Chris Tessin, Acuitas Investments
The Multi-Manager ETF Built for Small Cap Alpha
Chris Tessin spent years watching the same problem play out in small cap. The managers doing the best work, running focused, high-conviction books in specific corners of the small and micro cap universe, close to new capital fast. By the time most allocators find them, the capacity is gone. Tessin built Acuitas Investments to get there first, then built AIMS to make that sourcing process accessible in an ETF wrapper.
About Chris Tessin and Acuitas Investments
Acuitas was built around one operating premise: access to the best small cap managers requires finding them early. The firm does the due diligence and underwriting on specialized small cap managers, often ones with thin institutional coverage and limited capacity, and aggregates their model portfolios into a single vehicle. The result is a multi-manager small cap strategy that doesn't require an allocator to run a dozen individual relationships. AIMS launched in February 2026 and reached $77 million in assets in its first month.
How the Multi-Manager Model Works
AIMS doesn't have a single portfolio manager picking stocks. It blends curated model portfolios from multiple small cap managers into one ETF at 75 basis points all-in. No fee-on-fee. One ticker. Each underlying manager runs a concentrated, research-driven book in their slice of the small cap universe. Acuitas handles the sourcing, underwriting, and ongoing portfolio construction above the manager level.
The structure solves a problem that kills most multi-manager approaches: the fee math. Traditional multi-manager vehicles stack a fund-of-funds layer on top of manager fees, which produces a number advisors can't defend to clients. AIMS collapses that to a single flat fee, which changes the economics entirely.
Why Sourcing Is the Real Product
Tessin made clear that the performance of AIMS is directly tied to who Acuitas can access. The firm deliberately finds managers before they've built enough track record to attract institutional interest. That's the same window where capacity is still open. Once a manager shows up in database screens and conference circuits, they're usually close to soft-closing. Acuitas is looking for them years earlier.
The ETF wrapper and fee architecture matter, but the quality of the underlying managers is the actual edge. The multi-manager structure distributes that across several books rather than concentrating it in one.
The Small Cap Setup Right Now
Tessin's market argument is direct. The Russell 2000 is tracking toward roughly 30% earnings growth this year. Large cap multiples are still stretched from years of concentration into a narrow group of names. The spread between where small cap trades and what small cap companies are projected to earn is the widest it's been in years. He called it a coiled spring.
That's not a novel thesis, but the vehicle matters. A passive Russell 2000 exposure captures everything in that earnings growth story, including the structurally weak names that bring the average down. AIMS is trying to capture the recovery through managers who can distinguish between the good setups and the ones that just happen to be small.
Where Active Management Actually Has an Edge
The dispersion in returns across small cap is structurally wider than in large cap. Information is less uniform, institutional coverage is thinner, and mispricings persist longer. That creates conditions where active management can generate real alpha. In large cap, information is so widely distributed that most managers are effectively competing for rounding errors. AIMS is specifically built to access managers with edge in that environment, not just diversify across the asset class.
Key Takeaways
- AIMS aggregates curated model portfolios from multiple specialized small cap managers into one ETF at a flat 75 basis points, no fee-on-fee.
- Acuitas finds managers before capacity closes. That early-stage access is the sourcing advantage the fund is built on.
- The Russell 2000 is projecting roughly 30% earnings growth this year against still-stretched large cap multiples. Tessin sees small cap as the better-valued setup right now.
- Small cap's wider return dispersion and thinner institutional coverage create conditions where active management has a structural edge over passive.
- AIMS launched in February 2026 and reached $77 million in assets in its first month.
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 Chris Tessin on the multi-manager structure behind AIMS, the sourcing process, and the small cap setup, listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Full Transcript
5,496 wordsMachine transcribed from Brad Roth's conversation with Chris Tessin, Acuitas Investments, with speakers identified automatically. Timestamps link to that moment on YouTube. Lightly cleaned, otherwise unedited.
