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Behind the Ticker

Behind the Ticker

By: Brad Roth
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Behind the Ticker is hosted by Brad Roth, Founder & CIO of THOR Financial Technologies, a systematic investment firm with ETFs listed on the NYSE. Each week, Brad sits down with the sharpest minds in ETFs, asset management, and wealth technology — fund managers, CIOs, and the entrepreneurs building the next generation of investment products. From managed futures to structured credit, from factor investing to full downside mitigation — no topic is off limits. Brad also publishes The Signal, a daily market research brief for advisors and allocators. New episodes every week.

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Episodes
  • The First Autism Impact ETF — and 100% of Profits Go to the Cause | Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance ETFs
    Jun 28 2026

    Sylvia Jablonski is the CEO of Defiance ETFs — a firm that's grown from a handful of products in 2018 to over $13 billion in AUM across 80-plus ETFs, with launches happening on a weekly cadence. In this return appearance on Behind the Ticker, Sylvia walks through the firm's most personal product yet and the SpaceX launch on deck.

    The Defiance Autism Impact ETF (ticker ASD) launched on June 2nd, 2026, as the first ETF of its kind. The fund is built around the full value chain serving the autism community — drug development, genetic testing, behavioral therapies, educational platforms, assistive technology, digital health — and Defiance is donating 100% of net advisory profits to autism causes for the first two years, no less than 50% thereafter. Sylvia talks about the deeply personal story behind the fund, the investment case for a sector where one in 31 children is now diagnosed and the lifetime cost of care runs into the millions, and why institutional allocators are increasingly asking for products with a cause structurally built in.

    The conversation then shifts to SPCU — the firm's 2X long SpaceX ETF, set to launch alongside what may be the largest IPO in history. Sylvia covers how Defiance has been building space exposure for years across single-name, thematic, and basket products (UFOX, SPCL, JEDI, XOVL), why the space economy has gone from niche theme to mainstream so quickly, and how Defiance is positioning across an increasingly crowded category.

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    23 mins
  • Stacking the Odds to 93%: Inside a Non-Directional Income Strategy | Carter Worth, Worth Charting
    Jun 21 2026

    Carter Worth spent 35 years on Wall Street — Value Line, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, and a long series of major sell-side seats — before founding Worth Charting in 2021 to serve the largest institutional capital pools in the world. He's a regular on CNBC's Fast Money, and one of the more recognizable voices in technical analysis still operating at scale.

    In this episode, Carter breaks down WRTH — the Worth Charting Options Income ETF — and why selling both sides of an option, instead of buying them or running covered calls, is a structurally different way to generate income. He walks through how the fund stacks four probability filters on top of each other — short-dated, out-of-the-money, large cap only, non-biotech, sold only after outsized earnings moves — to reach approximately 93% odds that the options expire worthless. We also get into why the fund is fundamentally non-directional and bets only on a stock staying in a range for 15 to 20 sessions after a major move, how the cash-secured structure works to manage downside risk, why tail risk from acquisitions is more manageable than most investors assume, and how Carter and his team are thinking about distribution in what he calls the ETF Thunderdome.

    Carter also makes the case for why technical analysis is more relevant in a quant-and-AI-dominated market, not less — and why pattern recognition at the chart level is just the original version of what Renaissance was doing with 150 PhDs.

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    29 mins
  • The Bitcoin ETF Built to Survive a Drawdown | Mike Willis, Cyber Hornet ETFs
    Jun 14 2026

    Mike Willis has spent 25 years on Wall Street — Smith Barney, Paine Webber, UBS — before founding Cyber Hornet ETFs to do two things that traditional asset management still hasn't done well: offer a founder-run alternative to the index giants that dominate corporate voting, and build a way for financial advisors to put crypto into client portfolios without the volatility blowing the relationship up.

    In this episode, Mike breaks down BBB — the Cyber Hornet S&P 500 and Bitcoin 75/25 Strategy ETF — and the methodology behind why 75/25 is the sweet spot, not 50/50 or 60/40. He walks through what the fund actually did during Bitcoin's up year in 2024, its down year in 2025, and the deep drawdown unfolding right now in 2026 — and how the monthly rebalance functions as a built-in buy-low-sell-high mechanism. We also get into the firm's transition from Bitcoin futures to spot, why Coinbase's early custody concentration kept Cyber Hornet in futures longer than competitors, and how the wrapper actually changes the conversation when an advisor is trying to satisfy a client who wants crypto exposure without taking the volatility calls themselves.

    Mike also covers INDEX, the firm's S&P 500 fund that pioneered shareholder voting input years before the major issuers offered any version of it — and why he wishes he had pushed harder on full pass-through voting when they had the first-mover lead.

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    33 mins
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