Rob Arnott chose Wall Street over astrophysics, built his career applying scientific method to markets, and coined the fundamental indexing revolution that now runs $150B+ in assets. He breaks down the hidden drag inside cap-weighted indices -- stocks get added after they soar and deleted after they crash -- and explains how RAFI's rebalancing alpha has beaten cap-weighted value in three out of four years over 20 years live. We dig into RAUS (fundamental selection, cap weighting, 99.9% correlation to the S&P but 90bps ahead in six months at zero fees), the upcoming RAFI Growth index that beats Russell Growth by 4.5% annually over 30 years, and NYXT -- the deletions ETF that buys the names index funds are forced to dump. Plus: why the Mag 7 resembles the dot-com bubble, where the real bargains are, and the CFA monograph proving membership in an index has its privileges.

Christian Magoon built First Trust's early ETF business, raised $3B at Claymore before it was acquired by Guggenheim, and launched Amplify ETFs in 2015 — now approaching $20B across 40 funds. He breaks down Amplify's barbell strategy of income and thematic growth, explains why SILJ (the only junior silver miners ETF) won Alternative ETF of the Year, and makes the case that silver's industrial demand from AI, EVs, and solar gives it a profile gold can't match. Plus: the YieldSmart covered call approach, how junior miners act as leveraged silver, and why Amplify's open-architecture model is built for durability.

Paul Marino spent 25+ years in asset management, starting as a wholesaler at Federated Investors, managing teams at Pioneer Investments, and eventually making the jump to ETFs. Before any of that, he was a journalist at Newsday, the sixth largest daily newspaper in the country. Now, as Chief Revenue Officer at Themes ETFs, he brings all of it together - sales, marketing, PR, and a knack for communicating complex investment ideas clearly.

In this episode, we get into two of the most targeted thematic ETFs on the market. First, DRGN - a China-focused generative AI fund built to give U.S. investors access to the AI buildout happening inside China, completely separate from U.S. tech exposure. Paul walks through the index construction, how they screen for sanctions compliance, and why he sees Chinese AI as a distinct return stream that complements what most advisors already hold.

Then we pivot to BOTT - the humanoid robotics ETF. This one goes beyond what most people picture when they hear "humanoid robots." The portfolio spans factory automation, autonomous driving, specialized semiconductors, and industrial machine parts across South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and the U.S. Paul explains why equal weighting and semiannual rebalancing keeps the fund from becoming a single-stock bet, and why adoption in robotics might follow the same curve as commercial aviation.

We also dig into how advisors are using thematic sleeves alongside core portfolios, how Themes identifies market gaps and moves quickly from idea to product launch, and why Paul believes early positioning in these spaces matters.

Sean O'Hara started in financial services in 1985, moved into wholesaling, and helped build the Hartford's mutual fund and 401k platforms before striking out on his own in 2007. By 2015, he and partner Joe Thompson were launching Pacer's first ETFs. Today, Pacer manages roughly $42 billion across 57 products — every one built around a simple filter: innovative, disruptive, or unique. No cheap beta replication.

In this episode, Sean breaks down QDPL, Pacer's S&P 500-based income strategy that delivers four times the S&P's dividend yield without leverage or covered calls. We walk through how the 85/15 equity-to-T-bill split works, how dividend futures mechanics generate roughly 5% cash flow with the bulk distributed as tax-free return of capital, and what the actual trade-offs look like on both the upside and downside.

Sean explains how QDPL fits into an advisor's portfolio — from a 50/50 blend with SPY to a potential bond replacement — and why the product's timing is more compelling now with short-term yields falling back toward 3%. We also get into Pacer's boots-on-the-ground distribution model with 120-plus salespeople, why market maker relationships matter more than most issuers realize, and how products like SRVR and TRFK were built with patience for the market to catch up to the thesis.

Key Takeaways:

• QDPL delivers 4x the S&P 500 dividend yield (~5% today) through dividend futures, not leverage or covered calls
• 85% equity / 15% T-bills structure — you keep most of the S&P upside while generating meaningful income
• Bulk of distributions are tax-free return of capital — a major advantage over traditional dividend strategies
• S&P dividends historically grow 5-7% per year, creating a built-in tailwind for the futures contracts
• Pacer runs 120+ salespeople — old-school boots-on-the-ground distribution in a digital-first industry
• Products like SRVR and TRFK prove patience pays — both sat dormant for years before their thesis played out

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Michael Monaghan spent 15 years on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, Sanford Bernstein, and UBS before leaving to build Beartooth, a technology company that let smartphones connect without cell service. That 12-year entrepreneurial journey — and a visit to the Smithsonian where he and his partner were struck by the iconoclastic nature of America's builders — led him to launch the Founders 100 ETF (ticker: FFF), a fund that owns the 100 best publicly traded companies still run by their original founders.

