A midwestern ETF entrepreneur is looking for a key hire, strategic partners, and more.

Petra Bakosova Hull Tactical Asset Allocation Chief Operating Officer

"One of our goals for 2019 is we mature as a company and establish our brand," Petra Bakosova, chief operating officer of Chicago-based Hull Tactical Asset Allocation, tells MFWire. "We would love to find somebody to kick off our distribution efforts in a more formal way, an individual with a background on the institutional side."

Marson Blair Hull Hull Tactical Asset Allocation CEO, Founder

"We're also open to strategic partnerships. There's strength in numbers," Bakosova adds.

Hull Tactical, founded by veteran proprietary trader Blair Hull, entered the mutual fund business in 2015 with the launch of the Hull Tactical US ETF, a long-short equity ETF that is still the firm's sole fund.

"We will have essentially one strategy that is deployed in an ETF wrapper and an SMA wrapper," Bakosova says. "We wanted to be very committed and very focused on the areas where we think we have something to add."

"We don't necessarily want to spread ourselves too thin and go into areas where we would be too mediocre," Bakosova adds. "We're not far along enough to launch a second strategy."

The three-star (according to Morningstar) fund now has about $49.6 million in AUM, and the SMAs in the strategy have more than $100 million, Bakosova says. Exchange Traded Concepts is the ETF-in-a-box shop working with the fund.

Hull Tactical's core team includes four people: Hull himself, Bakosvoa, investment and product strategist Richard Anderson, and financial engineer Alex Kment. The firm is owned by Hull Investments, the family office that manages Blair Hull's own portfolio.

"Up to this point, we have not had a very focused or orchestrated distribution effort," Bakosova says. "Our marketing efforts have revolved around building the brand. We would like to be the go-to place when it comes to equity risk premium forecasting."

To that end, the Hull Tactical team has been focusing much of their efforts on investor and advisor education, via the firm's blog and more.

"We're always working on new research," Bakosova says. "We have very solid backing, which allows us to pursue our research in a very independent way."

"We're always hiring opportunistically," Bakosova adds. 

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