Keith Fitz-Gerald, One Bar Ahead
Why 4% of Stocks Drive 100% of Returns — And How to Own Them
Keith Fitz-Gerald has spent 45 years in markets, starting at Wilshire Associates and eventually building One Bar Ahead, a research publication he grew to tens of thousands of readers with no advertising. He joins Behind the Ticker with a claim that cuts against 50 years of Wall Street orthodoxy: the diversification most investors were taught to treat as gospel may be quietly costing them return.
His argument starts with a single number. Over the past century, roughly 4 percent of the companies ever publicly listed in the United States produced essentially all of the net wealth the stock market created. The other 96 percent, in aggregate, did no better than Treasury bills. If that holds, then spreading capital across hundreds of names is not lowering risk so much as diluting exposure to the handful of businesses that actually drive the outcome.
Why Diversification Broke
Keith's point is not that diversification was always a bad idea. It is that the market it was designed for no longer exists. The non-correlation that made a broad basket useful has been eroded by passive flows, zero-DTE options, ETF cross-ownership, and round-the-clock trading. When everything moves together, owning more names stops buying you protection and starts buying you the average. Concentration in a small set of must-have companies, he argues, is what the best investors have actually done all along.
The 5D Framework Behind FITZ
That thinking is now a fund. FITZ, the Fitzgerald Must-Have Portfolio ETF, launched in May 2026 in partnership with Nicholas Wealth and holds 20 to 30 names. The selection runs through what Keith calls the 5D framework, five structural forces he sees driving the next wave of economic growth, with digitalization as the master theme sitting on top of all of it.
Digitalization is also why his classifications look strange to a sector purist. Keith views Walmart as one of the most consequential technology companies in the world, not a retailer, because of how it moves data and logistics. The sector label misses it. The must-have lens does not.
The Must-Have Filter and the Exits
Getting into the fund takes more than a good story. Keith's filter looks for companies with no easy substitute, zero-to-one catalysts that create something that did not exist before, visionary leadership, and strong free cash flow. Getting cut is just as disciplined. He walks through why Intel came out of the portfolio, with the dividend cut as the dealbreaker, and why he rebalances three times a year rather than four to sidestep the liquidity drag that comes with forcing trades on a calendar.
He is candid that FITZ launched right at a market peak, and honest about how it has traded since. It is also why he frames the fund as a core equity holding rather than a satellite sleeve. For an advisor or an active investor weighing an alternative to the standard 60/40, the conversation is less a pitch than a challenge to some deeply held assumptions about what risk actually is.
Key Takeaways
- Roughly 4 percent of all US public companies have generated essentially all of the stock market's wealth over the past century, while the other 96 percent collectively matched Treasury bills.
- Keith argues diversification is structurally broken in modern markets, because passive flows, options, and round-the-clock trading have stripped out the non-correlation it was built to capture.
- FITZ holds 20 to 30 must-have names chosen through a 5D framework with digitalization as the master theme, which is why he treats companies like Walmart as technology businesses.
- The selection filter demands no easy substitute, zero-to-one catalysts, visionary leadership, and strong free cash flow, and the exit discipline is just as strict, with Intel's dividend cut cited as a dealbreaker.
- FITZ rebalances three times a year rather than four, a deliberate choice to avoid liquidity drag, and Keith frames the fund as a core equity holding rather than a satellite position.
Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
Full Transcript
6,234 wordsMachine transcribed from Brad Roth's conversation with Keith Fitz-Gerald, One Bar Ahead, 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, Keith, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. I've heard great things about it, been looking forward to it all week, actually.
Well, why don't we start by giving everybody a bit about your background. You're 45 years as a global investor, consultant, researcher, strategist. You started your career at Wilshire Associates, and you built one of the most followed independent research brands in the business. How did that entire journey unfold?
Well, believe it or not, it actually started cutting lawns. that's literally how I began my journey. I used the money I saved up. I became one heck of a lawn bearer when I was 12, 13, 14 years old. And I used that money to make my first trades at the tender age of 15. And I've never looked back. And my grandmother, Virginia Mimi Gruner, many of my longtime research clients know of her. Some of them actually even met her. But she was widowed at a young age, became a very successful investor in her own right using a very small life insurance settlement. She taught me really sort of the stepping stones, the foundational inputs to global investing before that even was a term.
