted indices -- stocks get added after they soar and deleted after they crash -- and explains how RAFI's rebalancing alpha has beaten cap-weighted value in three out of four years over 20 years live. We dig into RAUS (fundamental selection, cap weighting, 99.9% correlation to the S&P but 90bps ahead in six months at zero fees), the upcoming RAFI Growth index that beats Russell Growth by 4.5% annually over 30 years, and NIXT -- the deletions ETF that buys the names index funds are forced to dump. Plus: why the Mag 7 resembles the dot-com bubble, where the real bargains are, and the CFA monograph proving membership in an index has its privileges.
Transcribe →40 Funds, $20B, and the Case for Junior Silver Miners | Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs
Mar 2800:33:50Tap to summarizeChristian Magoon built First Trust's early ETF business, raised $3B at Claymore before it was acquired by Guggenheim, and launched Amplify ETFs in 2015 — now approaching $20B across 40 funds. He breaks down Amplify's barbell strategy of income and thematic growth, explains why SILJ (the only junior silver miners ETF) won Alternative ETF of the Year, and makes the case that silver's industrial demand from AI, EVs, and solar gives it a profile gold can't match. Plus: the YieldSmart covered call approach, how junior miners act as leveraged silver, and why Amplify's open-architecture model is built for durability.
Transcribe →China AI, Humanoid Robots, and the Next Wave of Thematic ETFs | Paul Marino, Themes ETFs
Mar 2200:33:24Tap to summarizePaul Marino spent 25+ years in asset management, starting as a wholesaler at Federated Investors, managing teams at Pioneer Investments, and eventually making the jump to ETFs. Before any of that, he was a journalist at Newsday, the sixth largest daily newspaper in the country. Now, as Chief Revenue Officer at Themes ETFs, he brings all of it together - sales, marketing, PR, and a knack for communicating complex investment ideas clearly. In this episode, we get into two of the most targeted thematic ETFs on the market. First, DRGN - a China-focused generative AI fund built to give U.S. investors access to the AI buildout happening inside China, completely separate from U.S. tech exposure. Paul walks through the index construction, how they screen for sanctions compliance, and why he sees Chinese AI as a distinct return stream that complements what most advisors already hold. Then we pivot to BOTT - the humanoid robotics ETF. This one goes beyond what most people picture when they hear "humanoid robots." The portfolio spans factory automation, autonomous driving, specialized semiconductors, and industrial machine parts across South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S. Paul explains why equal weighting and semiannual rebalancing keeps the fund from becoming a single-stock bet, and why adoption in robotics might follow the same curve as commercial aviation. We also dig into how advisors are using thematic sleeves alongside core portfolios, how Themes identifies market gaps and moves quickly from idea to product launch, and why Paul believes early positioning in these spaces matters.
Transcribe →