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Behind the Ticker

Jon Clements, Market Desk

Why Most Momentum Funds Are Looking at the Wrong Data

·32 min
Why a six-month momentum lookback beats the academic twelve-month standardScoring the quality and consistency of a stock's price path instead of raw trailing returnThe screens behind FMTM: a liquidity filter, a quality cut to roughly 300 names, and an equal-weighted 30-to-50 stock bookWhether momentum is just performance chasing, and Jon's answer to the skepticManaging risk through holdings selection when a fund stays fully invested with no cash and no hedges

Jon Clements covered U.S. large-cap financials in equity research at Goldman Sachs, then did time at JP Morgan and Guggenheim before he and his brother Matt started MarketDesk Research in 2020. The firm runs model portfolios and research for roughly two hundred of the largest wealth managers in the country, plus family offices in Switzerland and the Middle East. The ETF business came later, and FMTM, the Focused U.S. Momentum ETF, is the product of more than a decade of quantitative work. His argument: most momentum funds are reading the wrong data.

The Data Most Momentum Funds Get Wrong

The academic standard for momentum is a twelve-month lookback. Jon thinks that window is too long. A year of price history bakes in moves that already happened and may already be reversing, so the signal is partly measuring the past instead of the trend that is actually in force. MarketDesk uses a six-month lookback instead. It also does not just rank trailing return. The algorithm scores the quality and consistency of how a stock got there, so a name that climbed in a straight line ranks above one that posted the same number through two violent swings. Price tells you more than most analysts are willing to admit.

How the Portfolio Gets Built

The universe starts with a liquidity screen, then a quality filter narrows it to about three hundred names. From there the strategy holds thirty to fifty stocks, equal weighted, and rebalances monthly. Equal weight is a deliberate choice. It keeps a single mega-cap from quietly becoming the whole bet, which is what happens to closet indexers that charge active fees for index-hugging. The result is a portfolio with roughly two percent overlap with the S&P 500. If you already own the index, that is the number that should get your attention. You are getting something genuinely different, not a high-fee copy of what is already in the account.

Isn't Momentum Just Performance Chasing?

Jon takes the skeptic's question head-on. Momentum is a systematic, rules-based way of staying with trends that persist longer than people expect, rebalanced on a schedule so it sells what has rolled over and buys what is working. Performance chasing is what an investor does by hand, late, on emotion. A disciplined monthly process is the opposite of that.

Where Risk Actually Gets Managed

FMTM stays fully invested. No cash, no shorts, no hedging overlay. It sounds aggressive. The risk control lives in holdings selection. When the market turns, the momentum signal rotates toward names that are holding up and away from the ones breaking down, so the drawdown defense is built into what the fund owns rather than bolted on through an allocation call. Jon argues it is a cleaner design than most risk-managed equity products.

Who It Is For

Jon is clear that this is not a core holding for someone who wants index-like behavior. It is built for an investor who already owns broad market exposure and wants a concentrated, rules-driven sleeve that behaves the way a momentum strategy should. If that is not what you are after, Jon will say so.

Full Transcript

6,526 words

Machine transcribed from Brad Roth's conversation with Jon Clements, Market Desk. Timestamps link to that moment on YouTube. Lightly cleaned, otherwise unedited.

0:00

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, John, welcome to the show.

0:42

Hey, Brad, thanks for having me. So before we get into everything, why don't you give everybody a bit about your background? If my research is correct, you were Goldman Sachs, Equity Research, JPMorgan, Guggenheim, and then you and I believe your brother, Matt, started a firm called Market Desk in 2019. So kind of take me through that entire journey. And, obviously, this is a show about ETFs. You've launched some ETFs as well. So if you could, why don't you give everybody, a little bit about that career background? Yeah, yeah, certainly. So quick background on the career path. So I grew up in the Midwest, attended university here, and actually graduated college early to New York and joined the team at Goldman. Pretty traditional equity research role. I covered U.S. large cap financials at