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And so it's just been this, it's sort of a cumulative journey. many investors start from nothing and it's sort of big bursts. I'm the slow camel who just kind of walked along and plotted along and made every mistake in the book and learned all this stuff the hard way and finally wound up at Wilshire where I got serious.
That's great. And so I always like to ask before you get too much into the business, into the weeds, we were talking a little bit about airplanes before you came on, but outside of work,
What do you like to do? Any hobbies? Oh my goodness. Yes. My wife and I love to long distance motorcycle. She's a great motorcyclist in her own right. So, don't think for a minute she's behind me. She does that, but, but in her own right, she's out there for a thousand miles at a shot on her bike. So we love to explore the world. And that actually plays into my investing thesis and to all of the research and who I am as an investor because you meet the coolest people doing the most unusual things. And motorcycling is a lot like that. if you drive in somewhere in a car, you're anonymous. But if you ride in within a bike, particularly if you're in a small town somewhere or, it's,
It's inclement weather or whatever, within minutes of putting down the kickstand, people are like, Hey, where you been? What are you up to? How you doing? What's the weather? And we've been invited into people's homes. We've met all kinds of super people. one tiny little Italian woman who was about this tall come walking up to me with a twinkle in her eye outside a grocery store one day. And she just winked and said, Oh my gosh, Ducati, I love those. I used to ride those all over Europe after the war with my husband. And she would have gotten on it that day if she had been able to, or she's just, that's the kind of stuff that motorcycling really gets us going.
We love music. We love hiking. We spend a lot of time in St. George out in the desert,
Things that involve discovery. Well, you're making me jealous, Keith, because I'm looking at you, but my background is a Ducati monster, which I've had as my background for probably 10 years, but I'm not allowed to have one because I got two young kids. So I am, I told my son, it's actually funny yesterday. Uh, we passed the motorcycle, we passed the monster. I said, whenever you're a freshman in college, the first thing I'm going to do is go buy one of those.
Well, the monster is a fantastic motorcycle. And we actually, we have two grown boys now, both of whom are U S military. Uh, but we taught them how to ride at a very young age. And so one of our great things to do when they can manage to get leave is all of us go on a ride together. so each of us have our own bikes. We have a, comms in the helmets. We can talk. We don't ride in the city. We ride out in the countryside where, cause it's a dangerous sport. So we ride all gear, all protection all the time, but
That discovery is, is thematic for our family. Yeah. It sounds like a whole lot of fun. So one bar ahead is read by tens of thousands of financial professionals and individuals daily. Can you kind of walk us through what you publish and how you built your following over the years?
Oh, I'd be delighted to thank you for giving me the opportunity. So, so one bar ahead actually began, uh, in the corner of my dining room on a yellow pad. And I used to call it Keith's corner. Cause that's literally where I wrote back in the day. Uh, I took all of that experience that I gained on wall street and I just started writing about it. And my assumption was, I'm just going to tell the truth about money. I'm going to talk about what I've seen. I'm going to share that knowledge because people were very kind to me early in my career. So it really began not with the, the intention of publishing for a worldwide audience that we have today. It began literally
Because I wanted to communicate what I thought was really going on behind the scenes in the market and, and help people connect the dots because wall street wasn't going to do that. And they sure as heck weren't going to tell you what they were doing behind the scenes. So this was a way of, for me to close that loop and for me to begin to, to harness all the knowledge that I had taken in and begin sharing it. And today it's a worldwide platform. We're just stunned. If you had looked at me 30 years ago when I started writing this and said, this is what happened, I would have told it to your flat out nuts. There's no way. But, uh, we've got our first one bar ahead client marriages.
