Behind the Ticker: FITZ & One Bar Ahead

In this episode of Behind the Ticker, Brad Roth, CIO of Thor Financial Technologies, chats with Keith Fitz-Gerald, principal of Keith Fitz-Gerald Research and creator of One Bar Ahead research services. The two talk diversification, concentration, and the Fitz-Gerald Must Have Portfolio ETF (FITZ). 

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any of your preferred streaming platforms.

A Concentrated Portfolio Built on Decades of Research

Keith Fitz-Gerald didn't come up through a flashy Wall Street pedigree. Instead, he traces his investing roots back to a childhood lawn-mowing business, his first trades at 15, and lessons learned from his grandmother, a self-taught investor who turned a small life insurance payout into something substantial. He describes his career less as a string of early wins and more as a slow grind of hard-earned mistakes before landing at Wilshire Associates. That long apprenticeship eventually produced One Bar Ahead, the investing newsletter he started from a yellow legal pad at his dining room table and grew into an ad-free publication read by tens of thousands, thanks largely to word of mouth.

The philosophy driving the Fitz-Gerald Must Have Portfolio ETF (FITZ) comes out of more than two decades of research suggesting that only about 4% of publicly listed U.S. companies have generated essentially all the wealth created in the stock market over the last century. That means traditional diversification that entails spreading money across hundreds or thousands of names, actually works against investors by diluting exposure to the handful of companies that truly matter. He points to concentrated investors like Buffett, Ron Baron, and Steve Cohen as proof this approach has quietly worked for the best in the business, even as it runs against decades of conventional asset-allocation orthodoxy. Fitz-Gerald also argues that structural market changes since the late 1980s have eroded the non-correlated behavior diversification was originally built to capture, so when markets get stressed, everything tends to fall together anyway.

FITZ, sub-advised by David Nicholas's Nicholas Wealth, launched in May 2026 as a concentrated, actively managed portfolio of 20 to 30 companies selected through Fitz-Gerald's "5D" framework, with digitalization as the dominant theme. It’s a theme broad enough, in his view, to reframe companies like Walmart as tech plays rather than simple retailers. Selection emphasizes doing the work upfront so exits stay rare, guided by Ron Baron's hold-through-thick-and-thin philosophy; Intel's dividend cut is his go-to example of a thesis breaking down enough to warrant selling. The fund rebalances three times a year rather than quarterly to sidestep the liquidity drag from everyone trading on the same schedule, and Fitz-Gerald pitches it not as a satellite holding but as a potential core equity position, one built to hold the names that matter so investors don't need thousands of others around it. Fitz-Gerland is candid that the fund launched near a market peak, but points to early performance, including a day when FITZ fell far less than the S&P 500, as an encouraging signal for the lower-drawdown approach the strategy aims for.

You can learn more about Keith Fitz-Gerald here, as well as One Bar Ahead, and the FITZ ETF via Nicholas X.

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.