Welcome to Behind the Ticker, the podcast where we go beyond the symbol and into the strategy. I'm Brad Roth, founder and chief investment officer at Thor Funds. And in each episode, I sit down with ETF managers, CIOs, and industry leaders to break down how these funds are actually built, how they behave in real markets, and how advisors use them in real portfolios. Most people just see a ticker symbol, but we know much more goes on behind the ticker.
Hey, Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
So why don't you take a little bit of time, give everybody a bit about your background. You've been in this space now for over 30 years. You started at Bear Stearns and Lehman and ran the entire U.S. micro and small cap book at Russell Investments and then started Acuitis. I keep screwing that up. It's hard for me to say. Anyways, why don't you give everybody the real name of the company and your background and kind of walk us through how that whole journey happened?
Yeah, no problem. So Acuitis Investments basically were founded in 2011. A number of us have some heritage from Russell Investments where we worked in multi-manager investing, did manager research, and also managed portfolios there, multi-manager structures, much like we do here. The uniqueness for Acuitis is that we focus down the cap spectrum. So small and micro cap is really our purview globally with, U.S. micro cap was sort of our flagship and the majority of our assets. But what we were trying to do when we launched Acuitis was create an efficiency for investors who want to get exposure down the cap spectrum but don't necessarily want to spend the time sorting through 600 small cap managers or, a couple hundred micro cap managers.
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So we do the manager research, pair those managers together, and deliver it for the end client in various packaging, whether it's the ETF like we just launched or institutional separate accounts.
Great. So before we kind of jump into the firm a little bit deeper and the ETF that you guys have launched, what do you like to do outside of work? We both have a dog. We found that out on pre-recording,
But any hobbies? Yeah, lots of hobbies. So I like to play music. I play guitar and piano. And that's something I love to do. I still swim a little bit. I swim in college and still get together with my master's friends once a year and dust off the Speedo and dive back into the pool and race other old guys. Um, so, uh, so that's kind of fun, but, um, uh, keeps me fit and mobile. Um, but yeah, that sort of thing. I think especially the music part of it, um, I love the technical aspect of it, learning things that you didn't know the day before, seeing the results of practice, uh, feeling what happens when that myelin sheath starts to groove a path and, uh, and a song gets
Into your fingers. That's pretty special. That's great. I need to, uh, introduce you to David Scholhoff, who I've had on the show before he runs the music ETF. So you guys could probably riff pretty good and talk about all the technical aspects of music, but, um, he's a good guy too. So hopefully at some point you guys have a chance to run into each other. Um, anyways, at a high level, you kind of gave me some of the firm details, but when you left Russell to build this, what really is the firm's identity and what are you guys trying to build that just really didn't exist
In the marketplace? Well, um, I think primarily a specialist. So where we saw a gap was, um, people wanting access to these really inefficient asset classes down the cap spectrum. Um, and the products didn't really exist. Um, we saw large plans like large public pension plans, uh, which are now some of our largest clients, those types of plans making allocations to the space. Um, but there wasn't really a streamlined solution for them to do so. Um, often plans, even big plans have limited staff. And even when they have a robust staff of experienced folks, they still have limited bandwidth.
So a multi-manager construct down the cap spectrum test, that was sort of the best of all worlds where we could take our expertise of evaluating managers, focus it on the area where we felt like it had the most impact from an excess return perspective, uh, and then deliver that for clients. And that was
Kind of the genesis of it. So aims launched on February 10th. You guys already have 77 million in assets. The last time I've looked, that's a really strong start for a brand new ETF. So congratulations. Um, can you walk us through what aims is, what aims is, what it does for all the
People that maybe aren't yet familiar with it? Yeah. Aims is a multi-manager. It's a small cap ETF. pure and simple. Um, it's a small cap ETF and it's an active ETF. So it's very much under underlying it are skilled investment managers. It's a multi-manager construct, um, that pairs managers together in a complimentary fashion that have been deeply researched by Acuitous, um, and, uh, and delivers that to the end client. So they get an active exposure to small cap, the small cap market has evolved quite a bit and there are more non-earning stocks. There are more lower quality stocks. So the benefit of active is really powerful down the cap spectrum.
