Paul Marino, Themes ETFs

Paul Marino spent 25 years in asset management before landing at Themes ETFs as Chief Revenue Officer. He started as a wholesaler at Federated Investors, managed distribution teams at Pioneer Investments, and did a stint in journalism at Newsday, the sixth-largest daily newspaper in the country, before any of that. At Themes, he handles sales, marketing, and PR for a firm that built its entire product line around one question: where is the white space before it fills up.

About Paul Marino and Themes ETFs

Themes ETFs is built around speed and specificity. When a trend develops without a clean ETF wrapper, the firm moves to be first or second with a product. Paul's job is to translate that into advisor conversations: what the index holds, how the screening works, and why the exposure is distinct from what advisors already own. The journalism background shows in how he frames the funds: direct, specific, no filler.

DRGN: Chinese AI as a Separate Return Stream

DRGN is Themes' China-focused generative AI fund. The thesis: the AI buildout inside China is a distinct return stream from U.S. tech exposure. Most advisor portfolios are already weighted toward U.S. mega-cap technology. DRGN gives them access to the Chinese AI buildout without adding to existing positions.

Index construction required a step most domestic thematic funds skip: sanctions compliance screening. Before a Chinese company gets into DRGN, it runs through a filter for U.S. export control restrictions and OFAC lists. Paul walked through why that matters practically: advisors need to know their clients aren't holding names that could get frozen out of U.S. markets. The screening manages compliance risk and makes the product usable in an institutional context.

BOTT: Robotics Beyond the Factory Floor

BOTT is positioned as a humanoid robotics ETF, but the portfolio is broader. Holdings span factory automation components, autonomous vehicle systems, specialized semiconductors, and industrial machine parts. The geographic footprint covers South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S., pulling in companies that don't show up in most domestic tech-adjacent products.

The fund uses equal weighting with semiannual rebalancing. That structure prevents BOTT from becoming a concentrated bet on one or two companies, which is a real risk in a theme where a handful of names absorb most of the attention and media coverage. Paul compared the robotics adoption curve to commercial aviation: the technology develops faster than the infrastructure and adoption patterns around it. That gap between technology readiness and broad deployment is where early positioning has historically mattered.

How Advisors Are Using Thematic Sleeves

The conversation covered portfolio mechanics. Advisors running DRGN or BOTT aren't replacing core equity exposure. They're adding targeted satellite positions to express a specific view without restructuring the portfolio. That framing matters because it sets accurate expectations: these aren't low-volatility core holdings. They're high-conviction, narrow exposures meant to do a specific job.

Paul's argument on timing: early positioning in themes like Chinese AI and humanoid robotics is where the return premium lives. Once a theme reaches mass adoption and broad distribution, the compression has already started. The advisors who captured the AI trade weren't late to it.

Speed to Market as Strategy

Themes built DRGN and BOTT as separate products rather than a single China-and-robotics blend. Advisors want precision, not aggregation. When a theme is generating advisor questions without a clean product answer, that is the signal to move. Being first or second in a category is a different business than being third or fourth. The product roadmap is built around finding what's missing, not improving what already exists.

Key Takeaways

• DRGN targets the Chinese generative AI buildout with sanctions compliance screening built in, separate from existing U.S. tech exposure
• BOTT covers factory automation, autonomous systems, specialized semiconductors, and industrial components across South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S.
• Equal weighting and semiannual rebalancing prevent BOTT from becoming a concentrated single-name bet in a high-attention theme
• Paul draws the robotics adoption comparison to commercial aviation: technology ahead of the surrounding infrastructure is where early positioning has historically paid
• Themes builds products around gap identification: advisor questions without a clean ETF answer are the launch signal

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 Paul Marino, including the mechanics of DRGN's sanctions screening and why equal weighting in BOTT matters for advisors building thematic sleeves, listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.