1:26

Goldman for a number of years. And really, an incredible spot to sit because you sit right between, essentially every C-suite you can imagine. So CFO, COO, every divisional head, you'd want to dive down into in a corporation or company. And all of those conversations go into modeling estimates, price targets, for guidance for, S&P 500 companies. The other half of the equation is that you sit on the other side of, conversations with hedge funds, long, short, fundamental, quantitative. And so, an incredible role to sit in, learned a ton. I was fortunate to join the team very young there and learned quite a lot. And then, I think leaving that role,

2:04

Wanted to do something more, more entrepreneurial. to your point, yeah, the co-founder here at Market Desk is Matt. My brother come from a long line. So my grandfather worked with his brother and built out a very successful business. My father worked with his brother. And so we're, I guess we're carrying on the torch there per se, but Matt's background, more traditional accounting. He has a CPA, spent time with Ernst & Young. And the two of us, again, as I mentioned, kind of wanted to do something more entrepreneurial, found an opportunity to launch Market Desk Research in 2020. And that's more traditional, research, model portfolio, asset allocation. We work with 200 of the largest wealth managers across US. We work with a lot of family offices,

Read the full transcript (47 more sections)
2:43

Predominantly out of Switzerland and Middle East overseas. And then that rolled into, of course, launching an ETF business in 2022. Yeah. So before we get into that, I want to talk about Market Desk and obviously the ETF. But before we do that, what do you like to do when you're not working, when you're off the desk? Any hobbies? Yeah. look, to be honest, I work quite a bit. It's not a good trade. But whenever I'm away from the office, I would say in general, anything outdoors, big skier, love playing tennis, love hiking. So anything like it probably gets me away from the computer. I'd say my list of future hobbies, though, it's probably growing faster than my current list of hobbies, as probably with most

3:23

People. But yeah, the list grows. And, over time, I'll get to more of them. Outside of that, just enjoy traveling. Recently, got back from a trip to Madeira, Portuguese Island, kind of off the coast of Northern Africa. Last fall, I was lucky enough to go up to the Lofoten Islands up in northern Norway. So I try to really see interesting places. So yeah, try to, when I'm not working, which is a lot, try to get away from it quite a bit. Yeah. The unfortunate aspect of being entrepreneurs is even though you do like to travel, you seem to find yourself working or behind a screen at some point during that trip. It's hard to completely unplug. But let's talk about Market Desk a little bit here. It started, as you said,

4:03

A research and tools platform for advisors. I've been a client of yours. I'm still a client of yours. you've designed model portfolios, white label content, market commentary. As you said, you serve mostly wealth management firms. What made you decide to go from providing this type of research, which is great research, you guys do great work, to actually launching an ETF? Yeah, it was a very natural evolution for us. So we've been running, and we'll discuss FMTM here in a second. But like, that's a good example. So it's a momentum algorithm that we've been running in-house for several years. We have several clients that have been trading it for, three, four years in a row, manually trading it and providing kind of the opportunity to the holdings,

4:44

The weights, health, and to rebalance the portfolio. When we launched it last year in 2025, it was really to solve for two things. One, tax efficiency, right? So, being in the ETF wrapper, it's incredibly tax efficient, being able to use in-kind, create, redeems, which lends itself well to the strategy because we have about 60 or 70% turnover on a monthly basis. And the secondary to that is, outside of tax efficiency, it was able to automate a lot of the trading, right? So for clients that were, trading very large sums into the portfolio, the ETF kind of gave them opportunity to more of a turnkey approach. And so it's very natural evolution for us. We run about eight or nine different quantitative models, and over

5:23

Time, I think several of those will find their way into an ETF just to be more tax efficient and more tardkey. Yeah. So, for those of us who are running, a little bit more active funds, the ETF wrapper has been amazing for us. So the ticker, as you said, is FMTM. You guys launched it, just in March of last year. It's actively managed 45 basis points. You guys have come out, hot out of the gates. What is the fund? What's the problem that it's solving? Like, what are you actually rotating in and around? Is it fund to funds? Are you an individual names? So just like at a high level, what does somebody expect when they take a look at FMTM?