And I think delivering an act, a truly active product that with managers that simply aren't available direct to investment for the retail investor, um, is really is, is, is a powerful,
Uh, product. Yeah, no, I would agree. It's, it's very unique. I've had over a hundred different ETFs on the show already and, running a multi-manager structure inside of an ETF wrapper, most of, most of the funds we look at are, PMs that are, are picking stocks. Right. And so you're really allocating from my understanding, uh, across a curated group of sub managers who each run a piece of the portfolio. So can you explain how that actually works like mechanically and how managers, like how many managers are you maybe putting inside the
Portfolio and how do you figure out who gets what? Yeah, sure. Um, so it all begins with kind of the manager research. That's, that's really, the core of the effort on our, on our half. Um, and then, as I said, the packaging, the ETF, as much as that's really a challenge for a lot of managers and, um, um, it's just, it's just packaging. It's really the, um, the hard work goes on initially when you're finding the managers, sourcing them, uh, understanding who you believe has talent, who's going to be able to deliver excess returns to the end client and then packaging them together. As far as the construct goes, we have managers, um, deliver model portfolios to us.
So that means that they're giving us every stock that they have up to every day, but we deliver those on a periodic basis to the trading sub advisor. The trading sub advisor then aggregates all of those securities together and creates the basket. Um, and, uh, and works with a market maker to maintain a market in the security. So it is a single security. It's a very efficient way. As I'm talking to a lot of ETFs. It's a very efficient way to access the market for the end investor. It lives in the platforms. It's available on areas like Fidelity and Schwab. Um, it's easy for RAs to make an allocation for individual investors to make an allocation. But there's also a reason
Why a lot of individual managers don't create an ETF. Um, there are capacity challenges. There's the issue of very small funds that only want to manage a limited amount. they, they can't turn off the faucet once assets are coming in. So it's, they don't have the same ability to manage their capacity in a product that they do with individual clients and like institutional clients. So in a multi-manager construct, it solves some of those challenges, um, because it allows for greater capacity and you have more lovers to pull when it comes to capacity for those managers. Um, and that's a really important factor when you're evaluating investment managers is capacity, where they are in their life cycle, how much they're managing and what implementation looks
Like, especially down and small and micro cap. Um, so for these managers, we, delivering a truly active product in small cap, um, for investors with their, the highest quality managers that have been researched by a QS who thinks a really compelling, uh, uh, compelling offering.
I do too. It's, it's a really interesting idea and concept because it's really like, it's almost active on top of active, right? You've got a bunch of active managers and then you're actively, selecting them and figuring out, um, how to allocate between them. I guess that's one piece of the puzzle. I I'd still like to try to unpack a little bit, which is when you figure out and do due diligence on a manager that you want to allocate to how then are you making the asset allocation decision internally? Um, for, let's just say 10% goes to this manager or 30% goes to this manager and how often are those decisions being made?
