ETF Manager

David Kotok from Cumberland Advisors was the guest host on Squawk Box. He has been a regular on different CNBC shows for the last year or two.

I was very surprised to hear they only use ETFs. I think I have heard him mention ETFs but never the extent to which they use them. He mentioned using them to capture different sectors, similar, I think, to the way I use ETFs for certain accounts.

Since the show starts at 3 am Arizona time I did not see if there was any other mention of this earlier in the morning. The Cumberland site does not have any sample portfolios that I could find to get a real feel for how they use the product.

The site does specifically mention selecting sectors, industry groups, market caps, styles and region-kind of like what I have been writing about. Obviously there is no mention on the site of how they have done, could be great or mediocre.

They lead with the fact that they are a top down manager- me too. The thing I have to wonder is, if they are truly top down (and I am not doubting them), there must be all sorts of themes that they think will do well but they can't own because they only use ETFs.

There are a lot of countries that fall through the cracks, and before this last wave of sector ETFs there were very few sub-sectors to buy into. I have thought all along that gaps would be filled, and that is happening slowly.