6:00

Yeah, that's a great question. So the ticker FMTM, obviously short for focused momentum, right? And so we're investing in US equities. Before I dive into the algorithm to kind of explain the details, it's probably helpful to explain the universe. So we start with US companies that have north of a billion in market cap and trade more than 25 million a day. So incredibly liquid US companies that generally gives us a pretty lengthy list of US large and mid caps. From there, we take a quantitative screening approach across the balance sheet and income statements of looking for healthy companies, profitable, profitable businesses, healthy operating margins. And so from that quality screen, we have about 300 names, give or take every month that fall out the

6:41

Bottom of that, right? So that's a pretty large list that we then take into the momentum scoring, right? And so, in terms of how FMTM works, we're constantly looking for new areas of leadership across US equities, or style agnostics, sector agnostics, we don't have any, certain areas of the market that we tend to fall into more often than not, we're truly just finding where there's new opportunities. And so, obviously, in an environment like today, where there's a lot of build out around AI data centers, kind of whole value chain, they're heating and cooling, making them more efficient, right? So that we have a lot of exposure and it seems like that, given that's currently a large portion of driving market market sentiment today. Other themes that

7:22

We've held recently include, defense, defense names have been kind of benefiting from the rising, rising, US budgets on defense spending. So finding unique opportunities, wherever the themes may rotate. And so once we roll out of the 300 names, we're really ranking them on the past six months of share price data, right? So we look at, for example, if you were to look at a share price of Apple, for example, the human eye might pull off two or three different data points. In reality, there's there's thousands of data points that you can pull off of that line, right? And so what the algorithm is ultimately doing is, is looking for anomalies in that pricing data and finding 30 to 50 names that we hold on an equal weight basis, that we think have the

8:03

Strongest momentum in the current environment. At month end, that then gets rebalanced back to equal weight any names that are strengthening, we continue to add exposure or add new names, then anything that's losing momentum, right, or weakening, we remove from the portfolio at month end. So this, this process repeats every month. And so you were to look at, FMTMs, historical sector exposure on a monthly basis, every month looks pretty different, right? The fund is actively rotating, as I mentioned earlier, about 60 to 70% turnover on a monthly basis. And that's that active process of going in and finding fresh momentum and participating in those trends. So you mentioned that the look back periods, six months instead of maybe the standard 12. What's the idea of it being short? I actually run look back periods are even

8:46

Shorter than six months, there's a flavor of momentum in some of the stuff that we do. So what was the thought process there? And why is, cutting the traditional 12 months and a half more meaningful and helps you find better opportunities? Yeah, so for context, for anyone that's listening, traditional momentum is a, if you were to go read the academic definition, it's 12 months or 12 months minus the most recent month, but it's generally about a year of pricing data. there's a lot of benefits to that, right? It, certainly can minimize the short term noise, smooth out trends, help you find kind of long term momentum. But there's a lot of drawbacks and

9:24

Downsides. I think the number one would be that it tends to lag whenever markets change, right? So, while it's smoothing out a lot of the noise, it's also much slower to respond to market changes, right? So in years like 2022, or 2008, or coming out of the dotcom bubble in 2001, that that 12 month momentum can really have some, some downside aspects that you'd want to avoid. Now, we think six months is really kind of a sweet spot, right? It allows us to go back far enough to establish a trend that is a high level of consistency, it's a quality trend. At the same time, it's fresh enough to be able to rotate and find new opportunities as they're

9:58

Emerging, right? So that six month really kind of is the sweet spot in our view, at least from a statistical and mathematical lens, way we look at markets, and then the monthly rebalance allows the fund to constantly be updating. So we're rolling into the end of May here, 2026, we then roll off six months ago. And as we go to June, we roll off the six month. And so it's constantly using the most recent data as the markets progress. So most momentum ETFs, when you look at it, they're, as we already mentioned, looking at 12 month total return raw data. If I understand you're doing something a little bit different, you're measuring the consistency and quality of the trend. So like in plain English, what does that mean? Yeah, so as I mentioned, most most momentum algorithms or