I'm now meeting the children and grandchildren of our original research clients. Uh, I'm very proud of the fact that we've never sent a single advertising email in the history of this company. It's always been, share the knowledge. And if somebody finds it valuable, they're going to be here. So it's a monthly magazine about investing, about the mindset that's involved about the behind the scenes shenaniganry. It's about how you stop fighting for wall street's table scraps and start getting a place at the table. And I believe that any investor can be wildly successful in the financial markets with the right perspective, the right knowledge and the right education. And so one bar ahead is really about that. And my theory in the name is courtesy of my wife. If you read it,
You're going to be one bar ahead. So, we're not always correct, but we sure as heck hope to
Be profitable. That's really the goal. So, which has led to you, as you said, uh, kind of being a worldwide thing here. I, Keith, I didn't know much of anything about this until I started preparing, um, for this, for this interview. So I've learned a lot. So you become a frequent collaborator with a somewhat famous Susie, Susie Orvin, um, who's called you somebody you should pay attention to. And I also read Forbes has called you a market visionary at one point. Can you just tell me how did the relationship with her come together and what does that audience
Get out of your work? Well, there's another one of these, I've been overnight success after 40 years, this was serendipitous on the highest order. Susie was reading one bar ahead and I had no idea that she was a research client. I literally had no idea that she was reading my work, uh, and had been for several years. And then one day just out of nowhere, our customer service stuff went bananas. Our usership just went absolutely berserk. And I started asking our team, what in the world is going on here? And we had no idea. And it turns out that Susie on one of her podcasts said, Hey, I've been reading this guy, Keith Fitzgerald. You guys need to read this guy,
Keith Fitzgerald. He doesn't even know that I'm telling you this. And it exploded. And anyway, long story short, over several years now, we've become best friends. We talk once a day, sometimes twice a day. We just were traveling with her and her wife, KT in Kyoto, Japan, showing them our Japan because they had never been there. So it's, it's, it's blossomed into this magnificent friendship. And what we find is that her audience and my audience not only have a great time getting together, but the desire to learn how to be better investors, people first, then the thing, then the money, that's the way the world really works. And so there's a lot of, of synchronicity between the two of us, a lot of mental overlap, a lot of investing and optimism. Many of the things that
Drive her drive me. She's like the older sister I never had.
Wow. That's great. So let's get into kind of the investing side of everything. Let's talk about the must-have portfolio framework. This is your proprietary IP built over four, four decades of research. What is it and how has it evolved over those 40 years?
Well, that's a, that's it. Oh, it's, it's evolving constantly. Actually, that's one of the great advantages to how we view the world. Because, many people look at the, the, the environment and they slice and dice. Well, I want a little of this. I want a little of that. I want a little of this. The problem is that history increasingly doesn't work that way. What we know from our research and from the way we view the markets is that a very small percentage of companies, I'm talking maybe two, maybe three, maybe 4% maximum over the last 120 something years have contributed virtually all of the wealth. So if you think about that for a second, you've got 4% of the companies that have been publicly listed in the United States contributing 100% of the total
Wealth created in the stock market, US stock market over the last hundred years. The other 96%, according to our research, did worse or at best, even with treasuries. So what this tells you is that you take all of this idea of, of diversification and spread your money around because you don't want to lose. You flip that around, you turn it inside out and you do what the world's best investors do. You play to win by picking the companies that are highly probably going to do that. The ones that are changing the world, we define them as must have companies, companies making must have products and services. And we have a slogan by the best, ignore the rest, because we really believe that the research and the performance in the investing philosophy go hand in hand. So by the best,
Ignore the rest, very simple proposition. You don't have to be the television cable model. You don't need two channels to get 500 channels or vice versa. Concentrate to win and it's an easier way to go.
