Jon Clements, Market Desk

Jon Clements built his career in equity research at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Guggenheim before co-founding Market Desk Research with his brother Matt in 2020. What started as a research and model portfolio platform serving 200 of the largest wealth managers in the country eventually became an ETF issuer — and FMTM, the Focused Momentum ETF, is the result.

In this episode, Jon breaks down what actually makes FMTM different from legacy momentum products like MTUM and SPMO. We get into why Market Desk uses a six-month lookback instead of the academic standard of twelve, why the algorithm scores the quality and consistency of a stock's price path rather than just its trailing return, and why a concentrated, equal-weighted portfolio of 30 to 50 names ends up with only about 2% overlap with the S&P 500. Jon also takes on the skeptic's question head-on — isn't momentum just performance chasing? — and explains how a fund that stays fully invested with no cash, no shorts, and no hedging still manages risk through holdings selection in a drawdown.

It's a genuinely substantive conversation about factor investing, what price data really tells you, and how to build a momentum strategy that behaves like a momentum strategy.