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.