What Traditional Momentum Strategies Miss
Momentum is the factor most often associated with performance chasing, but that’s a narrative MarketDesk is looking to change with the MarketDesk Focused U.S. Momentum ETF (FMTM). Find out how the fund’s approach leads to a drastically different portfolio overlap with the S&P 500 than traditional momentum ETFs in this episode of Behind the Ticker.
In this episode of Behind the Ticker, Brad Roth, CIO of Thor Financial Technologies, sits down with Jon Clements, Managing Director and Co-founder of MarketDesk Research, to talk the MarketDesk Focused U.S. Momentum ETF (FMTM). Their discussion covers how MarketDesk approaches momentum investing, the differentiated portfolio its strategy yields compared to traditional momentum ETFs, risk-management, and more.
This conversation is also available in video form here or on our YouTube. You can find the audio version on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any of your preferred streaming platforms.
What’s in This Episode
- From Research Platform to ETF Issuer: Jon Clements co-founded MarketDesk Research in 2020 after stints at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Guggenheim, building a quantitative research and model portfolio platform serving ~200 wealth managers and family offices. The ETF wrapper was a natural evolution, solving the tax inefficiency of a high-turnover strategy and automating a manual trading process clients had been running themselves for years.
- How FMTM is Built: The fund starts with a high-liquidity US equity universe ($1B+ market cap, $25M+/day in volume), runs a quality screen down to ~300 names, then ranks those on six months of price data and holds the top 30–50 on an equal-weight basis. The six-month lookback keeps the signal fresher and reduces the lag that burned traditional momentum strategies in 2008, 2022, and the dot-com unwind.
- What Makes It Different: Unlike legacy momentum products that rank stocks purely on trailing return, FMTM scores the quality and consistency of the price path, favoring slow and steady accumulation over single-event spikes. That design choice, combined with equal weighting and a concentrated portfolio, produces a roughly 2% overlap with the S&P 500, compared to 30–40% for traditional momentum ETFs.
- Risk Management and Who It's For: FMTM stays fully invested with no cash, shorts, or hedging overlays; all risk management is handled through holdings selection, leaning on relative momentum to find defensive pockets during drawdowns. Advisors use it as a satellite alongside core S&P exposure, as a complement to existing momentum funds given the minimal overlap, or in some cases as a primary growth-oriented holding.
Disclaimer: The market insights, projections, and investment strategies expressed in this article are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of ETF.com. This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice.