10:39

Strategies typically rank stocks on on 12 month returns, all equal that would say that, two companies that have the highest 12 month return would be viewed as both having high degree momentum. In reality, every company gets to that 12 month or that six month return mark in a very different way, right? And we think that's incredibly important. We want to capture a lot of the characteristics that go into that that trend, right? So imagine two companies, right? They're both up 30% over a six month period. The first company has a very slow and steady progression, right? It's accumulating more investors, it's getting more news flow, more headlines. There's a story developing behind stock A. Stock B also up 30% over six months. A lot of that, let's say, came in the

11:17

Last week of trading on the back of earnings, right? So two very different styles of momentum, they both end up at the same spot over six months. And most traditional momentum algorithms would rank those equally, right? they got to the same point, these are high relative momentum names. But the path of getting there, we think is something that's been often overlooked, if you kind of read historical academic research in the space, and scenario that we put a lot of emphasis on, right? So we want to make sure that the quality, the path, the kind of price path of how that company achieved that 30% return is something that we would rank as a quality price path. So I hear this all the time, you probably hear it too. I got to ask the skeptic side of the question,

11:57

Is it momentum investing just performance chasing? Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a great question, right? And even, when you're running an algorithm, it can certainly feel like that at times. I think the reality, you have to look at the academic research that backs this up. And this is not just research from the last 10 years. really, if you look at the last 40 years, academic research has identified momentum as kind of one of the strongest or most persistent equity factors across investing, right? And for good reason, right? momentum is really in everyday, everyday life, not just in the equity market, right? So you could think of a traffic jam, right? And kind of what lane is, is progressing

12:31

Throughout the traffic jam, like there's momentum, micro levels of momentum, really in every aspect of life, and certainly in the stock market as well. the benefit that we see behind using price data is that it really efficiently aggregates millions of data points into one forward looking data point that's continuously being updated, right? So, as a company has news come out, whether it's earnings related, whether it's guidance, whether it's a headline, whether it's a, Washington policy, that price is constantly being reflected based on the most recent data, and it's constantly forward looking, right? So while it certainly feel like price chasing at times, at the same time, it's the single most important data point in terms of sentiment, earnings, valuations, sector growth that goes into any company. And so that's why we think monitoring

13:19

The share price outside of all of the academic research that supports it is really important when you're thinking about constructing a portfolio. Because ultimately, whether there's future downside or upside in a name, it's going to show up in the price trend. And if you're monitoring a lot of the statistics around that price trend, it can identify a lot of very compelling opportunities for entry, but also a lot of compelling opportunities to exit a position as well, right? So it's a tremendous amount of data, it seems like a very innocent and single data point, but there's so much statistics pull off of just a price line, it really is incredible when you start to dive into it. Yeah, I've had this conversation, maybe going off script here for a minute, a million times with

13:57

Advisors about, price data is, in my opinion, the only truth, right? People look at all these different, I would call them almost like vanity metrics. But at the end of the day, the price is the price and people on people are buyer and seller. And that's what they believe the fix. So price to me, is so much more important of a metric than anything else that anybody's actually looking at. Yeah, I'd certainly agree. like, I don't know that I buy into markets are efficient, that like, 100% at the same time, let's say, you and I uncover something in terms of a policy initiative, it's going to benefit a company, but we'll make trades.

14:31

And, that'll be reflected in the price, right? And this is happening not only across the US, but, on a global international basis, not just with a handful of investors, but, literally 10s of millions of investors placing trades every day. And so, yeah, I would certainly agree. And I think it's probably an under, underscored source of information. What's interesting is, a lot of times we'll find signals that are that are not obvious, right? like, of course, when NVIDIA reports earnings, and you see that start to be priced into the share price. But sometimes we'll find opportunities that, there's not really an apparent headline, there's not a data point that we could point back