Yeah. Um, the decisions about weightings, um, are, are active. We're looking at them, every day we're not moving them that often. Um, and we're also not trying to over engineer the product in the sense that, market moved today. We do have bands within which they trade. Um, the interesting thing about the ETF and model delivery in this case, um, is that we can move things, easily on a day by day basis, um, because of the nature of what the sub advisor, uh, the trading sub advisor is doing for us. So we work really hard to set the balance at the beginning, um, as far as the, uh, the weights go. And then we're monitoring them daily with the ability to
Move them as often as we like. Um, and, uh, and doing a hard review internally on a regular basis, we have portfolio meetings where we'll go through each of the managers and we'll go through each of the portfolios that we manage, um, and evaluate the weights and what's happening in the market. And what are the headwinds and tailwinds for each of the underlying managers. But importantly, what we're trying to get in the end, the structure we're trying to deliver is, is we're trying to deliver alpha. We're trying to deliver excess return above the benchmark. Um, that's the goal. We've had a strong track record of doing it across our product set. And so we're not trying to over engineer and eliminate and risk control the portfolio massively. So it isn't meant to be a super low
Tracking error, um, index plus type strategy. It's meant to be an active strategy. And as a result, you'll have managers making active bets. They'll have, large active sector bets and individual security bets. Um, and, um, and they're reasonably diversified portfolios, but we actually like managers that, um, lean towards concentration in their portfolios because we're trying to get the active return. We can balance those bets in a, in a multi-manager construct. Um, but we want managers
That are truly seeking alpha. So when you're going out and doing due diligence and kind of sourcing managers, can you talk about what that underwriting process look, looks like, like, how are you finding then evaluating and then saying, okay, this is something we want to be including in our process?
Yeah, absolutely. I think like you said, um, idea generation is really core to the effort. So where we find managers, the answer is everywhere. Um, important as venues like this, which are really helpful, um, to tell people that we have an open door to call us if they have a small gap product, because often people started a product. They may have a few million dollars in it. They may have half a billion dollars in it, but they don't feel like they're getting the attention that they deserve. They feel like for whatever reason, maybe the returns for the past year have been poor. Maybe they just haven't had the marketing presence. Maybe they're, um, a small team that doesn't have a debt, a dedicated, uh, sales effort. Um, we want to hear from all of them,
Understand who they are. We track a lot of people in the industry. So network is a big piece. Um, that's important when, there's this constant death and rebirth process, especially down in small cap where products fill up. People realize that they've have a ceiling over them at a certain firm or a certain product. They, they launched their own firms. We're very supportive of that community. We've worked with a lot of early stage investment management firms. We're not interested in seeding firms. That's not our effort, but we do, we have seeded many products. Um, in other words, been the first investor in that product. So down in micro cap, for example, or with a small cap product, a low asset based product that perhaps doesn't have as much attention
At the firm, but, uh, but it's really compelling. And then there are ways like, backing into firms from security, saying to yourself, uh, Hey, look, what's running today. Who owns this? who are the managers that hold the security and do we know them? Um, so, we want to know everybody and a big part of it in this environment is making the effort and having the focus. So by this focus on small cap, um, I feel like we're, we're making an effort, we'll never know everyone. And, but it's a point of pride for us to, uh, to, uh, to know a lot of managers in this space.
So let's talk about, this, the small micro cap space you're playing in, looking at the Russell 2000, something like 40% of that index, the companies are unprofitable, right? So how much of your edge or finding generating excess alpha is basically avoiding the junk, uh, that, passive small cap exposure can get you or, and how much of the alpha do you think is to just, pure, really good asset selection?
Yeah. Well, we hope it's stock selection in the end, but I do think there is a benefit to throwing out the junk. And as the, uh, 10, even 10 years ago, the, uh, percentage of assets, non-earning stocks was much lower than it is today, in both small cap and in micro cap. And so while there's some benefit to that, um, in a year like 2025, it's interesting because you think of what investors, including the largest investors in the world are drawn to, um, they're drawn to recent returns. And in 2025, it was that low quality. A lot of those junk stocks actually paid. You wanted stocks with non-earnings, non-revenue, story stocks, um, exposure to the next big thing, uh, that really paid and that reversed pretty abruptly for a period of here at the beginning of
The year. Um, but there are periods where that wins. Our managers view much more, um, sort of fundamentally sound companies in general. Um, we do have managers on all edges of the spectrum from the most aggressive growth down to the deepest value. And across that spectrum, there are just dozens of, sub styles and versions of them. So we really try to understand what the manager is doing and drive the excess return through stock selection. Because while there's a marginal benefit from, uh, from throwing out the junk, we really think the great benefit is from that
Deep security selection. So staying on small caps, that sector relative to, large cap growth has been relatively left for dead. Um, people have been just flooding into large cap growth. Somebody like myself, who's an equal weight manager, and when everybody ran a market cap, uh, I didn't love that either, but it feels like more of the market is now participating. And so what's the case for that cycle to really turn in small caps to have, a better day in the sun?
