In a recent episode of Behind the Ticker, Clark Allen, Head of ETFs at Horizon Investments, shared his journey from public accounting and family office investing to leading Horizon’s entrance into the ETF space. With a deep background in institutional asset management and quantitative research, Allen joined Horizon to help bridge the gap between sophisticated investment strategies and emotionally resonant, goals-based planning for financial advisors and their clients. Horizon, founded in the mid-1990s, evolved from a wealth manager into a strategist firm with a focus on outcome-oriented models. Today, the firm offers a blend of mutual funds, OCIO services, and now, actively managed ETFs as part of its growing product suite.
About Clark Allen and Horizon Investments
Horizon’s ETF push began with two initial launches, BENJ and HBTA, and the firm has filed for seven more ETFs in 2024. Allen explained that Horizon’s motivation was largely advisor-driven—many advisors were already using Horizon’s mutual funds and model portfolios but needed ETF-based solutions to better integrate with their workflows. BENJ, the Horizon Landmark ETF, is a cash management strategy built around box spreads, offering a T-bill-plus total return without kicking off taxable income. Allen emphasized that this feature is ideal for model portfolios, particularly in retirement distribution strategies, where advisors need liquidity but prefer to manage tax exposure and reinvestment activity with precision.
Investment Strategy and Approach
HBTA, the firm’s second ETF, is designed as a high-beta equity strategy with put spreads to offer greater upside capture than the S&P 500. Allen described it as a product built for certainty—not to time markets, but to provide clear expectations around performance, particularly for advisors seeking risk-aligned tools for growth-oriented allocations. He noted that many advisors in Horizon’s OCIO network had asked for such solutions to complement their existing exposures without relying on small caps or thematic tech names.
What sets Horizon apart, according to Allen, is its emphasis on being a solution provider rather than a product pusher. The firm’s ETF lineup is crafted to fit within model portfolios and financial plans, not just to chase the latest trend. Horizon’s focus remains on outcome-driven investing, where each ETF serves a clear role—whether providing liquidity, risk-managed equity exposure, or a building block for custom advisor models.
Deeper Dive: Insights from the Full Conversation
Beyond the headline strategy, the full conversation between Brad and Clark Allen covered several additional themes worth highlighting for advisors and investors.
On Process and Philosophy
And so that helps you stomach the volatility that you are probably taking on with the equity risk that you likely need to have a high probability success. But with a high liquidity bucket, if you just ignore the fact that you're getting volatility in your equity portfolio, or even equity fixed income mix, and just focus on your liquidity bucket, that's going to be able to provide you the spending you need to meet your needs. And so this is an ETF that's designed specifically to fit that liquidity bucket.
It can be similar, white label and additional costs that comes with that. We have hired a trading sub advisor to allow us to scale pretty quickly because we've traded mutual funds, we've traded resumes, but there's a lot more to trading ETFs in terms of the in-kind process, the APs dealing with the market makers, the exchange, and there's a lot of different other pieces that we work familiar with. And so coming to market with this many ETFs, let's just, we said, let's just partner with somebody that's really good and we'll come up with the strategy, we'll come up with the distribution, and we'll let them do the trading and execution on our behalf.
Market Context and Positioning
And so we've launched a custom portfolio business, which is custom estimates, attack management. And then even more recently, now we've launched our first two ETFs, and we just filed for seven more, and there will be more to come this year where we're coming pretty quickly into the Active ETF space, and simply because we see that there's a need. And again, we have solutions, and we see that there's gaps in those solutions that are offering advisors, and we want to be able to have product to fill those needs and really serve these advisors.
And so I came here originally was just focused on the point research, the director of content research, portfolio management as well. And then more recently we've entered the ETF space and so it was promoted ahead of ETFs and overseeing not just sort of research efforts, but also execution and launching of our ETF business. It's funny, you and I have fairly similar backgrounds. I did public accounting, but I was on the tax side and I lasted about one tax season and it was like that's enough for me.
Notable Insights
"But ETFs have really been at the core of everything, and that's why we sell advise ETFs for first trust, and it's really what's given us is the confidence that come to market with so many ETFs this year, because we understand how ETFs work."
Key Takeaways
- Today, the firm offers a blend of mutual funds, OCIO services, and now, actively managed ETFs as part of its growing product suite.
- HBTA, the firm’s second ETF, is designed as a high-beta equity strategy with put spreads to offer greater upside capture than the S&P 500.
- The conversation explores important themes in growth investing relevant to today's advisor landscape.
What This Means for Advisors
For financial advisors evaluating options for client portfolios, this conversation with Clark Allen highlights important considerations around fixed income. Understanding the strategy behind each fund—not just the ticker—helps advisors make more informed allocation decisions and better communicate the rationale to clients.
The themes of fixed income and income investing discussed in this episode are particularly relevant in the current market environment, where advisors are increasingly looking for differentiated solutions that go beyond traditional benchmarks.
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 Clark Allen, including additional nuances and details, listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.