15:04

To in terms of why this company has seen momentum. And then, lo and behold, after it's been added to the ETF, a few weeks later, it's added to the S&P 500 index, right? Or you see that Berkshire has disclosed a large position in the name. Or, there's been a big defense spending contract awarded to the company, right? So like, you even see non public information finding its way into into price as well, which I think is fascinating. Yeah, it's super interesting. We've, we've already talked about your rebalance schedule being monthly, your competitors, SPMO, MTUM, the rebalancing twice a year, what does that monthly cadence actually give you in, in terms of edge over that slower rebalance? I know this is an

15:47

Active ETF, it's going to be more expensive. But to me, that nimbleness is going to give you a significant, I would say, significant advantage finding shorter term momentum rather than just, hey, we're going to run a screen six months later, we'll hit another button and rebalance it. Yeah, yeah. Look, I think the way we've described in and look, all of the algorithms, I mentioned market desk research, we've been running these algorithms for years. we had long conversations with all of the wealth management firms that we worked with, five plus years ago, and, and sat down, what are the main drawbacks? What don't you like? What's maybe what's maybe a lazy approach to traditional factor investing that you'd like to see kind of solved or fixed, if you will. And I think that that certainly came up as one of

16:28

Them, right? if you think about, we're sitting here recording this in May of 2026. Imagine using data from June of last year, or May of 2025, we've got everything that's happened between now and then. So 12 months, we think is, just an insufficient approach, there's a lot of updated information being applied there. And then beyond that, to your point, only updating that that basket every six months, you start to miss a lot of data points, not only on the upside in terms of finding new opportunities or new, new kind of emerging leadership, but also on finding exit opportunities, right? I think that's something that, is generally overlooked. It's something that, I would encourage anyone that's

17:03

Listening to this to go to Market Desk indices, you can download the fund presentation. But in there, it's 20 page deck towards the back, you'll see a page that covers exit and entry discipline, right? And it's something that we put a lot of emphasis on. The monthly rebalance really allows FMTM to find, of course, new opportunities, traditional momentum, finding new emerging opportunities, but also exit a lot of names that have either ran, right, or starting to weaken, right? And that I think is incredibly important, because if you rebalance a portfolio every six months, for better or worse, you're sort of locked into that, right? So, and certainly there can be periods where that's a great, a good thing to have, you aren't forced or tempted to

17:39

Sell a stock. But there's also periods where the theme and the catalyst that drove that initial stock in the basket has changed meaningfully, right? And you need to readjust and kind of reconsider that inclusion. So monthly rebalancing really allows us to be much more nimble. And then the last thing I would highlight, in terms of, and again, you're no stranger to the ETF space as well, is the tax efficiency of this, right? So we, on purpose, we filter for companies that trade more than 25 million a day. It's a very high liquidity threshold. If you were to read any perspectives, you're probably going to see closer to like half a million. So almost 50x lower than what we require in terms of what goes into the index.

18:13

And that allows us to have a lot of underlying liquidity in terms of going in and out of these names without moving share price, but also doing it in a very cost efficient manner as well. Yeah. So let's, let's jump ahead a little bit. Cause you may, you, you mentioned like, having a sell side discipline here as well. So there are certain environments we all know that can break a momentum strategy. And so how does FMTM kind of adapt when conditions maybe turn against you? Because you are staying fully invested. You're not raising cash. You're not hedging, how does the model actually kind of start to shift during, volatility or sell-offs? Is it just moving into more defensive names? Cause that's where money's flowing. Can you talk to us

18:53

About how this fund, would look maybe, uh, in periods of, volatility or sell-offs? Yeah, it's a great question. Right. And it's something we put a lot of emphasis in and designing the algorithm years ago and certainly embedded into, into FMTM as well. Uh, to your point. Yeah. So it stays fully invested, right? So we don't go to cash. We don't, use short exposure. We don't have any derivatives. There's, there's no use of, of any hedging overlay. Um, all of the risk management is implemented through holdings selection rather than asset allocation is best way to put it. Right. And, and to your point, money has to flow somewhere, right? Largely, you can certainly have capital being pulled out of markets, but it's largely a zero sum game, right? So if,