Yeah, it's a great point. Um, it's been a decade plus that small cap has been kind of left in the dust and, uh, and largely forgotten. And there'd been endless papers about is small cap dead? Um, my own view is, trees don't grow to the sky and some, and it's not always the case that the sequoias outgrow the saplings. Um, but, um, even more important is, sort of from evaluation perspective where we are and what's driven the largest stocks, has it been earnings and has, or has it been multiple expansion? And it's, I think it's largely been multiple expansion. Um, so there's no question there are some great names out there that have grown earnings and been rocket
Ships, especially at the very top end of, of large cap. But there's also a limit to what people should be willing to pay for those earnings. Um, and, and what, when they're very pricey, the kind of shock that comes and how sensitive it is to disappointment. Um, the big story down the cap spectrum is not just the valuation, but the earnings as well. I think that this year, for example, small cap is expected to double, even triple the earnings of, of large cap. Um, the most recent estimate I saw for Russell 2000, I think was in the range of a 30% expected earnings growth in 2026. Importantly, whatever the number is, it's that small cap earnings are, have higher expectations than, uh, than large cap. And if
They execute, and some of this is off of a lower base, but if they actually execute on that, even maintaining their multiple, it's going to be powerful. Um, so that's a big piece of it. Um, obviously a lot of volatility here at the beginning of the year with all the market happenings in the geopolitical, uh, um, environment that we're in. But if you look at where we are kind of from a valuation perspective, there's no question that small cap is much cheaper than large. Uh, it's also got better earnings prospects and that's, what's really, uh, I think compelling for a lot of our
Managers and for us. Yeah. So when you're looking at active managers specifically in the small cap space, the return dispersion between managers can be huge, right? There's a lot more opportunity to have absolute banner years versus, significant underperformance, I would argue than in large cap. So could you walk me through what happens when one of your underlying managers kind of maybe drifts or underperforms? What does that decision tree look like? Do you trim them? Do you replace them? Do you give them some rope? Like what's the, what's the leeway for manager underperformance? Or is it something that's just expected from time to time? Yeah. We give them at
Least three to five days to turn it around. I'm kidding. Um, the, no, and honestly, um, we want to constantly self-evaluate our own decisions when it comes to managers and, um, and their performance. Um, we don't just hire and fire managers based on performance because everybody comes to you when they've got great performance, for us in our world and for pension consultants as well, managers come in and they have the marketer with the handshake and the great hair and like, and the three-year number and the five-year number. And they're just ready. They're like, where are the assets? how can you deny that this is the best product ever? We want to get under the hood and understand the environment. Is it a manager with a huge healthcare weight and
Healthcare has had a run? Is it a manager who has an exposure that's, that they benefited from, there's a little bit of degree of every manager is a broken clock, that they'll have their period where things are, where the environment's a tailwind. Um, and the opposite is true as well, where, an environment like last year, there were some outstanding managers that, um, that suffered last year because it was a terrible environment for active management broadly in small cap, but doesn't necessarily mean it's time to go through the list and say who had a big underperformance number and start to terminate. Um, so the sell discipline is really important.
It's important when we're evaluating managers and how they handle stock individual stocks. It's also important when we're looking at managers hiring and firing, replacing managers, et cetera. We want to understand them in context, did they do well in the environment? one of the most damning things to us is an environment that favors a manager where they didn't execute. They have the tailwind and they didn't put up the numbers that they need. Um, there are managers that, every 10 years you look and you think, I thought that manager was out of business. And the next thing they're on the cover of Barron's because they get their environment for 12 months. Um, that doesn't mean that it's time to pile on
Because that, it may be very short lived.