Yeah. So the core here, as you said, is it's quite bold and I understand the research, but the long-term returns, are, as you put it, and we'll talk about here in a second, are actually a shrinking group of dominant businesses. Correct. That is a direct challenge to the diversification gospel that's been preached for like the last 50 years, the index it and forget it, the VOO, and I forget what they say on Reddit. So why make the case, or can you make the case to me why diversification has become a problem instead of
Really a solution? Oh, absolutely. And funny enough, Wall Street hates it when I bring this stuff up because it flies in the face of every asset allocation model out there. It flies in the face of most of what's used or passes for investment advice today. It flies in the face of how most professionals think or were taught to think, the certifications, the regulations, everything, right? And so slicing and dicing to diversify involves two things. It involves risk and reward. And the assumption is that you have to have more risk to get more reward. Well, think about the inherent irony in that. Warren Buffett has a huge percent of his portfolio, 70 to 80% concentrated in five stocks. So he doesn't diversify. Ron Barron invests in companies that he believes in because
He doesn't diversify. Stevie, I can go down with 50, 100 different investors, all of whom have been phenomenally successful, who play to win and play to concentrate. And so I started looking at this research 20, 30 years ago and say, there's really something here. What am I missing? What's wrong with this theory? And then when, after 9-11, the world changed. Black Monday, really, in 1987, which I remember vividly because I was still a young buck just getting into trading. that was the era when people figured out that diversification didn't work anymore because portfolio insurance failed. Everything went down at once, which according to diversification isn't supposed to happen. And if you fast forward to 2000, then you have the
Commodities Modernization Act. You have the removal of many of the safeguards. Greenspan's influence was huge. Suddenly, Wall Street was supposed to self-regulate. Well, you and I both know you don't invite a coyote into the chicken coop, you know. That doesn't work. So then we had the rise of passive investments, leverage, all kinds of other things that have snowballed to today where you have zero DT options. You have leverage. You have 24-hour markets, computerization, all of which is expressly designed to remove the non-correlated principles in diversification. So now, when you have a market shock, all correlations go to one, meaning diversification fails when you need it most. If you were looking at specific companies, many investors are spreading their money around, owning two, three, four, 500 companies, which means that the ones that matter aren't moving the
Needle when you need it the most. And finally, over the last 10 years in particular, with the rise of ETFs, there's more ETFs now than stocks, we have a tremendous cross-fertilization of highly computerized trading vehicles that have no bearing on fundamentals. They're just quantitative. And that further removes the last sort of leg of the table in diversification. Because if something happens to Apple, suddenly you've got hundreds or thousands of ETFs that have to adjust. Something happens to Palantir or Tesla, suddenly hundreds of these things have to adjust. So you've got to flip that around. And that's what our research is based on, is how do you identify the companies that are necessary when you flip that around? Where does that go? That's where the must-have products and
Services comes in.
Yeah. Well, we've been talking to our clients about this for quite some time. The acceleration of the non-correlation of assets, once computers and quants and, the markets became, I would say, more efficient because they react so quickly, but everything goes in one direction. And one of the things that we noticed is you look at things that have been preached forever, like low beta means low drawdown, right? If you look at, let's just go back to 2020 during COVID, right? You've got the S&P down 34. You have what is low volatility ETFs, which are low beta are down just as much, if not more. So you're right. The market has changed fundamentally and it makes it that much less attractive to be
Diversified in some sense. And so, but let's get into FITZ, F-I-T-Z. It's the Fitzgerald must-have portfolio ETF. You just launched it in May. It's actively managed. At a high level, what is this fund and what is it doing?
Well, thank you for asking. So it is the absolute embodiment of everything we have just spoken about in the last few minutes. My goal was very, very simple when we started creating this, was we wanted something that's available in a single, easy to buy, easy to understand ticker. It's 20 to 30 of the world's best companies, most successful companies, companies with the highest probability of making products and services. They're going to alter the course of humanity going forward. I'm not interested in where they've been. I'm interested in their impact going forward. And we use something called the five Ds. So these five Ds are thematically driven structural changes that are impacting humanity.
Our belief, our research, my research shows that we stand on the cusp of what we call the sixth wave. We've had steam, we've had the internet, we've had penicillin, we've had mechanicals, we have electronics. We're now a sixth wave where the data is really becoming integral. And we've never seen this in recorded human history. And my attitude is that we want to find the companies that are going to take that, move it forward in such a way that they create unprecedented profitability. Now, the downside and the drawback to that, because I get this a lot, is, well, doesn't that mean we're going to have some volatility? Yes, it does. We're going to be slightly more volatile than the S&P 500 because we are going to concentrate. But over time, if we've done our research carefully and properly, what you're going
To see is a smoother ride. You're going to see a much more pronounced upside with less downside capture ratio. And today's a great example. The S&P 500 got shellacked. And even though we're new in the game, we proof of concepted it. I think we were down 0.3 or 30 basis points. I think the S&P was down 91 or something to that effect, without looking at the numbers just off the top of my head. So we're beginning to see the stability that we've tried to engineer into this fund emerge. And that's very, very critical because I want individual investors who are in search of great names to know that they potentially can sleep at night, that they don't have to be flipping the channels all the time,
That they can relax, they can be confident, that they can know that those names are very likely going to be there when they need them. So why don't you walk me through a little bit deeper of
What makes a company a must have? You talked about the five D's, but you're looking for strong balance sheets, disciplined capital allocations, durable earning power. What does the screen actually look like in practice if you're willing to? I don't need the full mousetrap, but what does the, break it down into, you've got universe and then screen, screen, screen, and then we've got 20 to 30 names. Yeah. So that's a really interesting product.