19:34

If we see semiconductors starting to slow down and pace, two, three years from now, that capital is going to flow somewhere else, probably, most likely looking at, valuations today, it's going to flow towards areas like, staples, defensives, utilities that have largely been left out of the rally. Uh, regardless, there's always areas of relative momentum, even if, even if everything's falling, right? Even if you're in a bear market, uh, there's still areas of relative momentum. And so often, FMTM's goal is to define those opportunities, right? So even in something we mentioned in the fund material as well, it's looking for momentum in an offensive and a defensive way, right? So if you find yourself in a extended bear market, like 2008 or 2022, there's still pockets

20:15

Of the market that are benefiting on a relative basis. And so that's what FMTM rotates into. So it's very possible that, if we were to rotate into a bear market, over the next two to three years that, portfolio would look dramatically different from what it currently owns. And that monthly flexibility, that shorter six month look back really enables the fund to go and find those, those opportunities. Um, and, and, to some extent provide defense for the portfolio during those periods of market volatility. So you said something interesting there. I just want to follow up on, you said, use the term relative momentum. So you're not purely looking at like we, raw performance data. And I know you're looking at some of the underlying qualities of how

20:54

That performance presented itself. Um, but in periods of, good markets and bad markets, look, are you, are you doing, I guess you, you use the term relative momentum. So even if the sector is maybe, or a sync, a name might be trending down, if it's not trending down as much as the overall market, would that become a candidate? Yeah, certainly. So, and again, like a very, it's easy to use like high level examples of this, right? So like, if you look back to the dotcom bubble, right, coming into, after the fall, kind of in March of 2000, there were several areas that did incredibly well, right? So like staples, were names that did incredibly well, uh, in 2000, early 2001 as well. Uh, there's, there's always pockets of,

21:38

Of outperformance. Um, and at the very least there's pockets of relative outperformance, right? So we think back to 2008, a lot of the housing stocks, financial stocks, um, certainly had a lot of downside, but again, there was, there's always opportunities across markets because capital ultimately has to flow somewhere. And so, yeah, our focus is on relative momentum and that's, that's both throughout bull markets as well as bear markets. So even in periods like today, right. Or, let's talk kind of the opposite of this. Think of like a 2001, for example, where kind of all, all tides were rising, and every company in the S&P was trading higher. we want to find the areas that have the most relative momentum to the

22:12

Broader market. The S&P is typically, S&P 500 is typically kind of our benchmark there as kind of what's happening at a high level for the index. And then, the goal is to go in and find names that have consistent, stable momentum on a relative basis over the prior six months. The more volatility picks up, we tend to shorten the signal back as well. Um, ultimately FMTM is really just a portfolio of different anomalies that we're, that we're kind of looking to, to find opportunities and, ultimately identify securities in. Um, and, and a lot of that comes from the relative nature of the portfolio. So the portfolio is pretty concentrated, 30 to 50 names. Most peers are holding a hundred plus and generally a lot of times cap weight them. So what was the decision

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Of, Hey, let's run a concentrated portfolio and why are we going to run an equal weight? Yeah, great question. So, so, concentrated portfolio is very deliberate by design, if you will. Right. So, it was certainly the choice in terms of constructing the algorithm years ago and I think it's, it's done, it's, it's served the strategy incredibly well. Um, think about it this way. If you were to have a portfolio of a hundred stocks, right, the more stocks we add to a portfolio, whether it's a momentum ETF or, broad market, it starts to behave more and more like the broader market index. Right. And so it kind of defeats the purpose of owning a momentum sleeve. If you're going to have a hundred, you know,

23:28

150 names, better momentum, um, you're, you're going to have a large correlation to the overall market. Right. And so again, deliberate by design. Um, we think the combination of this, this concentration, this 30 to 50 holdings in the portfolio, as well as the active monthly rebalancing, uh, ultimately something that's going to serve the ETF quite well going forward. And it's, it's designed to behave differently from the index, right? We have very minimal overlap with the broader market. I think, as of this recording, it's about 2% with the S&P 500. That's dramatically different. If you were to look at like SPMO or MTU and kind of the legacy momentum ETFs, those are going to be closer to 30 or 40% overlap. And so