So let's go back to the structure again, because I'm, I'm fascinated by it. This is traditionally a structure that you see in, a fund of funds that might be wrapped in a two and 20, right? And you're doing it in what I would argue a very cost effective ETF wrapper that has, as we all know, many efficiencies. So the expense ratio on the fund is 75 basis points. Again, I think it, for what you're doing, it's extremely competitive. How did you get there? the, the fee, like I said, for this type of structure and product is very low in comparison.
Yeah. Well, we're really proud of the structure that we've built. And I think a lot of it speaks to the partnership that we engage in with the investment managers, finding them early, finding them, uh, many of them when they're low asset base and most compelling from an implementation perspective also benefits us when we're looking to partner with them from a fee perspective. Um, and obviously our world is not two in 20. We're a multi-manager where it's a lower margin business. But that said, what we can deliver for clients is a really compelling structure that includes both our fee and the underlying manager fee. This, this perception of multiple layers is not true. In the end, in the end, the client, they pay the one fee, um, which is low in this case, especially for the multi-manager construct,
Because you're getting a number of investment managers, um, the oversight of a multi-manager like us, uh, the constant balancing, um, and managing and implementation of it day to day, the sourcing of managers, many of whom don't have available products. You can't just go out and buy a mutual fund at some of these underlying managers. Um, they are, uh, um, and, and there are a lot of folks that aren't doing the work to find them early in their, uh, in their investment life cycle, which we think is the most compelling part, um, uh, of the life cycle.
So when you're sitting down and talking to, that registered investment advisor that is just checking the small cap box by maybe just investing in IWM or VB, what is the argument for aims, uh, in its, in its placement? Um, I could probably think of 20 of them, but I'll let you take it.
Yeah. It's sort of where to start, right? Um, a big part of it is there's benefit to being active down the cap spectrum. Um, and I think most investors believe that to a degree that, yeah, there has been a move towards passive and especially in large cap where you're gaining exposure and you're not just trying to manage the bets of the largest stocks. Um, that's a real challenge. Um, but down the cap spectrum in areas like small cap and micro cap, which we are where we also manage money. Um, it pays to be active over time. And so a truly active product with the, the highest ranked investment managers that have been deeply resourced, researched by Acuitis, um, is our offering. It's alpha seeking, it's active, and it's a really
Compelling time for small cap. So those things sort of combined, um, I think make the case for us in a lot of, a lot of sense.
Yeah. And so when also you're looking at kind of a diversified model portfolio, are, are you putting it, are you advising to say this goes in the small cap sleeve? Are you looking at, um, it being maybe a satellite of just overall equity exposure because it's, it could be a massive alpha generator for, the equity sleeve or it, does it fit somewhere in the alternative sleeve because of the multi-manager approach, right? When you're really sitting down and selling this product to an advisor that already has a model portfolio, where would you have them look to really place it?
Yeah. A lot of it depends on how they're handling their equity portfolio, um, where it fits for them. So we have folks use it in, in a whole range of cases. Um, some of it is just, the active portion of small cap has become a smaller portion of the portfolio. Um, so is it calp weighted? Um, in that case, like you said, it's going to be a reasonably small portion. Is it alpha weighted where you have a larger allocation to small cap because you actually believe this is going to be the alpha generator in your portfolio and you have more and you're more passive or more balanced up the cap spectrum.