It took me many, many years to, to get to that process. Right. And so, so the individual screening mechanisms are highly refined. The output tends to have certain things in common that you can't pick up if you're using conventional diversification allocation. This is what makes what we do very, very different because you can't just go screen for the same stuff that everybody else is looking for and call it a better mousetrap. What we're looking to do is connect the dots across segments and industries that would otherwise be missed. So for example, anything that we're coming up with is typically going to have a visionary CEO. It's typically going to have a fortress-like or strong balance sheet. It's typically going to have multiple zero to one catalyst to use Peter Thiel's term.
It's going to have very, very strong free cashflow, positive true shareholder yield. The conventional metrics allow you to slice and dice. What we're looking for with the 5Ds, for example, is digitalization. Let's just take that. It's the biggest single 5D there is. It is so large now. When I started, it was tiny. Now it's so big, it encompasses every other theme. But when you start looking at digitalization, it allows you to evaluate price to sales, price to earnings. It allows you to evaluate metrics like sales differently because you can connect the dots across industries. So if you're diversifying, you say, I want tech, you might miss Walmart. But Walmart is now one of the greatest tech companies on the planet because of digitalization. So that's a connection we made very, very early. Or Tesla, for example,
In 2011, 12, when they began to pivot, I said, wait a minute, we've got energy recharging here, which he's talking about. You've got this going way beyond the cars. Suddenly we're looking at Tesla much earlier than anybody else because we recognized, fortunately, this connect the dots mechanism, that this was going to have an impact on industries that were well beyond the car. The iPhone was another one. It was, I'm very, very fortunate to have gotten that correct. I sat and thought about it for a while. I thought, he's not really building a phone. That's what everybody else saw, a phone. And I looked at it, I thought, no, he's got to be doing something different with that. And that became Apple
Services. That became the installation. That became the revenue model. this is an ecosystem. It's not a phone. It's a mechanism for which they can change a few lines of code and make billions of dollars. Everybody else was still thinking about making the number of phones. So when we define a must have is something that literally the world can't live without. There's no easy fungible substitute. those are examples of the companies that we're going to prioritize. So think Apple versus Peloton, Walmart versus Kroger. those are very, very different companies, even though, arguably they would have some overlap. They're
Entirely different. So you are, you're holding this concentrated basket of stocks, five to 10 year time horizon, which is a much longer hold than, maybe your typical active manager. We talked about the entry fee, right? Well, how do they make their way out? And, how do you, how and when do you make that decision? Is it a, do you have a, a normal cadence in which you're rerunning screens? Like what is, can you talk about, the rebalance thinking here or what would get somebody kind of punted out of your, your basket?
Well, there's two things that would happen. So, so rebalancing, first of all, we actively will rebalance. obviously we're still young, just a couple of weeks into this game, but, but the plan and everything we've done prior to this with, with managed private highway net worth, individual accounts, et cetera, that we've done on a consulting basis, we rebalance three times a year, not four. And the reason we do three is because if you do four, you're trying to go through in, in through the outdoor when everybody else is. So what we have found is that if you're rebalancing quarterly, like everybody else, that's going to be a drag of 175 to 200 basis points, a quarter potentially, because you're not going to get the fills you want. There's so much liquidity,
There's so much movement in the marketplace. Why fight all that volatility? so number one, our research shows that's not, not proper, but in terms of, the longevity of a company in the fund, if we're doing our job correctly, if we're doing it right, we put a lot of our effort into the selection up front. And if we get that right and we contend to hold it, our, our attitude is very similar to Ron Barron's in this regard. Unless there's a fundamental thesis change and the reasons for which we bought a company ceased to exist, then we're going to hold it through thick and thin. We're going to continue to build our position with the company over time. So an example of
Something that would cause us to leave would be, for example, Intel, missed everything. They, and when they finally got away with their dividend, I said, we're out. And we moved back into NVIDIA or, or a different choice, an AMD or a Palantir. Now, I don't believe, for example, Intel would exist today if the U.S. hadn't taken a strategic position in it. But the fact that it did, didn't constitute inclusion in our portfolio because I don't believe the company is smart enough to survive that without that input. Now, maybe it comes back in the portfolio later. we're evaluating it now, but that's a great example of something we didn't buy because we had better choices. Going forward, if a CEO changed and suddenly, you know,
Apple started making swimming pools or, or Walmart started serving airport portions, in Costco's food garden, we'd be gone. Those are the kinds of changes that again, we're going to put most of our energy into the selection process. And very simply, if a company just violates its own rules, if it changes direction, if there's something we can't account for or explain logically, and we don't get the answers we want, we're done.