24:04

Understandably, if you have 30 or 40% overlap, you're going to have pretty high correlation, both on the upside and the downside with a broader market. Again, that's where you kind of see that, that, that evolution of a starting behave like a broad market index, rather than a momentum sleeve, which is, which is what FMTM is developed to, to, to be, uh, the equal weighting, uh, is another great question, right? So that's also an area that drives a lot of kind of high active share or minimum, uh, overlap with the broader market, right? So all 30 names or 30 to 50 names are held on an equal weight basis in the portfolio. That does two things for the portfolio. Number one, it removes company specific risk. Uh,

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And then secondary to that is it helps align the portfolio with the actual qualitative screens that we're, we're running. Right. And so, instead of a name being added to the portfolio, certainly, uh, based on its size, right? The market cap, it really has to earn a position in the portfolio based on its quality and momentum. And ultimately that, that scoring metric that goes into every company's momentum. Yeah, no, it's it, whenever you're running kind of algorithmic portfolios, it's hard to just decipher an additional or underweight to a certain name because it's, it's purely kind of like signal based. We run everything we do equal weight for that same reason. And it's funny, I was smirking at what, as you were talking, um, you, you walked right into my

25:20

Next question, which was you have about a 2% overlap with the S&P 500 SPMO. Is it like 31%? So is that, uh, is that differentiation or non overlap, like a part of the edge of that you can get over the broader benchmark and your peers? Yeah, look, I think, I think certainly so. Um, it's very often that we'll, we'll speak with investors, different advisors that they might buy into the ETF and, and they're shocked to see that, 20 out of the 30 names they've never heard of, right. Or, they're certainly not on their radar. Um, these are not necessarily household names. Um, and it's certainly more of a, an approach taking kind of off the beaten path and certainly by design as well. Right. again, we have very minimal overlap,

25:59

Right? We don't, if we were going to launch a product that had a correlation of nine, 0.9 to the S&P it's kind of hard to, to argue that shouldn't deserve any weighting in a portfolio. ultimately you're getting broad market returns. Um, and so yeah, very minimal overlap. That's, that's something that, probably expect going forward as well. It certainly has been the case, uh, since inception, uh, back in, in March of 2025, very minimal overlap and then constant rotation, right? So from quarter to quarter, month to month, the sector exposure changes quite a bit. All right. So, uh, for those of you listening in or watching my internet went out, so it might feel a little bit choppy, but, um, let's get back into FTMN.

26:37

The numbers are hard to ignore. I'm not going to bring them up because compliance gets a little fidgety when you start to talk about performance numbers, but you guys have come out of the gate really, really, really hot. And so what are your plans on kind of leveraging that early success to continue to drive AUM growth in the fund? Yeah. look, I think the funds resonated quite a lot. As I mentioned, the, the really inception of it was conversation with a lot of advisors and figuring out what the kind of the drawbacks of existing momentum was, and then, being able to solve those. And I think certainly the pickup in terms of asset growth and, obviously the performance of the fund as well, um, have both kind of been,

27:13

Credence to that, that approach. So I think ultimately, it's, it's more, more investors probably coming across FMTM, uh, finding the strategy, the monthly rebalance, the shorter six month look back, I think are certainly attractive. Um, I think as we see more and more market environments, we're not, we certainly haven't built the strategy, uh, just to, to work well in the current environment, which will, you could probably define as narrow mega cap, thematic driven, but we want the strategy to do incredibly well. And certainly, the goal is to do well, not only in that type of environment, but also in a drawdown also in a, a period where it's kind of a melt up and all, all companies and

27:49

All sectors are trading higher. And so I think as time goes on and FMTM gets to, to experience more and more, uh, different market regimes, it's something that a lot of investors will probably appreciate just having that, that real, the real time data, uh, being able to see how it reacts to, to different market environments and certainly something exciting, I think for the fund, um, it's designed and built to, to handle a variety of environments. And I think, over time as people see that playing out more and more, it'll be certainly exciting. we get a lot of inbound questions, uh, every week, um, from new investors that are running across the fund. So I think we certainly try to put a lot of information and resources out on the website,