Uh, there's a strong case for that, which we believe, um, as a small cap folks, but at the same time that, that, that doesn't fit for everyone. Um, really the case we're trying to make at a minimum is for a small cap allocation, this is a really compelling offering. Um, it's, it's, uh, it's priced well, it's deeply researched investment managers that truly active. Um, there are also folks that use this small micro cap portion of the market as a private equity proxy, um, as people are facing, return challenges in that space. So, um, we've written the case when you get down into micro cap, for example, um, which is a notable part of our business as well, that sort of case for, uh, a proxy for private equity is really compelling and that's a whole different story. But in small
Cap, um, really just as a small cap offering, which most people have kind of, they've moved towards this world. And Russell was a big part of that, our, our, uh, predecessor firm of, uh, getting people to think of the world and not just equities or, a narrow equities like Dow or something more, there's more broad S&P 500. Then it became the Russell indices, which are even more broad and large cap, small cap, which people started to think about the world that way. It's easy to say, uh, just have a, an equities exposure and have it be very big, um, over the last 10 years, et cetera. But I really don't think small cap is dead. These things tend to cycle.
Um, and, uh, and most of the research talks about the, uh, we believe the forward prospects for small
Cap are compelling. Yeah. Yeah. it's, you see this viewer, if you're in, been in the investing world long enough, uh, nothing stays dead forever. And generally when, you think it's dead is probably the time to buy it, but I want to go back to, again, you just recently launched this ETF. You've had it out for, about a month now you've had congratulations again on your success jumping into what I call the ETF thunderdome, right? There's all these products, there's all these, there's all this noise, I guess what's something that maybe you've learned so far. And do you think you guys are going to just really focus on aims and that's going to be your only flagship
Product or their plans maybe for more products down the line? Um, for now it's definitely aims. Um, our purview is a firm has been small cap and below. So that includes global products like international small cap and emerging markets, small cap. Um, so we're going to focus on aims. There's no immediate prospect of other products. Um, and in us micro cap, we have a mutual fund, which lends itself, uh, more to the mutual fund from a liquidity perspective and, um, and, uh, natural way to access that market. Um, that's a more, uh, efficient structure for us to deliver. And, but in the, um, really excited about entering the ETF space, learned a lot about the offerings that are out there. Like you said, there's every flavor it's, it's Baskin Robbins times a thousand, you know,
Because, um, there really is just about anything that people can deliver will deliver. Um, we think that this product stands out and that it's, like I said, truly active and multi-manager and those things combined can be really compelling. But, um, I've definitely learned about a lot of folks, it's a compelling product because of the tax benefits of it, because of the efficiency of it being a single security and the ability to access, um, an asset class or an exposure through a single security is really compelling for folks. It's easier, um, for, uh, RIAs that are, um, looking to access an asset class or, or an exposure. Um, I'm also, we had to do a lot of work on the structure. It's a very non-standard structure, um, just the underlying pipes and, and all of the
Providers. And we've always been a firm that can sort of, uh, figure things out and deliver these things for clients. When the clients say, this is what I'm looking for. This would be really compelling. Uh, we'll find out if we can offer that and, and an efficient manner. And if it makes sense, um, we've run into a lot of investment managers, really compelling investment managers, some of the best in the universe that have made the choice not to go forward with an ETF for reasons that I talked about earlier, like capacity constraints and, and things like that. Um, so we like to be out there for them, sort of being the champion for some of these managers, that the truly active finding the greats and getting a way to deliver them for clients.
And honestly, we've got great partnerships with our underlying managers, like we talked about earlier, um, because of that, because we're a champion for small and micro cap.
Well, Chris, I really appreciate you spending some time with me, love the product really competitive in terms of, what the offering is. I think it's super unique. So, but before I let you go, where can people learn more about the firm? Where can they
Get all the information they need about aims? Yeah, you can go to acutisinvestments.com and learn all about, uh, our firm, our background, encourage you to reach out to us. If there's, if you have any interest in the product or, uh, or in the firm, or there's something that we can talk about, or just want to chat about the active management space. Um, it is, uh, it is really a passion project for us. Um, small stocks, small and growing investment managers. Um, we really want to be, contributing part of the ecosystem of investment managers. Uh, we've helped a lot of them get off the ground and, um, and grow their assets. And that's benefited us from an excess return perspective. Um, so excited about the product and, uh, and really appreciate you having me on today.
Well, again, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Okay. Thanks again.
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