New ETF Bets Against Diversification, Targets a Few 'Must-Have' Stocks

ATLANTA, GA – May 28, 2026 – In a direct challenge to one of modern finance’s most sacred tenets, XFUNDS by Nicholas Wealth has launched an actively managed ETF that bets against broad diversification. The Fitz-Gerald Must Have Portfolio® ETF (NYSE Arca: FITZ) is built on the premise that only a tiny fraction of companies generate all real market wealth, and that owning hundreds of stocks is a recipe for mediocrity.

The new fund is the brainchild of Keith Fitz-Gerald, a 45-year market veteran and strategist known for his “One Bar Ahead®” market research service, which reaches tens of thousands of subscribers. FITZ will hold a concentrated portfolio of just 20-30 companies, each hand-picked through a proprietary framework Fitz-Gerald has honed over four decades. The goal is to provide investors with a single, high-conviction holding designed to capture the profound economic shifts shaping the next decade.

“We’re launching FITZ to provide investors who are tired of fighting for Wall Street’s table scraps a simple, one-stop solution that aligns their money with where the world is going rather than where it’s been,” says Keith Fitz-Gerald, who serves as the Portfolio Manager for the new ETF.

Challenging a Century of Investment Dogma

The core philosophy of the FITZ ETF dismisses the conventional wisdom that investors should own a little bit of everything. The fund’s strategy is rooted in a startling statistical reality of stock market returns, one that has been rigorously documented in academic circles. The press release highlights that fewer than 4% of all publicly traded companies have generated 100% of the net wealth created in global stock markets.

This claim is strongly supported by the landmark research of Professor Hendrik Bessembinder at Arizona State University. His studies, which analyzed decades of U.S. and global stock returns, found that the vast majority of stocks, over their lifetime, fail to outperform risk-free Treasury bills. The market's overall gains are driven by a very small number of “superstar” firms. For investors, this implies that broad diversification often means diluting the impact of these big winners with a vast number of laggards.

FITZ is designed to solve this problem by actively seeking out those rare, high-performing companies. It is built for investors who want a professionally managed portfolio focused on what Fitz-Gerald calls “must-have” companies—businesses with such strong competitive advantages and alignment with future trends that they become indispensable.

The '5D' Framework for Future-Proofing

To identify these potential long-term winners, Fitz-Gerald employs his proprietary “5D’s” framework. This thematic model moves beyond traditional sector and geographic classifications to evaluate companies based on their exposure to five powerful, structural forces reshaping the global economy. The portfolio is constructed with a 5-to-10-year horizon, emphasizing firms with strong balance sheets and durable earnings power.

The five pillars of the framework are:

• Digitalization: The relentless technological transformation of every industry, from manufacturing to healthcare.
• Defense: Companies aligned with evolving national security priorities and geopolitical realities.
• Distribution: The fundamental rewiring of global supply chains and the movement of goods, services, and capital.
• Dislocation: Identifying value created when powerful new trends disrupt legacy industries and create new market leaders.
• Diffusion: Tracking how innovation, capital, and information spread across markets to fuel new growth opportunities.

By focusing on companies that are leaders in one or more of these themes, the strategy aims to build a portfolio that is not just reactive to market news but is proactively positioned for long-term structural growth.

A 'Guru' Enters the Crowded Active ETF Arena

The launch of FITZ comes amid an explosion in both actively managed and thematic ETFs. The U.S. ETF market now includes hundreds of thematic funds managing over $270 billion in assets, all vying for investor attention with narratives centered on trends like artificial intelligence, clean energy, and robotics. The active ETF space is even hotter, with nearly 1,800 new funds launched in the past six years as investors seek expert management in a convenient, transparent wrapper.

In this competitive landscape, FITZ aims to stand out through the reputation of its manager. Fitz-Gerald is a well-known media commentator, with thousands of appearances on major financial networks and features in publications like Forbes, which dubbed him a “market visionary.” His followers credit him with making several major market calls, including anticipating the dot-com bust and the 2008 financial crisis.

“Keith has spent decades building one of the most respected thematic investing frameworks in the market and we’re proud to partner with him,” says David Nicholas, Founder and CEO of XFUNDS by Nicholas Wealth. “FITZ gives advisors and investors direct access to Keith’s high-conviction, long-term approach through a single ticker.”

Nicholas Wealth's Strategic Play

For Atlanta-based Nicholas Wealth, the FITZ launch represents a significant strategic expansion. The firm's XFUNDS division has carved out a niche with actively managed ETFs that often focus on income generation and risk mitigation, such as the Nicholas Fixed Income Alternative ETF (FIAX) and the Nicholas Crypto Income ETF (BLOX).

The partnership with Fitz-Gerald allows XFUNDS to enter the high-conviction thematic growth category with a recognized expert at the helm. It combines Fitz-Gerald’s established investment philosophy and brand with the modern, accessible ETF structure that Nicholas Wealth specializes in. This move positions the firm to capture a different segment of the market: investors seeking concentrated, long-term capital appreciation rather than income or alternatives strategies.

The fund is positioned as a potential core holding that can anchor, complement, or even replace other equity strategies for investors who believe in its concentrated, forward-looking approach to wealth creation.