Innovative ETF Investing Strategies

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Welcome to the Money Tree Investing Podcast. Stock market, wealth, personal finance, value stocks. Invest in your life.

Kirk Chisholm (0:11)

Hello, Smart Money Tree Podcast listeners. Welcome to this week's show. My name is Kirk Chisholm, and I'll be your host. So today, I'm joined with Matt Tuttle. How are you doing, Matt?

Matthew Tuttle (0:18)

I'm doing great. Thank you very much for having me.

Kirk Chisholm (0:21)

So Matt and I have been friends for a while and wanted to get him on the show. He's one of the more innovative people in the Wall Street game. So Matt, tell the listeners a little bit about your background for those who don't know you.

Matthew Tuttle (0:31)

I've been investing in markets since 1981, kind of got the bug and I've been doing that ever since. Started out working on Wall Street, hated it, hated what passed for advice, set up my own wealth management firm, had other wealth managers kind of come to us and say, hey, can you manage money for us? They saw what we were doing, started doing that. 2015, started doing it through ETFs and have been launching ETFs ever since. So now I run an ETF shop, Tuttle Capital Management. We're launching ETFs every day. I think I have around 70 I mean, if it was 65 or 75, I wouldn't be surprised I lose track. We're about five billion in assets.

I've kind of got an investment philosophy I call the HEAT formula. So I like to launch ETFs that kind of fit into that philosophy.

And also I'm at a point in my life and career where I launch ETFs that I want to buy myself, that make managing my portfolio easier. So that's me in five seconds or less.

Kirk Chisholm (1:46)

Why did you jump into ETFs? Because most people just manage money, they manage mutual funds or they just manage it privately. So why ETFs? What kind of got you into that game?

Matthew Tuttle (1:56)

The way we're managing money back in the day was a little more active and we were on the different custodial platforms, Schwab, TD, Fidelity, and they forced you to trade through them. You know, and you weren't getting best execution, but you're sitting there, you're an SEC registered RIA, and you've got to be getting best execution. So, you know, kind of pulling my hair out a little bit, like, well, I've got a fiduciary responsibility to have best execution, but I'm forced to trade through you, and I know I'm not getting it. Was sitting down with an ETF market maker for lunch, who happened to be my neighbor, and saying, you know, man, I wish I could trade with guys like you. And she said, you know, hey, why don't you just launch ETFs for your strategies? Then you trade the ETFs on the custodian, and in the ETFs, you trade with us.

I'm the type of guy where you give me an idea, if it makes sense, I'm doing it. I'm not going to wait, I'm not going to think about it.

And so, you know, pretty much the next day, I started the process of launching ETFs, you know, never looked back.

Kirk Chisholm (3:06)

I don't know which came first, but I know the one ETF that kind of got everybody's attention was like the anti-Cramer. And I think you also had an anti-Cathy Woods one. What kind of brought those about? Those are the ones that everybody was talking about at the time.

Matthew Tuttle (3:19)

Yeah, and we did anti-Cathy Wood first. So there's a lot of stuff in this industry that pisses me off.

You know, there's a lot of conflicts of interest that people don't understand. And when I see things that I think are going to hurt people, I like to take the other side of it. So, you know, with Cathie Wood, you know, coming out of COVID, she had insane returns.

One law of markets that's never going to be repealed is reversion to the mean. You know, if you're getting more returns than you should, eventually, you're going to give those back. And I saw nothing bad about Cathie. I mean, she's a great marketer, but I saw her being brought on show after show as the next Warren Buffett.

And I would argue there can never be structurally another Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett hasn't been Warren Buffett for at least the past 20 years. So I'm sitting there like, this is going to crush people. And of course, it did. So I'm like, I'm going to take the other side of it, and we're going to launch an inverse fund and we're going to go out there. We're going to be loud about it. And I got people emailing me like, thank you. You know, yeah, I lost a whole bunch of money in ARC, but at least I made some of it back in your fund. Cramer was the same deal. Cramer's an entertainer. He's a great entertainer. I mean, I can't watch Mad Money, but you know, people have fun with it. But CNBC brings him on and there's zero accountability. And they present him as his guru.