While focusing on a pair of key new distribution channels, this fundster chief is also expanding his team.

"We're going to continue to expand the sales team as we get approvals from the home office so we can cover the field," Rob Nestor, president and head of Rafferty Asset Management's Direxion [profile], tells MFWire. Direxion currently has 41 people and more than $14.5 billion in AUM, Nestor adds.

The sales expansion, along with some new product launches (and more coming down the line), is part of Nestor's strategy to broaden Direxion's distribution reach beyond its traditional core market: tactical traders. Direxion has historically been known for leveraged index and inverse index mutual funds and ETFs.

Nestor sees both strategic asset allocators (who have a multi-year time horizon for investing) and "top-down, macro and thematic investors" (who invest over six- to eighteen-month time horizons) as key distribution areas for Direxion moving forward, and his team is building new products to better serve those channels. M&A is a possibility, too.

"We'll now be relevant in retail wealth advisory," Nestor tells MFWire, adding that, now more than ever before, it's "important that distribution be scaled." The "if you build it they will come" ETF distribution days are long over, he says.

"Products increasingly need to be sold," Nestor says. "They will not just be found in a world where we now have over 2,000 ETFs." Nestor also stresses that Direxion's core channel, tactical traders, "remains and will remain a core business." 

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