In this episode of Behind the Ticker, host Brad Roth speaks with Kirk McDonald, Portfolio Manager at Argent Capital Management, about his unique path from Air Force pilot to managing the Argent MidCap ETF (ticker: AMID). McDonald shares how his firm’s mission to deliver both strong investment performance and top-tier client service inspired their move into the ETF space. With a deep-rooted philosophy focused on “enduring businesses,” Argent seeks companies with consistent cash flow growth, durable competitive advantages, and strong capital allocation by management.
About Kirk McDonald and Argent Capital
Kirk dives into the construction of AMID, which holds a concentrated portfolio of 40–50 midcap names with low turnover—around 20% annually. What differentiates Argent’s approach is the integration of both quantitative modeling and fundamental research, a methodology McDonald calls “quantamental.” This framework is built on 25 fundamental factors that guide stock selection, continually refined to ensure alignment with their long-term investing philosophy. Kirk shares a memorable analogy comparing portfolio candidates to pigs at a trough—emphasizing the constant drive to prioritize younger, hungrier contenders that can generate future outperformance.
Investment Strategy and Approach
McDonald also breaks down key portfolio holdings, including Copart and Fortinet, and explains how AMID performs across different market cycles. While the strategy may lag during market regime shifts, it tends to outperform once trends stabilize. He stresses the importance of risk management, drawing from his aviation background to describe a systematic process embedded throughout the stock selection lifecycle.
Finally, McDonald explains how AMID fits into broader client portfolios, describing midcap stocks as a “forgotten” asset class underrepresented in most investor allocations despite historically delivering strong returns. He also previews Argent’s growing ETF lineup, which now includes large cap and small cap offerings and will eventually expand to cover SMID and high-yield strategies.
Deeper Dive: Insights from the Full Conversation
Beyond the headline strategy, the full conversation between Brad and Kirk McDonald covered several additional themes worth highlighting for advisors and investors.
On Process and Philosophy
Or how do you view risk management? Yeah, so that actually goes back to my Air Force days where risk management was invented for aviation. And so we started the risk management process when we were planning a mission. So it, so we do the exact same thing with the Argent midcap strategy. Risk management is built in throughout. When we're considering even adding a name to a portfolio. Throughout the research process, we're always thinking. What are its exposures to different risk characteristics?
So there's 40 to 50 securities in there, right now there's 43. And the turnover over a long span of time is about 20% a year. So we're looking for these enduring businesses and we want to own them as long as we possibly can and really take advantage of that compounding cash flows over time. And I think our edge over other mid-cap portfolio managers out there is this combination of quantitative and qualitative or fundamental investing that we do.
Market Context and Positioning
So we just open two new ETFs in addition to Amid. We have a big A, B, I, G, which invest in large caps stocks. It's our large cap core strategy and a little A, L, L, which is our small cap strategy. So they're just exact clones of our SM separately managed accounts that with fairly long track records and those two asset classes. Essentially, we have two more investment strategies here, an urgent high yielding portfolio as well as a SMid cap.
So some of my names are the portfolio that are long term holdings. I've had conviction in if their stock price is underperforming significantly. I'll take advantage and sell some of the relative winners. Trim them actually not sell them. And then reinvest in some of the, the lower, the lower performing underperforming stocks. So having kind of relatively number of small holding, we'll talk a little bit about the risk management process. Is that almost inherently embedded in the monthly kind of reallocation of capital a little bit?
So I was a quantitative research analyst and then a quantitative portfolio manager as building models of factors. And for people that are familiar and a factor is essentially. Balance financial ratio like from the income statement or balance sheet simple swam would be like price to earnings ratio. But it's a financial ratio that correlates with stocks outperform the market over time. So I was building these models and managing purely quantitative portfolios. And when I came over to urgent 14 years ago, they hired me to build them a stock selection model.
Notable Insights
"So I went and flew to the C5 Galaxy, which is the exact opposite was the biggest plane in the Air Force."
"So that's why we're seeing a lot of people kind of move to the ETF space."
Key Takeaways
- In this episode of Behind the Ticker, host Brad Roth speaks with Kirk McDonald, Portfolio Manager at Argent Capital Management, about his unique path from Air Force pilot to managing the Argent MidCap ETF (ticker: AMID).
- Kirk dives into the construction of AMID, which holds a concentrated portfolio of 40–50 midcap names with low turnover—around 20% annually.
- McDonald also breaks down key portfolio holdings, including Copart and Fortinet, and explains how AMID performs across different market cycles.
What This Means for Advisors
For financial advisors evaluating options for client portfolios, this conversation with Kirk McDonald highlights important considerations around income investing. Understanding the strategy behind each fund—not just the ticker—helps advisors make more informed allocation decisions and better communicate the rationale to clients.
The themes of income investing and small & mid cap discussed in this episode are particularly relevant in the current market environment, where advisors are increasingly looking for differentiated solutions that go beyond traditional benchmarks.
Listen to the Full Episode
This article is based on an episode of Behind the Ticker, hosted by Brad Roth, Founder and CIO of THOR Financial Technologies. For the full conversation with Kirk McDonald, including additional nuances and details, listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.