In this episode, Michael breaks down the strict definition of "founder-led" that drives the portfolio, the 30-year, 11,000-stock database his team hand-built to validate the factor, and why founder-led companies have historically outperformed the S&P by 3-5% annually. We get into the actual fund mechanics — the Bernstein-style factor model, the 7% position cap at quarterly rebalance, and why the 80/20 rules-based vs. discretionary split exists primarily to catch IPOs between rebalances. Michael also makes the case that FFF is a direct replacement for QQQ, running 85% active share against the S&P and 70% against the Nasdaq, and explains his distribution playbook for breaking through in a market where 10 new ETFs launch every week. Plus, the names he's watching for that he can't own yet — including SpaceX, Stripe, and Anduril.

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In this episode, Brad Roth sits down with Sam Klar of GMO to unpack the thesis behind the GMO Domestic Resilience ETF (DRES). Sam shares his path from joining GMO out of undergrad to helping launch a strategy focused on U.S. reindustrialization, supply chain resilience, and long-term domestic economic strength.

They break down how DRES is built, why GMO emphasizes quality and value even inside a thematic strategy, and how the portfolio is structured across manufacturing, transportation/logistics, energy/materials, and defense. Sam also addresses common pushback — including whether DRES is just an industrials bet — and explains why he believes stock-level selection and U.S. revenue exposure make the strategy distinct.

The conversation closes with practical implementation guidance for advisors: DRES as a satellite allocation to complement global, tech-heavy core holdings, plus a candid look at policy risk, competition, and early investor response since launch.

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David Nicholas, founder of Nicholas X Funds and a financial advisor with nearly 20 years of experience running a private wealth practice in Atlanta, joins the show to break down how he's building one of the more ambitious ETF suites in the smaller issuer space. David walks through the origin story of X Funds, which started during COVID when he saw an opportunity to recreate insurance company balance sheets in a liquid ETF wrapper. His first fund FIAX was designed as a liquid alternative to fixed annuities, pairing a treasury underlay with short spreads on HYG to harvest junk bond yield, then using that income to buy long index call options for equity upside exposure. The fund attracted institutional investors including foreign governments and became the launchpad for everything that followed.

From there, David built GIAX and then BLOX, a crypto fund that has now grown to just under 250 million in assets. The firm has since launched four new thematic funds — silver (SLVX), gold (GLDN), defense (Weapon), and nuclear — with two more Bitcoin-based products in the pipeline, an overnight fund and a Bitcoin tail hedge fund. The common architecture across the entire suite pairs roughly 50 percent commodity or core asset exposure with 50 percent equity positions in companies that benefit from that commodity, all layered with an active options overlay. In SLVX, that means silver spot exposure through ETFs like SLV and PSLV alongside miners like First Majestic, Pan American, and Wheaton. In Weapon, the commodity sleeve is rare earth materials used in defense manufacturing, balanced with traditional defense companies.

David goes deep on why he built the options strategy around short put spreads rather than traditional covered calls. His core argument is that covered call strategies almost never beat their underlying in rising markets because the short call caps your upside. With put spreads on the equity side, the fund collects premium while preserving full upside participation. On the commodity ETF side, the team sells call spreads but also buys long calls above the spread to recapture gains on sharp moves higher. None of the funds track an index — they are all actively managed with the ability to switch between calls and puts, add protective hedges, or take them off at any time.

The conversation also tackles NAV decline head on. David distinguishes between NAV decline caused by underlying positions dropping versus decline caused by over-distribution, and uses BLOX as a case study. The fund generates roughly 50 percent yield from options but only distributes 36 percent, targeting an 80 percent success rate on trades. Bitcoin is down 20 to 30 percent since inception yet BLOX has remained roughly flat, meaning the fund is outperforming its underlying without the distribution dragging the NAV. He could declare a higher yield like some competitor crypto funds but considers that irresponsible if the options income doesn't support it.

David also gets real about the business side of scaling a smaller issuer — reinvesting essentially all revenue from the first three funds into launching six new products, navigating the compliance minefield of ETF marketing, and the leadership transition from having his fingerprints on everything to hiring specialized talent who can push the firm beyond his own ceiling. For advisors, he frames the funds through a picks and shovels lens: rather than just buying the commodity, own the entire ecosystem around it with an income-generating overlay on top.

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Bob Elliott, co-founder and CIO of Unlimited, returns to break down how his firm is bringing Vanguard-style indexing to the hedge fund world. After spending the bulk of his career at Bridgewater building proprietary investment strategies, Bob launched Unlimited on two truths the industry wouldn't say out loud — institutional hedge funds are largely no better than their peers over time, and managers take nearly all the alpha in fees. His solution: diversify across managers, cut fees to a fraction, and deliver it all through liquid ETFs.

We get into the nuts and bolts of how Unlimited's third-generation replication technology actually works, why Bayesian machine learning picks up tactical alpha that older rolling regression approaches miss, and what separates strategies built by real money managers from those designed by academics and technologists. Bob walks through his full product suite — HFND, HFEQ, HFMF, and HFGM — explains why the 2X target return products are resonating with advisors, and makes the case for moving from 60-40 to 50-30-20. We also talk about the realities of growing a boutique ETF business on a guerrilla marketing budget and why the biggest risk for startup issuers is spending too much too fast.

Learn more at unlimitedetfs.com. Read Bob's Substack "Non-Consensus" and follow him on social media at BobEUnlimited.

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