Introduction to Behind the Ticker

Brad Roth has spent his career on the operating side of asset management, building strategies, managing portfolios, and navigating the systems most investors encounter only as finished products. Behind the Ticker is his attempt to open that up. Hosted by Roth, who serves as Chief Investment Officer of THOR Financial Technologies and portfolio manager of the THOR Low Volatility ETF, the show is built around a simple premise: there is a great deal that happens behind the ticker, and most of it goes unseen.

About Brad Roth and THOR Financial Technologies

Brad Roth is the Chief Investment Officer of THOR Financial Technologies, a systematic asset management firm. He also serves as portfolio manager of the THOR Low Volatility ETF, a rules-based strategy focused on managing downside exposure while staying invested in equity markets. His background spans both the practitioner and entrepreneurial sides of asset management, an unusual combination that shapes how he approaches the conversations on Behind the Ticker.

THOR Financial Technologies is built on a systematic, technology-driven investment philosophy. That discipline informs Roth's curiosity about how other managers, particularly those building ETFs from the ground up, think about their own process, their business model, and the decisions that led them to launch something new. He isn't approaching these conversations as an outside observer. He's an operator asking other operators to explain their work, which tends to produce more direct and substantive exchanges than standard fund marketing interviews allow.

Behind the Ticker is a natural extension of that professional curiosity. The show gives Roth a structured forum to ask the questions that don't appear in fund fact sheets or investor presentations, questions about how strategies were designed, what early mistakes cost real money, and what the day-to-day reality of running an investment firm actually looks like.

What Behind the Ticker Is Built to Do

The show covers portfolio managers and ETF service providers from across the industry, from boutique single-product issuers to established managers running multi-strategy lineups. The goal isn't performance commentary or market prediction. It's something harder to find: a genuine look at how these businesses operate, what drives the people building them, and what the experience of creating an investment product inside the ETF structure really entails.

Roth is explicit that entrepreneurship is a recurring theme. Many of the guests he plans to feature have taken meaningful professional and financial risk to bring a new product or service to market inside an industry that doesn't make that easy. Their experiences navigating service providers, regulatory processes, distribution channels, and capital formation are as instructive as their investment frameworks. Behind the Ticker treats both as worth examining.

Inside the Concept: What Makes This Show Different

The ETF Industry as a Subject

The ETF wrapper has become one of the most efficient vehicles in asset management, and the range of strategies housed inside it has expanded substantially over the past decade. Active ETFs, thematic products, factor-based strategies, and liquid alternatives now sit alongside the passive index funds that defined the category in its early years. That diversity creates genuine complexity, and genuine stories worth telling. Behind the Ticker is built on the belief that those stories deserve a dedicated home.

Roth's vantage point is particularly useful here. As someone who manages an ETF, he understands the mechanics of the product from the inside. He knows what questions matter for advisors and sophisticated investors, questions about index construction, rebalancing methodology, liquidity management, and the practical realities of distribution. That fluency shows up in how he steers each conversation: focused, specific, and attentive to the operational details that generic media coverage tends to skip.

The Entrepreneurship Thread

One of the more underappreciated stories in modern asset management is the number of practitioners who have left larger institutions to build something from scratch inside the ETF structure. The barriers to entry, while real, have come down meaningfully over the past decade. White-label platforms, outsourced compliance functions, and third-party index providers have made it possible for smaller teams, sometimes a single person with a clear thesis, to bring a product to market that would have required a much larger organization a generation ago.

Behind the Ticker is specifically interested in those builders. What made them leave? What did they underestimate about launching? How are they thinking about growth when assets are small and distribution relationships are still being built? These questions produce insights useful to anyone evaluating the people and firms behind the products they recommend, or anyone considering building something themselves.

Format and Audience

Behind the Ticker is a conversational interview show. Roth conducts extended one-on-one conversations with guests, covering their backgrounds, their strategies, their businesses, and the lessons they've drawn from years of building inside the industry. The content is designed to be both educational and engaging, a distinction Roth makes explicit from the outset.

The audience spans advisors looking for deeper context on products they're evaluating, investors trying to understand how ETFs actually function beneath the surface, and industry professionals interested in how peers approach their own businesses. The show is not positioned as investment advice. It is a resource for anyone who wants to understand the ETF world with more depth and candor than a fund prospectus allows.

Notable Insights

"Behind the Ticker uncovers the inner workings of the ETF industry. We will interview portfolio managers and ETF service providers to learn about their work lives and their businesses."

"Many of these individuals are entrepreneurs and will have unique and compelling insights to share."

"As much goes on behind the ticker."

Key Takeaways

• Behind the Ticker is hosted by Brad Roth, CIO of THOR Financial Technologies and portfolio manager of the THOR Low Volatility ETF.
• The show focuses on the ETF industry, interviewing portfolio managers and service providers about their strategies, businesses, and the work behind their products.
• Entrepreneurship is a central theme: many guests have built investment firms or service companies from the ground up inside the ETF structure.
• The format is conversational and designed for advisors, investors, and industry professionals who want more depth than standard fund marketing provides.
• Content is produced for educational and entertainment purposes only, not investment advice.
• Each episode goes beyond the strategy itself and into the lived experience of building and operating inside the ETF industry.

Why It Matters

Advisors are increasingly expected to evaluate not just fund performance but the quality and durability of the firms behind the products they recommend. Understanding how an ETF issuer thinks, how they built their business, and what drives their decision-making is relevant due diligence, and it's the kind of context that is hard to find in standard product literature.

Behind the Ticker provides that kind of deeper evaluation. Each conversation gives advisors access to the perspectives of people actually running these strategies and businesses, not polished investor relations language, but the candid reflection that surfaces in a genuine interview. For advisors who want to stay current on where the ETF industry is heading and who is building inside it, the show is worth adding to the regular rotation.

The show also models the kind of diligence process advisors themselves should be running: go past the marketing materials, understand the people, ask about the hard parts. That's what happens behind the ticker.

Listen to Behind the Ticker

Behind the Ticker is now live. New episodes feature extended conversations with portfolio managers and ETF service providers from across the industry. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow along as Brad Roth uncovers what's really happening behind the ticker.

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.