28:22

Just answer as many questions as possible. Um, kind of pull back the covers on the strategy and kind of, how to think about fitting the strategy into a broader portfolio approach where it might fit, how to think about it in, in a market drawdown, how to think about it in terms of, as the fund grows, being able to, not being capacity constrained, uh, for, for how the algorithm currently runs today. So, we're constantly putting new educational resources out there, um, which, take some time and we certainly get them out over time, but, we're over, I'd say over the next several years, you'll continue to see more and more. Um, another thing we've started doing,

28:54

Which I think has been incredibly well received, uh, is quarterly fund letters. So, roughly the second week of every quarter, you'll see a new newsletter coming out, discusses the performance of the portfolio, what it rotated into and out of throughout the quarter, what are the current themes heading into the next quarter, uh, provides a tremendous amount of insight into, to how the model thinks, how the algorithm, reacts and behaves, uh, in real time as well. So I would, I'd certainly encourage anyone to go on, to market as good as season, you can download those fund letters, you can read past newsletters, and then of course you can sign up for the ongoing newsletter as well. So who is, FMTM kind of designed for, you work with a lot of advisors. And so

29:32

When they're using your strategies, are they putting it as a satellite beside their existing equity holdings? Are they using it more as a, as a core strategy? How are they implementing it? Yeah, a variety of ways, kind of all the above. Um, it's certainly built to sit alongside an existing, legacy momentum approach, because again, there's very minimal overlap. So we have some firms that are kind of taking an approach of owning, kind of legacy momentum ETFs, but then, adding to FMTM. We have a lot of firms that add it as a kind of a satellite position, right? Alongside their core S&P 500 exposure, again, minimal overlap with, with the broader market index. So it allows you to have really a differentiated source of return

30:10

In the portfolio. Um, and then we have some firms that, just traditionally have kind of always been momentum or growth investors. And so they've obviously resonated. They were some of the, the initial capital and investment firms into, into the ETF, uh, around, around its IPO. Um, and so, there's some firms that lean quite heavily into the strategy and make it a very large core holding. It really varies firm by firm. I think ultimately you have to think through kind of, what are you looking to achieve in your portfolio or what's your time horizon, what's your, uh, what's your, risk tolerance. Um, and then think about where it might sit in the current portfolio, whether that's next to a core exposure, whether it's taking a core

30:43

Exposure itself, or even sitting next to an kind of meet being more complimentary to an existing momentum ETF. Um, we've seen all of those use cases applied, uh, over the past several quarters. Well, John, I really appreciate you spending some time with me today through all of the, uh, technical difficulties, but before I let you go, where can people learn more about market desk and research and where can people find all the information they need on FMTM? Yeah, absolutely. So go to, uh, to market desk indices.com. There's two things I'd point you towards there. Uh, number one, the fun presentations, you go to fun documents. It's about a 20 page deck. It discusses a lot of the topics we've discussed here today, overlap, you know,

31:22

Monthly cadence, comparing it to other momentum ETFs up, down capture. So it's a fantastic deep dive into the strategy really kind of pulls back the curtains on, on how the strategy thinks and behaves. And then secondary to that, I would say, get access and sign up to the, uh, fun letters. Uh, so every quarter going forward, you'll see that being published really gives you an incredible insight into how the fun rotates. We discuss, holdings, uh, past holdings, uh, throughout that newsletter as well. So performance, the actual themes and catalysts that drove the stocks. We also talk through exit discipline, right? So where was the algorithm, wrong? Where was it early? Um, and then how did it deal with those different model

31:56

Adjustments as well? So newsletter and the fun presentation, you can find both of those on the website, uh, just a wealth of resources available there. Well, again, John, thanks for spending some time with me today. Yeah, absolutely. Brad. Thanks. Bye.

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