Yeah. So you said a few minutes ago, FITs aims to connect the dots across industries and sectors to capture, shifts that traditionally ETFs miss because they're either sector driven, they're cap focused, or they have some sort of, geographically centered mandate that they must follow. So give us an example of how one of these cross sector themes you're seeing right now, is there anything in the portfolio that kind of goes across different sectors or geo, or geo, um, Oh yeah. Geographically centered. I can't talk. It's too, normally I do these at nine o'clock in the morning after a cup of coffee, three 30 in the afternoon.
Well, caffeine is a food group around here. And my wife has very fortunately put up with me for 30 plus years, just keeps me full of it. So I'm good. Um, the, the Walmart, let's return to Walmart for a second. Okay. for, for many, many years, that was just nothing but a rock solid, super efficient retailer. And that's how it was categorized, retail, retail, retail, but very early on, they started taking a look in a very solid interest in digital investment. And it wasn't just, Hey, we're going to get an online sales portal. It was questions that were coming up in the annual reports, questions that were coming up in the meetings, questions. We're hearing interviews with the executives, cause we, we research all these things. we started
Hearing about, Hey, we can get more efficient purchasing. We can get more efficient pricing. We can get more efficient inventory management, but most of all, we can get more efficient, better, more profitable customer loyalty. When you start connecting the dots, really they stayed in the retail business, but they became a tech company. And that was the key with sort of a Walmart. So they're crossing into not only the retail environment, which they have emerged from, but they're crossing into AI. They're crossing into digital rights management. They're crossing into membership. They're crossing into payment streams. that's a business that is, is just blossoming in all directions. Tesla is another great example. many people still look at Tesla unbelievably for reasons that defy the imagination as a car company.
Yet within the next few years, I submit that cars are going to be the least likely profitable business line of Tesla. And we're going to be looking at robotics, data, energy, transmission, all sorts of other things. And, again, people have just gotten into it with me for years on this one. And I've just said, this is inevitable because history shows they're going to take this information and begin to use it. It's not just something they're going to plug in for the heck of it. And so that's another great one. Apple is yet a third example. People look at it still. every quarter I go on television and, oh, what about the iPhone sales numbers? Fine. Look at the services, which is high margin. Look at the hundred billion dollars worth of this,
A run rate a year. Started from zero in 2014. people don't, they don't realize that or they deliberately forget it or their perspective shifts. So when we put a portfolio of these things together, what we're looking for is these companies that have the connect the dots capability. we don't want something that's one and done. There's not a single company in the portfolio that is single industry, single one and done anymore. Doesn't exist. we, one of our favorite exercises, every time somebody comes to me and says, well, why is this in here? Why is that in here? I say, here's a highlighter. Here's a list of 30 companies. You cross off any one of these that you don't want to own in 10 years and tell me why. 99% of the time they can't do it.
