An FA-turned-asset management entrepreneur recently rolled out his first ETF.

Thomas John "Tommy" Mancuso Thematic Investments, LLC (dba the BAD Investment Company) President, Co-Founder

Last Wednesday, Tommy Mancuso's Thematic Investments, LLC (dba the BAD Investment Company) launched the BAD ETF (BAD on the NYSE). B.A.D. stands for betting, alcohol (and cannabis), and drugs (i.e. pharmaceuticals), the three areas that the new index fund is designed to invest in. (It's investment focus is slightly different from a longstanding, similarly themed active mutual fund, which invests in alcohol, gambling, tobacco, and weapons.)

"With the proliferation of whitewashed ESG products and market sub-segments like sports betting and cannabis becoming more widely accepted socially and legally, we saw an opportunity to fill what we perceived as a gap in the marketplace," states Mancuso, president and co-founder of the Overland Park, Kansas-based fund firm.

BAD Investment Company is the new fund's investment advisor, while Toroso Investments, LLC is its subadvisor and EQM Indexes LLC is its index provider. Charles Ragauss, portfolio manager and head of trading at Toroso, and Qiao Duan, portfolio manager at Toroso, are the fund's two PMs. And the fund is designed to track the EQM BAD Index (BADIDX). It comes with an expense ratio of 75 basis points.

Other service providers to the new fund included: Cohen and Company, Ltd. as independent accounting firm; Foreside Fund Services as distributor and principal underwriter; Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP as counsel; U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, LLC (dba U.S. Bank Global Fund Services) as administrator, index receipt agent, and transfer agent; and U.S. Bank National Association as custodian.

Mancuso has spent more than five years with Prime Capital Investment Advisors' Qualified Plan Advisors (QPA), providing 3(38) investment fiduciary services to retirement plan sponsors. Earlier, he worked as an FA at Merrill Lynch and Waddell and Reed. He is an alumnus of San Diego State University. 

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