They just can't do it. maybe there's going to be, Hey, I don't like this. I don't like Mr. Musk. Maybe I don't like Jamie Dimon. Maybe, whatever. It usually comes down to like or dislike. There's no quantitative reason for it. So again, if we're doing our jobs correctly and we have a bead on where this is going and we think we do, um, the portfolio performance over time is going to really begin to accelerate. It's going to be a smoother ride. And hopefully, uh, all of the investors who put their trust in me are going to smile at the end of the day is, I'm glad
I did that. So when you're sitting down, you've got an advisor in front of you, he's running model portfolios. Um, where, where do you see fits kind of thing inside of that framework, right? Is you, is it a, uh, we'll use a motorcycle term, kind of a sidecar to your large cap equity exposure, or, where do you see this kind of fitting, uh, and where would you kind of advise
They, they put it? Well, actually that's a really sophisticated question and we've put a lot of effort into this. So there's a couple of different uses for the professional investor. Number one, this is a thematically fits is, is designed and intended as the first thematically driven core equity holding. It's not, most people hear themes now investing themes, thematic investing has been around for a long time, but most people use that as salt and pepper. We're talking about the main course now. And so we design it as a one-stop shop for a core equity position around which you can now integrate and build all these other things. You could use it for risk bucketing.
So for example, if you have an advisor that is risk parity oriented, or you have a client that says, hey, I need more of these kinds of companies, or I need more exposure to these themes. You can use it in that capacity. And finally, you can replace the 60, 40 with it, uh, if you so desire. Because again, the, the intention here is to build quality names that you can count on that are very defined, very contained universe that give you maximum upside potential without all the fluff that normally comes with it. So if you're, you don't have to buy cable television with 500 channels to get the two you want, this becomes the two you want, then you can build around it. And we find that most advisors are extremely receptive to this.
Um, the advisors that are already on board have told us that this is exactly what they've been looking for, for a very long time. Uh, many of the investors who are beginning to come on board. Cause again, we didn't start like wall street. We didn't have a big house backing us. We didn't have billions of dollars in the seat capital. We came from the outside because we came with something we believed in. And it looks like that's being very well received and people
Are believing in what we have on offer. Well, I saw when I was looking through the issuer here is X funds, uh, by Nicholas. Well, we've had David Nicholas on the show before. Um, just curious, how did that partnership come together? And when you see him, tell him I said,
Hello. I will. He's a fabulous guy, super smart, and we couldn't be prouder to partner with him. And he said the same thing with us, as a research shop, right? That's what we do. We, we're a worldwide research shop. It is not appropriate or needed for us to maintain what's called '40 Act compliance or infrastructure. So in order to bring this ETF to the market, we had to find a partner who did have those things, who was registered, who was regulated so that we could implement the strategies through an appropriately regulated, structured provider. And that's Nicholas wealth. And the reason David and I started talking about this was because I really respect what he's done. I respect his shop. I respect how he analyzes the thing,
His attention to detail. So when I came to him with this idea, he said, gosh, I've been watching your stuff for a while. Let's have a discussion. And that's where it led.
Yeah. Very cool. So like I said, tell him I said hello, but I really appreciate you spending some time with me today before I can let you go though. Where can people learn more about your research and where can people find information on the CTF? Oh my goodness. You're very gracious. Thank you. So
The, the easiest thing to do, frankly, uh, is to go to the website. My, just like my name, Keith fits hyphen, Gerald.com or five with fits.com. And what that gives you to do, we call it the, the entry suite. Um, I write something called the five with fits. Now these are my personal trading notes that I've written for decades. It just helps me sort out how I'm thinking about the market. And what I suggest is for people just to come get to know me, and if you like what you see, if the logic resonates, if you understand it, then great, take that next step and, and take a look at either one bar ahead or presumably the ETF, which you can buy on any of your brokerage platforms now
At this point, if you'd like it. But that's really, no pressure, no sales tactics. I'm not into that nonsense. If what I have to say resonates, people are going to know it very, very quickly. Um, and, and that's an honor. It's also humbling as heck. So that's how you find out about me. That's how you find out about what we do, how you get to know the logic, the, the, the way we approach the markets, the ETF itself, you can go to fits ETF.com and it'll take you right to Nicholas wealth. You can get the perspectives. You can get all the information you want. Uh, and of course you can begin to track this darn thing. Uh, again, we're still early days. We launched
At the absolute peak of the market. So we're still paying the price for that one. But on days like today, the markets, the, the, the, the portfolio is beginning to perform as we anticipate. So I couldn't be more thrilled. Well, Keith, thanks again for being here with me
Today. I appreciate our time together. All the best. Thank you very much. And get that monster.
Bye.
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The Signal
Brad Roth's daily market brief — systematic signals, ETF positioning, and what the data is actually showing.
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